Rooted and Rising: Women Cultivating a Just Green Future
Across wetlands, farms, and city blocks, a quiet revolution is unfolding. It doesn’t always make headlines, but it is shaping the future of our planet in deep, regenerative ways. It is being led by women entrepreneurs, farmers, scientists, and caretakers, who are growing green economies from the ground up.
From a half-acre plot in Kenya to the wetlands of Nagdaha in Nepal, a skincare lab in Mongolia, and climate-adaptive buildings in Europe, women are reimagining sustainability, not just as a policy goal or carbon target, but as a lived, daily commitment to land, people, and possibility.
This is the story of four women, Joyce, Anu, Khulan, and Elena, and the larger story they are helping to write: one where climate justice is built on care, courage, and community.
Where the First Seeds Were Sown
Sometimes, change doesn’t announce itself. It comes quietly, as a slow unravelling of what once thrived—a fading river, a failed crop, a skin rash brought on by pollution. It is in these silences that something stirs: the need to act.
For Joyce, a farmer in Kenya’s Kiambu County, it began when her soil stopped speaking in the language of abundance. “I remember when the rains were reliable and the soil was rich,” she says. But the patterns shifted. Droughts grew longer. Yields dwindled. Hunger crept closer. Her journey into green farming wasn't prompted by a grand plan, but by a growing unease and intuition that the earth was no longer speaking the same language. What began as a handful of tree seedlings and vegetables on a half-acre plot has become a model food forest, deeply rooted in community nourishment, sustainability, and knowledge-sharing.
Anu’s path began in the highlands of Nepal, where the headwaters of the Bagmati River nurtured both ecosystems and a sense of responsibility. Volunteering in the long-term biomonitoring of the Bagmati River’s headwaters opened her eyes to both the fragility and importance of freshwater ecosystems, sparking a deep sense of responsibility not just to study them, but to protect them. However, she found that real opportunities to engage communities in meaningful conservation were limited and surface-level.
Khulan returned to Mongolia with a degree in renewable energy but was confronted by something more personal: pollution-induced allergies and a market flooded with synthetic skincare. There were no genuinely organic skincare products made locally - everything was imported, synthetic, and ill-suited to Mongolia’s harsh environment - so she created her own. Using local ingredients like sea buckthorn, rosehip, yak milk, and sheep‑tail tallow, she began blending her own organic products in her kitchen, and a business—Lhamour—was born.
Elena’s roots stretch from a small rural town in Spain to the bustling infrastructure of the UK’s built environment. Her path was not marked by policy invitations or mentors. It was hard-earned—through minimum-wage jobs to fund a degree, through motherhood, and through navigating a system not built for her. “There was no mentor, no one to ask whether my choices were right,” she reflects. But she kept going, determined to make buildings climate-ready and sustainable from the inside out.
Each woman started in a different place—but all were responding to the same quiet call: something must change, and maybe that change starts with me.
Innovation That Grows in the Margins
Real transformation rarely begins in boardrooms. It often begins in compost pits, overlooked data, or wild-harvested herbs.
Joyce turned kitchen waste and cow dung into compost, transforming dry soil into fertile ground for her thriving food forest. She experimented with local, low-cost materials and relied on indigenous knowledge. Her approach has become a practical demonstration site, where women from nearby villages come to learn under the trees, cook meals together, and exchange real-time lessons on composting, mulching, seed saving, and pest control. To her, it is a space not just for agriculture, but for the restoration of dignity and connection.
Thousands of miles away, Anu was facing down an ecological nuisance: fast-growing water lettuce choking the life from her local wetland. Most would have seen weeds. She saw potential. Her team trained community members to transform the invasive plant into compost and biopesticides. Now, they not only protect five hectares of wetland—they also reduce their dependence on chemicals and restore food systems.
Khulan’s Lhamour promotes a circular economy, offering refillable and recyclable packaging and sourcing ingredients like yak milk and sea buckthorn from nomadic herders. Her business blends skincare with social impact, employing over 30 women and exporting worldwide.
Elena’s tools are different—spreadsheets, data layers, GIS maps—but her innovations are no less grounded. In one post-COVID project, she identified a local foodbank’s route and connected it to a struggling retail site with surplus food. “A few phone calls later, we had a pickup system,” she shares. In six months, that simple map turned into over 8,500 meals to families and children in need. “The project ran itself after that. It was self-sustaining. All it needed was a spark.”
This is innovation as healing, not extraction. Grounded in care and creativity, it emerges from the everyday and the overlooked.
The Weight and Wonder of Leading While Female
But planting change in systems not built for you requires more than vision. It requires resolve.
