– Anjali Sai Chalise, APFSD Youth Forum 2025 Scholar and the Women of the South Speak Out Asia and the Pacific Fellow
Climate change is not just an environmental crisis, it’s a crisis of power, inequality, and systemic oppression. The impacts of rising temperatures, deforestation, and erratic weather are felt most brutally by those already crushed under the weight of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism: women, indigenous communities, the poor, and marginalised groups.
In Nepal, where glaciers melt and monsoons turn lethal, the climate emergency is peeling back layers of injustice, exposing how gender, caste, and class dictate who survives and who is sacrificed. To call for “climate action” without centering feminist justice is to perpetuate the same systems that created this crisis.
In Nepal’s villages, climate change is a daily war fought on women’s bodies. As men migrate in search of work amid failing crops, women are left to shoulder the crushing weight of farm labor, childcare, and survival.
A 2024 study by the International Organization for Migration found women’s work days increased by 3–6 hours after disasters as hours were spent fetching water, rebuilding homes, and foraging for firewood in dwindling forests. The health toll is a silent epidemic.
Uterine prolapse, a preventable condition linked to malnutrition and grueling labor, disables countless women. Clinics shutter during disasters, maternal care vanishes, and gender-based violence surges.
The roots of this suffering lie in structures designed to exclude. Globally, women own less than 20% of land, locking them out of resources to adapt farms. In Nepal, 90% of women lack land titles, making them invisible to policymakers. Climate finance, the lifeline for survival, flows to those already in power: less than 1% reaches Indigenous communities, and even less trickles to women-led initiatives.
National policies, like Nepal’s Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Strategy, pay lip service to equity but ignore intersecting crises of disability, caste, and sexuality.
This is not oversight, it’s oppression. Climate solutions dominated by Global North institutions and male elites replicate colonial violence, erasing Indigenous knowledge and feminist alternatives.
When a Tharu woman in Bardiya revives drought-resistant seeds passed down through generations, her innovation is dismissed as “unscientific.”
When Dalit women demand a seat at disaster planning tables, they’re told to “wait their turn.” The message is clear: the systems deciding our planetary future were never meant to include those they exploit.
But enough is ENOUGH . In February 2025, 31 young feminists from Asia and the Pacific, activists, Indigenous leaders, and grassroots organisers refused to let the world look away. At the APFSD Young Feminist Forum organised by Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW) we brought up CALL TO ACTION to tackle the climate crisis. Our blueprint for justice is uncompromising:
- Decolonise Climate Knowledge
Dismantle the myth that “experts” in suits hold all the answers. Center Indigenous women’s wisdom like sustainable farming practices or forest stewardship and fund feminist research in the Global South.
- Divest from Death, Invest in Life
Redirect trillions wasted on fossil fuels and wars toward feminist climate action. A “Just Transition” must be led by those most impacted not corporations greenwashing exploitation.
- Rewrite the Rules of Power
Demand gender-diverse leadership at every level from village councils to global treaties. Use disaggregated data to expose how disasters harm marginalised communities. Create disaster plans that address care work, mental health, and caste violence. Build economies valuing care, not extraction.
Climate justice isn’t about charity or token inclusion. It’s about redistributing power: accelerating a fast, fair, and funded feminist phase-out of fossil fuels, redirecting resources to grassroots women’s collectives, and investing in community-led renewable energy. It’s about rewriting policies to center care work and amplifying solutions born from lived experience.
Climate justice requires dismantling patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism, systems that treat Earth and women as disposable. We need to Stop silencing grassroots voices. The Earth’s survival depends on dismantling systems that exploit both people and the planet. This isn’t idealism, it’s survival. When women, Indigenous communities, and marginalised groups lead, resilience grows. Their knowledge heals land, their solidarity rebuilds communities, and their courage lights the path forward. The choice is simple: stand with those fighting for life.
Justice isn’t a distant dream, it’s the work we do today.
