As extensively documented, including in the UN Chronicle, women’s resourcefulness is increasingly challenged by the impacts of climate change, to which they are generally more vulnerable than men. Comprising the majority of the world’s poor and proportionally more dependent on threatened natural resources, women also have less access to wealth-creating and -accumulating structures. This heightened vulnerability is evident in forestry, where, traditionally, women have lacked access to the most valuable forest resources. In a global study that included 41 focused on Africa, Ngolia Kimanzu et al. (2021) write that, “In all studies across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, there is a strong gender specialisation, with commercial access and utilisation of forests and forest products being dominated by men, whereas access for subsistence and household consumption is almost exclusively the task of women”.

Increasingly, however, stories are emerging of African women who have ingeniously and successfully navigated obstacles to create sustainable, profitable enterprises while conserving their tree resources. As reported in the UN-REDD publication Climate resilience and women’s empowerment: Forest restoration in Northern Ghana, “An estimated 16 million women across 21 African countries, from Senegal to South Sudan, depend on the shea tree – (‘women’s gold’) – for their livelihood … Harvesting and collecting shea nuts is a key source of income, supporting more than 90 percent of women in this region”. In Ghana’s Northern Savannah Zone, women have traditionally been excluded from land ownership but, granted access to parklands to collect shea fruits and nuts, they are now gaining a degree of financial autonomy. The women are also helping tackle climate change by engaging in the project’s goals “to restore 500,000 hectares of off-reserve savannah forests and degraded shea parklands and to establish 25,500 hectares of forest plantations in severely degraded forest reserves”.

In the Casamance region of southern Senegal, a formidable woman heads Nous Sommes la Solution (“We are the Solution”), a movement of more than 500 rural women’s associations in Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali and Senegal that promotes sustainable agroecology. As reported by Ricci Shryock in The Guardian, Mariama Sonko and her movement are against large-scale industrial farming. “We promote agroecology and food sovereignty in Africa,” Sonko says. “Women are invaluable actors for the development of the rural areas. We want to valorise this tireless work of women who are concerned about the environment and the health of their families. They have always worked in agriculture, and they do not use the products that ruin the ecosystem nor the health of humans.”

In Senegal alone, 10 000 women have joined Nous Sommes la Solution, and several have followed Sonko’s lead in protecting precious tree resources. “Pink shells hang on improvised nets that will be placed in mangroves to provide a breeding spot for oysters,” writes Ricci Shryock. “Normally, women collecting oysters chop at the branches – a method that can harm the mangroves. But these nets allow them to harvest sustainably”.

Sonko describes her work as ecofeminism: “indigenous knowledge and the practices … have always supported food sovereignty and this knowhow is in the hands of the women,” she says. “Ecofeminism for me is the respect for all that we have around us.”

The work by Sonko and her organization to protect mangroves helps mitigate climate change. As noted in a UK COP26 pre-conference note, Voices from the Field, “Mangrove forests are the ultimate nature-based solutions for both climate change mitigation and adaptation. They capture and store carbon dioxide – coastal blue carbon – and they do this at rates far greater than most tropical rainforests. Protecting and restoring mangroves is a highly efficient and effective way to simultaneously reduce GHG emissions, and supporting adaptation to climate change. Mangrove protection and restoration is a vital component of achieving the large-scale carbon drawdown essential if we are to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C”.

Women everywhere must draw daily on their resourcefulness, collaboration and fortitude to navigate and overcome economic and social obstacles, and this is certainly true in Africa, where poverty is widespread and most women bear many family and household responsibilities. Success stories like those recounted here (and there are undoubtedly millions more across the continent) show the substantive, meaningful contributions women can make when given the opportunity. As momentum increases to scale up agriculture and forest restoration across the continent, a big question remains on whether African women will be able to share their views and benefit equally. Achieving sustainable outcomes depends on it.

Patricia