Joyce farms land she does not officially own—land held in her husband’s family name. Decisions about fences or water tanks involve layers of permission. “Hapo mwanzo, watu hawakuamini mwanamke anaweza kuongoza mradi wa miti,” she says. At first, people didn’t believe a woman could lead a tree project. But she persisted. She kept notes, tracked rainfall, and showed her results. Slowly, doubt gave way to respect.
Anu, too, has worked against the grain. In the conservation sector, funding and influence are often closed doors to youth- or women-led initiatives. “Many opportunities are not designed with us in mind,” she says. Yet, by co-creating solutions with youth and forming cross-sector partnerships, she’s carved out a path that’s inclusive, credible, and deeply rooted.
Khulan was told lip balms and body oils could not be serious entrepreneurship. She persisted through theft, devastating floods that crippled production, and copycat brands—holding tight to her mission and community.
Elena faced the unspoken rules of class and culture. She did not come from connections. She built them. She did not inherit wealth. She generated value. She navigated new systems in a second language, often with two children in tow. Her leadership has been forged through adaptability and an unrelenting belief that climate adaptation must include the places people live and work.
Their challenges are unique, but they share a common thread: showing up anyway.
A Different Kind of Leadership
There’s a type of leadership the world is just beginning to see clearly: one that does not clamour for power but cultivates collective strength.
“Wanawake ndio uti wa mgongo wa jamii,” Joyce says. Women are the backbone of the community. She has seen women create seed banks, tree nurseries, and savings groups with nothing but recycled bottles, shared wisdom, and grit. “We don’t wait for things to be perfect; we start with what we have.”
Anu adds: “When women lead, they bring holistic thinking and intergenerational wisdom.” She’s witnessed it firsthand in wetland clean-ups, storytelling sessions, and youth mentorship. Women lead with care not just for human life, but for the ecosystems we depend on.
Khulan believes leadership starts with listening to one’s self, to the land, and the needs of the community. “You don’t need to be perfect. Just real.” She urges investors and policymakers to recognise women-led models as scalable, serious, and system-changing.
Elena reminds us that a successful green transition needs everyone—not just a few experts in suits but also caregivers and connectors. “It would be insanity not to include women,” she says plainly. Their presence at all levels is essential, not optional.
I’ve learned that showing up consistently—with authenticity, clarity of purpose, and a willingness to listen can slowly shift mindsets. The green economy isn’t just about technology and finance; it’s about relationships, care, and resilience which woman bring to the table of discussion.
— Anu Rai
What Support Really Looks Like
If you ask these women what they need, they won’t ask for praise. They’ll tell you what works.
Joyce wants land rights for women (real tenure, not just borrowed authority), friendly loans, and better-resourced grassroots organisations like AEN-Kenya. "Support local organisations that walk with us. Empower them, and they will multiply solutions." Real support, she says, means funding that reaches the last mile and training offered in women’s own languages. She envisions a women’s network rooted not in hotel halls but in shambas (farms), kitchens, and markets—where knowledge is shared through practice, not just theory.
Anu calls for policies that protect watersheds, support youth entrepreneurship, and monitor ecosystem health. She also dreams of creative and cultural support to revive tourism through storytelling, particularly around the local mythology of Nagraj (the serpent king), which holds deep cultural significance and could help foster place-based pride and attract responsible tourism.
Khulan advocates for:
Small business grants and capacity-building for women-led green SMEs,
Local labs and organic certification infrastructure,
Packaging and refill station policies,
Global market access for eco-brands from emerging economies.
She also dreams of global-local solidarity networks that offer not just business coaching, but emotional and peer support.
Elena sees the biggest threat as political backsliding on climate. Without stable regulatory support, banks and institutions hesitate. The climate can’t wait. “We need action and access—especially education for all women. That changes everything.”
And they all echo this: support local leaders and their stories—not just with funding, but with trust.
From One Tree to a Forest
These women are not exceptions. They are exemplars. From skincare to compost, from maps to wetlands, they’re weaving care into economies, creating futures grounded in dignity.
Their stories are blueprints for the green transitions we need: just, regenerative, and deeply human.
As Joyce puts it:
“Every woman planting a tree is planting hope. For her family, her land, her country, and her planet.”
Let us listen. Let us follow. And most of all, let us invest in the future, they are already growing.
This blog post is part of Green Economies, Powered By Women — a campaign by SHE Changes Climate spotlighting women entrepreneurs who are leading climate solutions. It takes a closer look at the journeys of Joyce, Anu, Khulan, and Elena— highlighting the barriers they face, the support that matters most, and how their experiences can inform better policy and funding decisions.