16 http://www.earthislandjournal.org
PHOTOSPAIGEGREEN^WOMEN’S EARTH ALLIANCE:
Women Fighting the Climate Crisis
Magaly Santos and I both unlatch our
charm necklaces and gently set them in
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women from around the country. For
the opening ceremony of a four-day
immersive learning experience, which
wrapped a four-month leadership
program, we had all brought with
us an item representing our work
as environmental and social justice
activists. Now we are encouraged to
tell the story of what brought us into
this room in Northern California — a
room full of women who are advancing
grassroots climate solutions from
Alaska to Guam.
Santos’ chain holds a charm with
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which we both explain are symbolic of
what keeps us motivated to advocate in
times of political chaos, human rights
abuses, and an intensifying climate
crisis. Santos is 16 years old and from
a California farming community
of mostly immigrants. Many of her
friends and relatives are being exposed
to a toxic cocktail of pesticides while
working in shifting and increasingly
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work as a communicator, I frequently
hear the stories of people moving
around the world, many of whom are
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calamities that are all becoming more
intense as our world warms. The
climate crisis is taking a toll on the
economies of their homelands and
their livelihoods.
As we make our way around the
circle, all 21 participants describe the
item they’ve brought. The themes
embedded in their explanations strike
me as recurring. In telling their own
stories, all of the women allude to a
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the planet that sustains us, and to
secure justice for the communities that
are struggling in the face of existential
changes to homes and ways of life.
These women — and so many
others — have fought passionately,
innovated thoughtfully, and lifted up
their communities as they tackle their
environmental realities. And in manyways, they have been wildly successful.
Throughout the accelerator program
we hear stories about the betterment
of people and places — including from
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four-day gathering that her city govern-
ment has adopted a climate action plan.
Her organization had been paving the
way for this type of policy for years.
Yet, women have not had an equal
opportunity to participate in climatepolicy-making and governance when
compared to their male counterparts.
According to a 2017 report in Forbes, a
minuscule 0.2 percent of philanthropic
funds are channeled to women-led envi-
ronmental solutions. This cultural and
systemic under-investment in women
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to scale up successful solutions to the
global level where they are desperately
needed.In an attempt to address this issue
here in the United States, the Sierra
Club joined with Women’s Earth
Alliance (WEA) last year to launch the
US Climate Accelerator program to
give women activists working on a
range of environmental challenges a
catalytic boost. This program builds on
the work of WEA, which was founded
with the vision that bringing the world’s
women together could truly advance aEarth Island Reports
Tosha Phonix, a food justice organizer for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, was
among the 21 women who participated in the US Climate Accelerator program this past fall.