Green economies, powered by women
Climate summits produce vague hopes for a distant future. Women entrepreneurs across the Global South are creating climate solutions now.
Things disappear in climate discourse: ice shelves, coastal villages—and women. Their erasure is not natural disaster but human design, a calculated forgetting of who carries water when wells run dry, who feeds families when crops fail, who holds communities together when systems retreat.
Yet, across the vast fields of Asia, the vibrant markets of Africa, and the contested forests of Brazil, women are not passive victims of climate change. They are surviving, innovating, and leading.
They are transforming smallholder farms into food forests as erratic weather patterns destroy crops. They are connecting renewable energy to rural livelihoods where grids fail to reach. They are developing nature-based solutions for waste management as municipal systems fall short.
Still, when we speak of climate solutions, we rarely speak their names.
Women Lead Climate Solutions—But Remain Underfunded
While international summits produce declarations for some distant future, women entrepreneurs across the Global South are creating climate solutions now.
Their leadership and innovations are rooted in necessity: managing food, water, and community well-being gives them firsthand knowledge of resource scarcity and the ingenuity to respond.
Yet, the financial systems meant to scale climate innovation continue to lock them out. The $1.7 trillion financing gap for women entrepreneurs reflects capital unavailable to those best positioned to deploy it. Without targeted investments—blended finance models, and women-focused climate funds—these innovations remain small-scale, unable to reach the communities that need them most.
“ Women have a deep-rooted knowledge of their communities’ needs and challenges, enabling them to design climate solutions that are practical and sustainable. To make these solutions scalable, it’s crucial for all ecosystem stakeholders – policymakers, financiers, civil society organisations, funders and others – to collaborate and create an enabling environment.”
Inclusive Economies Are More Resilient
This is not just about fairness, it is about survival.
When women lead climate initiatives, they address environmental challenges in a way that strengthens social infrastructure—the networks, resources, and systems that determine whether communities withstand or collapse under climate stress. They embed sustainability, resource-efficiency and community wellbeing into their core strategies.
The data supports this: Companies with women in leadership perform better environmentally. Boards with gender diversity allocate more capital to green investments. Women-led firms score higher on ESG indicators. Economies that invest in women are more stable and better prepared for climate disruptions.
All this, not because of some innate environmental consciousness women have, but because diverse leadership brings a wider, more interconnected perspective. Decision-making bodies that include those who navigate climate impacts—across professional, community, and household domains—better assess long-term risks and opportunities. They recognise links between environmental degradation and socio-economic stability that homogeneous leadership overlooks.
“ As the climate crisis and broader socio-environmentals challenges accelerate, we must turn to the low-cost, nature-based solutions that women—especially grassroots women—have long pioneered. These solutions must be recognised, supported, and placed at the heart of how societies envision alternatives to the current trajectory. We should use COP30 in Brazil to fully acknowledge the central contribution of women in building resilience, and financially support it.”
Funding Women is Funding the Future
For centuries, women have built solutions without resources, capital, or decision-making power. Today, they are transforming constraints into competitive advantages—creating businesses that generate jobs, stabilise incomes, and integrate circularity and sustainability into profitable economic models.
These achievements come despite formidable barriers: financial institutions requiring collateral many women cannot provide; investment networks flowing through male-dominated channels; policy forums where their expertise is treated as anecdotal.
“ Investing in women isn’t just about survival—it's smart business with proven high repayment rates and significant growth potential. Women-owned businesses make up 20-40% of small and medium enterprises worldwide, yet their potential in green enterprises remains largely untapped. For instance, in agriculture, closing gender gaps in access to resources could boost farming yields by 20–30%. Now is the time to accelerate action and harness the full potential of half the population. SCC's Gender Just Transition campaign challenges the women-as-victims narrative—women are solution providers, and change requires equal opportunity and increased investment.”
Over the coming weeks, SCC will highlight the stories of women building new, green, and just economies across parts of Asia, Africa, and Brazil. Their voices, their leadership, and their work will be at the centre of this campaign, with a demand that the world recognise what has always been true: when women lead, sustainability thrives.
It is time to fund them. It is time to follow them.
Mamta Borgoyary, Executive Director, SHE Changes Climate
