What the Current Climate Narrative Leaves Out — and the Women It Leaves Behind
WEA Leader Chio, Mujeres de la Tierra, at WEA’s Mexico Partners Onboarding. Credit: Eduardo Velasco.
Climate conversations today carry an emotional weight that’s hard to ignore.
We’re met with a steady diet of worst-case scenarios: stories of scarcity, collapse and irreversible loss. Headlines lead with fear and division, leaving little room for grounded solutions. The tone is alarmist. The story is stuck.
Increasingly, this discourse is turning inward, influencing not only how we approach the climate crisis, but whose leadership we recognize and trust.
Women — particularly those in under-resourced and frontline communities — are often cast as passive victims or mere beneficiaries of aid in dominant climate narratives. This framing leaves much untold.
Yes, women in climate-impacted regions are among those most affected by the growing environmental challenges we face. But they’re also among those most deeply engaged in responding to them. In all the chaos of loss and urgency, this truth is often overshadowed.
And when that truth is ignored, the consequences are not just hypothetical: they’re real. When women’s leadership is erased or diminished, their work becomes more vulnerable. Within broader trends of violence against environmental activists, women, and particularly Indigenous women, are disproportionately affected. Still, they lead — with clarity, courage and care, even in the face of mounting threats.
Erasing women’s leadership doesn’t just distort the narrative — it compounds the danger. It dulls momentum. It strips away the full context of who is leading change, and how. And it blinds us to the vision already reshaping our future through innovation, resilience, and community-rooted leadership.
Shifting this storyline is a core part of our mission at Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA). Through training, resources, mentorship, and networks of support, we invest in grassroots women leaders who are not only addressing the climate crisis on the ground, but also challenging the narratives that so often erase their leadership. Since 2006, WEA has partnered with more than 52,000 women leaders in 31 countries, reaching over 24 million people with life-saving social, economic and environmental solutions, and offering living proof that when women thrive, the Earth thrives.
Across regions and ecosystems, we see a consistent truth: women are not just navigating the climate crisis, but designing some of the most effective responses to it: restoring forests, protecting water and developing regenerative food systems.
In Kenya, WEA Leaders are protecting and reforesting the Kakamega Rainforest, the country’s last tropical rainforest. In Mexico, they’re safeguarding the Great Mayan Reef — one of the world’s most significant coral ecosystems — using Indigenous ecological practices. From regenerative farming and strengthening water access to advocating for clean energy, these women demonstrate what’s possible when local leadership is recognized and resourced.
It’s easier to sell a crisis than a collective solution, but stories that lean on fear come at a cost. We’ve seen how language shapes how people show up in these spaces. Stories can expand or shrink our imagination, depending on how we tell them. Those rooted in fear leave little space for agency, innovation or hope. Focusing only on what’s broken overlooks the avenues of repair led by communities and individuals just beyond the spotlight. It also obscures the wisdom embedded in lived experience and intergenerational knowledge.
To celebrate Earth Day, the Rwanda Women Climate Resilient Accelerators from Ninda Cell, Nyange Sector plant trees in partnership with WEA. Credit: Women’s Earth Alliance.
Reclaiming the climate narrative means telling a fuller story — one that centers women as skilled architects of change instead of passive recipients of aid. One that honors lived experience, intergenerational knowledge and solutions already in motion.
WEA advocates for intentional, responsible language with the understanding that it changes what — and who — people believe in. Whether it’s choosing “solutionary” over “recipient” or “most impacted” over “victim,” we know words shape the work.
Research shows that positive storytelling around climate is more likely to inspire action. Narrative shift, in itself, is a climate solution — and it must include decentering Western frameworks and uplifting the leadership of women whose expertise is often overlooked in mainstream climate discourse: Indigenous women, women of color, Black women, and women in the Global South. Indeed, Indigenous women carry generations of ecological knowledge — wisdom that’s time-honored, place-based, and essential to any sustainable path forward. Acknowledging this isn’t charity; it’s a recognition of what works.
In the words of WEA’s Co-Executive Director, Kahea Pacheco, “the narratives we share shape what society believes is possible. When women are left out of the story, we all lose.”
WEA Leader Hikmatul Fadhila at WEA’s 2021 Indonesia Women & Climate Accelerator. Credit: Women’s Earth Alliance.
Stories of women’s leadership and innovation remind us of the complexity and brilliance already alive in our communities.
In a time when fear dominates headlines and women’s leadership is increasingly questioned, the stories we choose to tell matter more than ever.
The future of climate action isn’t dependent on some far-off solution or miracle technology. It’s already here, and women are leading the way.
It’s time we start paying attention.
Read the full story, published May 5 2025, on Women’s Earth Alliance’s blog.
