Women, especially women of colour that are living in poverty, suffer most from the climate crisis. Unsustainable logging and plantation development also reduces women’s ability to fulfil traditional roles such as collecting food, medicine, and other essential products. Indigenous and rural women make up more than half of the 2.5 billion people who depend on customary land. Despite this, they continue to be marginalised and excluded from decisions linked to forest and land management. 

But now a growing number of people are standing up and fighting to protect women's rights, and to ensure that climate discussions consider the elderly European women dying in heatwaves, and hear from the African women fighting for their land rights. Women and girls are out on the streets at the vanguard of the climate fight, but at the top table, it’s often men deciding the earth’s future. 

That’s why, in our work to open space for those affected by forest policies to be heard, we give particular emphasis to those women working to protect and restore forests worldwide.   

But our hope is to go further. 

Our gender statement explains that while we are initially focussing on promoting women’s rights, we aspire to support the specific needs of all people who face discrimination. On this page we curate our material focussing on gender justice in the hope that it will help raise awareness of the issues faced by women each day and the policy solutions that could help.