Our last piece explored women protecting mangroves and pink dolphins in Latin America. Now, we turn to women and organizations leaving their mark in South Asia.
India
Marathwada, an agricultural region in the Maharashtra state of India, has consistently been affected by droughts and crop failure over recent decades. Women have seen their health deprioritized in the face of such ongoing crises.
Nevertheless, since the 1950s, sugarcane production in the area has significantly increased with the support and incentivization of the government.
The cash crop industry is extremely water intensive, taking up only 4% of total cropped land in Maharashtra but accounting for 71.5% of its irrigated water.
Therefore, seasonal migration to find jobs as sugarcane cutters has become common for those without land.
Some women join that backbreaking work out of necessity, and those who opt out still face hard days. For example, Meenakshi Shelke told Mongabay that she works in the fields until 7 p.m. before returning home to do chores until 11 p.m.
Photo Courtesy Swayam Shikshan Prayog
Although founded to help with reconstruction in the aftermath of the 1998 Latur earthquake, Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) has been working with local women since 2014 to help them adopt a better farming model called Women-Led Climate Resilient Farming (WCRF).
“Our agriculture work with women started when they told us they had no food to eat,” Upmanyu Patil, director of programs at SSP, an organization whose name means “Self-Education for Empowerment,” told the Global Center on Adaptation.
Working with local governmental agriculture departments and other on-the-ground partners helps SSP empower women farmers to become leaders and agents of change. It changes perceptions of them in their communities and families, where they receive increased access to land and earn more of a voice in decision-making processes. Some women become Krishi Samvad Sahayaks, who are essential to helping select more farmers and promoting awareness of the program.
SSP’s “One Acre Model” entails a mixed crop pattern where women borrow land. It provides families with food security by increasing production and helping them diversify into food other than cash crops. In 2019, SSP reported that over the three years prior, 41,000 women farmers with whom it worked had seen a 25% increase in crop yield, 25% savings on farm inputs, and INR 35,000 ($418) in annual savings per household from eating food grown on their farms.
It also improves their income security by enabling them to sell produce or expand into related businesses like raising livestock. Eighty-three percent of WCRF adopters have diversified their livelihoods by launching at least one more farm-related business, and 25% became “agri-entrepreneurs” with new business ideas. Finally, it ensures a resilient model through organic farming, soil management, and water conservation practices that protect those resources and ensure they will be sustained long into the future.
Rohini Dhole from the Dharashiv District grew soybean and sugarcane with her husband but was constantly threatened by droughts and monsoons. She worked with SSP to build a vermicompost bed on their four-acre farm and used organic practices to plant grains, pulses, and vegetables for consumption at home and sale at the market.
She has gone on to take a leadership role in Nagewadi village, surveying 213 other women farmers to understand just how much water was going toward cash crops. She used those results to show women how to get into diversified food crop farming. As of late, she has also been encouraging others to install biogas units to shift farms to renewable energy sources.
Photo Courtesy Swayam Shikshan Prayog
SSP’s success cannot be understated. While the organization has impacted the lives of 6 million people across all its programs, about 65,000 women farmers from 750 villages have adopted this particular method of climate-resilient farming.
Even agricultural giant ADM started working with SSP two years ago. In the first year of the partnership, 100 farm ponds and 100 village-level conservation plans were built. In 2024, their plans include equipping 1,500 farmers and 30 villages with the knowledge and tools to engage in climate-smart agriculture.
Photo Courtesy ADM
Internationally
International Rivers has long been focused on protecting the rivers of Asia that are the backbones of biodiverse ecosystems and cultural systems, especially in the face of destructive dam projects. Meanwhile, the Women’s Earth Alliance seeks to empower women and invest in their long-term leadership to tackle the climate crisis by providing training through accelerator programs. The two organizations teamed up on one such program in the face of a mere 7% of women governing water systems and natural resources worldwide.
Photo Courtesy International Rivers
It all started in 2019 when International Rivers held a Women and Rivers Congress. Ninety-eight women from 32 countries attended. They not only celebrated women’s roles in protecting freshwater resources and gleaned inspiration from others’ stories, but they also sought to build supportive networks and partnerships, engage in dialogue across disciplines and sectors, and develop strategies and narratives with the potential to elevate women as water leaders.
“We stand together, united in solidarity,” the attendees said in a statement. “We commit to continuing our fight to protect free-flowing rivers and the lands, forests, and territories they sustain, to ensure women’s leadership in decision-making at all levels over freshwater resources, and to strengthen and build alliances and grow our movement, for the future of ourselves as women, our families and communities, our rivers and our planet.”
Photo Courtesy International Rivers
The Women and Rivers Accelerator is a four-month online program during which participants attend online webinars and workshops. They develop and share knowledge and skills, come up with action plans, and even obtain seed grants for their projects. Ultimately, they learn to bolster women’s environmental leadership and engagement, scale the impact of their projects and strengthen their campaigns for rivers in gender-responsive ways, and grow public awareness of and visibility for their work.
Currently, 23 women from 10 South Asian and African countries are working to protect 50 rivers worldwide. “Our work is an uphill battle every day and every hour,” Nirmila Gowda from India said. “To see that all of us have similar journeys makes me feel stronger, inspires me to do more, and that is the strength that I am drawing from these collaborations.”
This series will be continued with a closer look at the Arctic.
Photo Courtesy International Rivers
