The women who changed climate in 2022
“What will you do? What will you choose to save?” Mia Mottley asked in her powerful speech at COP27. As the first female Prime Minister of Barbados, Mottley has been a champion for climate justice and accountability. And as the world grapples with the accelerating impacts of climate change, including devastating flooding in Pakistan, unprecedented heatwaves across Europe and widespread famine in Ethiopia, Madagascar, South Sudan and Yemen, women everywhere are mobilising in the fight against climate change. To round off the year, join us in celebrating just a few of the fabulous women who changed climate in 2022.
Celia Xakriaba
Brazilian politician and indigenous rights activist
Celia Xakriaba made history in 2022, becoming one of the first indigenous women to be elected as a federal deputy in her municipality in Brazil, alongside fellow indigenous activist Sonia Guajajara. An iconic figure in macaw feather headdresses and the scarlet face paint of the Xakriabá people, Xakriaba is an advocate for women’s rights, climate justice and indigenous representation, and founder of the National Articulation of Ancestral Warriors Women (ANMIGA). With incoming President Lula forming a coalition with Xakriabá’s PSOL party, Xakriaba now has the power to address the degradation of indigenous and environmental rights which took place under former president Jair Bolsanaro.
Joycelyn Longdon
Founder of ClimateInColour and PhD Student on the Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Risk at Cambridge University
Climate tech is the next big thing, and Joycelyn Longdon is at the forefront. Her research with Cambridge University combines ecology, machine learning, bioacoustics, and indigenous knowledge to explore how we can use technology in forest conservation. She writes the climate column for gal-dem, and is the founder of ClimateInColour, an online climate education platform which focuses on diversity and intersectionality and boasts collaborators including Meta, Estee Lauder, Samsung and Greenpeace.
Sophie Marjanac
Climate Accountability Lead at ClientEarth and lead lawyer in the Torres Strait Islanders case
Australian lawyer Sophie Marjanac works with global environmental law NGO ClientEarth, using strategic litigation to drive governments and companies towards reducing their emissions. Marjanac and ClientEarth joined with a group of indigenous Australian Torres Strait Islanders to bring a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee, alleging that Australia had committed human rights violations by failing to implement adequate climate mitigation and adaptation measures. In 2022, a majority of the Committee found in favour of the Islanders, in a landmark decision which will change the course of climate change and human rights law.
Dr Yasmine Fouad
Egyptian Minister for the Environment
Dr Yasmine Fouad was instrumental in the COP27 climate change summit held in Egypt. In the first UNFCC COP held in an African country, she was a strong advocate for the region, highlighting that Africa has contributed the least to global warming but is likely to suffer some of the most serious consequences. Dr Fouad holds qualifications in environmental science and political science and has nearly twenty years’ experience overseeing a range of climate change and sustainability initiatives. She also represented Egypt at the COP15 on biodiversity, where the parties reached a historic deal to halt biodiversity loss by 2030.
Vanessa Nakate
Climate activist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador
Vanessa Nakate hails from Uganda, where climate change is not only causing catastrophic natural disasters such as floods, land slides and droughts, it is hindering the country’s ambitions to reduce poverty and develop sustainably. In her early 20s, Nakate began advocating on African climate issues. She founded Youth for Future Africa and the Africa-based Rise Up Movement, and in 2022 she was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador alongside the likes of Serena Williams and David Beckham.
As the year comes to a close it is also important to remember all the women who have been attacked for their work to save their community, the planet and their families. This year marks six years since Berta Cáceres was murdered and the imprisonment of the former head of the hydroelectric dam company for his involvement in her murder.
Berta Cáceres
Indigenous environmental activist and Goldman Prize winner
Berta Cáceres was an indigenous environmental activist in Honduras, who won the Goldman Prize in 2015 for her activism against the Agua Zarca Dam. The dam was planned for the Gualcarque river, which is sacred to the local Lenca people and supports their subsistence lifestyle and the surrounding forest ecosystem. In 2016, Cáceres was shot dead in her home. Honduras is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be an environmental activist, and globally it is estimated that one environmental activist is killed every two days. In 2022, the former head of the hydroelectric dam company was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in planning and ordering Cáceres’ murder; a huge step for environmental and criminal justice in Honduras.
Piece by Katherine Quinn
