Women and youth leading on climate with Rainforest Partnership
This guest blog post was written by Raina Chinitz at Rainforest Partnership. Many thanks, Raina!
There are so many ways that women and young people are transforming forest conservation—from funding innovative projects, to leading NGOs and nonprofit organizations, to empowering and leading action in frontline communities.
Rainforest Partnership itself was founded by women, is led by women, and is powered by a majority-women team with many Gen Z and millennial team members. One of our very first projects empowered women in the Ecuadorian Amazon to support their communities and protect their rainforests. Our youth branch, Gen Z for the Trees, is the world’s only global youth-led organization focused on ending deforestation.
Our focus on women-powered conservation is just one reason we were honored to receive the support of Planet Women, an organization that partners with women to create a healthy planet for all life. From Africa to the Amazon to the Colorado River Basin, Planet Women is improving forest, water and biodiversity health and reducing carbon emissions. Planet Women invests in projects led by local women, and Indigenous and multi-generational leaders, ensuring the inclusion of those most impacted by environmental decisions from start to finish. They are also transforming the conservation space by promoting a new model of leadership that embraces power sharing, collaboration, and many ways of knowing.
As two organizations led by women who are powering women-focused conservation and climate solutions, our partnership with Planet Women was a natural fit—and is a powerful ongoing collaboration.
Changing the leadership narrative
Incredible things happen when women have the tools to lead in historically patriarchal spaces dominated by men and when young people have a platform to exercise their powerful and fierce leadership.
Rather than simply pushing pieces around within an existing framework, we rearrange the framework entirely. We re-envision and redirect channels of power, resources and advocacy. And, when empowered women and youth leaders work together, large-scale transformation—the kind of major cultural and societal shifts we need to tackle deforestation and climate change—becomes possible.
Transformational shifts like what we are seeing in the Ecuadorian Amazon and our Gen Z for the Trees youth movement. For several years, Planet Women has powered these projects, and a recent grant in 2023 helps us continue this work.
Empowered women protect forests: Women of the Rio Napo
For several years, Planet Women has been powering our Women of the Rio Napo project in the Ecuadorian Amazon and our Gen Z for the Trees youth movement. A recent grant in 2023 helps us continue this work. Together, we are supporting women-led associations in Kichwa communities along the Rio Napo. These associations are organizing to build economic independence and opportunities for women in their communities and to empower women across generations to own their roles as powerful protectors of community lands and cultures.
Artisan handicrafts. Native fish. Sustainably grown cacao, honey, and essential oils. The women are turning their communities’ abundant resources into opportunities to support themselves and to redetermine their futures with creativity and vision. Alongside these livelihood projects, Rainforest Partnership coordinates training, empowerment, and educational opportunities for women in these communities. We respond to the needs the women have identified, namely, to develop the skills and resources to more efficiently and effectively lead their projects to long-term success.
Dreams of Kichwa Women empowerment and vision-making workshop in Sani Isla led by two representatives of University of Pennsylvania and Fundacion Pachay Sana. © Rainforest Partnership.
Women in Sani Isla make artisan handicrafts using natural fibers, dyes, clay and tools from the forest as a source of income. © Rainforest Partnership.
In addition to empowerment and skills training, technological resources are a foundational need for the women to grow their projects: from laptops to clean water pumps to solar panels, greenhouses, cacao processing equipment and bathrooms, these materials and equipment are keys that unlock the powerful potential of these women-led associations.
Women in frontline rainforest communities are integral to protecting community land. They are traditional and essential stewards of family and communal chakras (land for cultivation). They are vocal and strong advocates for conserving forests and resisting external threats such as oil and mining exploration and extraction. And as mothers and family members, they are preparing the next generation to better understand and protect their communities’ land and rights.
With newfound access to knowledge, tools and skill-based resources, these women are expanding their work and their vision for the future with confidence and independence.
Gen Z for the Trees youth movement
When young people embrace the importance of protecting forests and biodiversity, they help protect the entire planet. Planet Women also funds Rainforest Partnership’s own youth movement, Gen Z for the Trees, which was created in 2020 by a group of young people passionate about forest protection and climate action. Gen Z for the Trees has since become a global, digital movement bringing young people together from around the world to tackle global drivers of deforestation.
Through extensive research into the ways that deforestation is embedded in global economic systems, along with educational campaigns and advocacy initiatives, Gen Z for the Trees has used its platform to advocate against deforestation in global spaces such as COP26 in Glasgow and to push for further transparency in the palm oil industry by uncovering unlisted palm oil mills.
The Gen Z for the Trees team is currently producing thorough research and resources on palm oil, soya, cattle and pesticides, and leading an outreach campaign to push large food and restaurant chains to eliminate deforestation in their supply chains. This work has made Gen Z for the Trees a powerful youth-led mechanism holding large-scale decision makers accountable to their pledges to act responsibly to halt deforestation and climate change.
Gen Z for the Trees co-leads Roshan Khan and Jamie Ziah at COP26 in Glasgow. © Rainforest Partnership.
By recognizing women and young people as critical leaders in conservation. Planet Women is helping to power Rainforest Partnership’s projects that defend Indigenous lands and advocate for our forests.
From our work on the ground to our leadership in global spaces, our partnership with Planet Women is just the kind of essential collaboration that our planet needs.