Who Gets to Decide What ‘Fixing Climate Change’ Looks Like?

Climate change affects all of us, but not equally. In this episode, we'll explore the hidden link between gender, power, and the planet. From a Zimbabwean farming collective to Indigenous women in India drawing “dream maps,” these are the stories of communities who aren’t just surviving climate change, they’re leading the response.

Transcript

Power, Patriarchy, and the Planet

[Opening] 

Good morning, good afternoon, or evening—whatever it is where you happen to find yourself today. I’m Dave, and thank you so much for joining me today on Running My Mouth Off.

Today’s episode is a just little bit different, and I’ll just say this upfront: if the phrase “patriarchy and climate change” makes you instinctively roll your eyes, I get it. But stick around, because this isn’t a rant. It’s a story. Actually, it’s a few stories—about power, and about the planet, and about how the people least responsible for climate change are often the ones paying the highest price.

And here’s the hardest part of all that: sometimes the systems that keep people—especially women and girls—trapped in that reality, they’re the same ones that we never think to question.

But before we dive in, a quick digression—because that’s kind of how I roll.

My daughter asked me about this episode and I started with, “I was reading some studies, and…”

Every family that has multiple siblings, have their inside jokes about what Dad always says. For my brother and me growing up, it was stuff like, “You’re the world’s greatest authority on everything,” or “I guess so.” We still quote those lines to each other. Some of those things they just, they just never grow old.

And apparently, my daughters have their own version of this. When we’re all together—which isn’t often these days—any time I start talking research or data, they just glance at each other with these little grins. And I finally questioned one of them about it., and they said  “Dad, that’s your line. You always start with, ‘I was reading a study…’”

And they’re not wrong. I do tend to read a lot of studies.

But honestly, when it comes to power, patriarchy, and climate—what the numbers don’t say is realistically just as important as what they do.

[Scene-Setting – The Invisible Link] 

Let’s start with a basic truth though. Climate change affects all of us. But it doesn’t affect all of us equally.

For example when a hurricane hits, or when rains fail, or the heat becomes unbearable, it’s often women—especially in the Global South—who are hit hardest. Not because they’re weaker, but because the systems around them are designed to leave them most exposed.

For example, systems that keep them from owning land. From making financial decisions. Even being allowed to evacuate without permission from a relative who’s a guy.

In Bangladesh, in 1991 during Cyclone Gorky, 90% of the deaths were women. Why? Simply because the early warning messages didn’t reach them. And even if they did, many women weren’t allowed to leave without a man. Some didn’t know how to swim. Others had to stay behind to care for children or elders.

Now, that’s not a story about “those people over there.” It’s a story about power. It’s a story about how that power gets distributed. And it’s a story about who’s left exposed when the world kinda tilts off balance.

[ACT 1 – Story: Sheba’s Village in Zimbabwe] 

Let me take you to a village in southern Zimbabwe.

The rains, they’re not coming like they used to. The wells are starting to dry up.. The lvestock are dying. And every day, people, mainly women, have to walk further and further to find water, sometimes through very dangerous terrain, past livestock thieves, and even crocodile-infested rivers, and recall last week how we talked about people waiting to prey on girls and women who would have to go to these water holes.

Sheba Ngara, who’e a mother of five and leader of a local farming group, talks about how bad things got, this is one thing she said that kind of struck me, “Without water, there is no life,” That’s a simple statement, but it says a lot. This lack of life, it’s not just about thirst or hunger, it’s about the entire rhythm of village life, planting, harvesting, feeding your family, starts with that first bucket of water.

In the middle of this drought though, Sheba’s community did something that, frankly, most of the world doesn’t expect from the people hit hardest by climate change: they built a solution.

With support from CARE, and this is actually a pretty fascinating article, they installed water harvesting systems, basically collecting and storing rainwater to get them through dry stretches. It wasn’t high-tech. It wasn’t flashy or complicated, but it worked, really, really well.

And today, they grow vegetables again. They sell their surplus at the market. And the fact that they actually have a surplus to see, on its own, that’s a huge win. The money though that they make from all of this, goes to fund education for kids. It goes to a local savings program. It goes to keeping kids in class and keeping livestock alive.

What used to be desperation for these people was, kinda morphed by sheer will into self-reliance.

And all of that—the food, the income, the stability—came from women. Came from local leadership. From a village that simply couldn’t afford to wait for help.

[Zooming Out – Systems, Not Symptoms] 

Zooming out a little, what we’re talking about here though isn’t just access to water. Or schools. Or emergency alerts. It’s about who gets to make the decisions that shape the world we live in.

And right now, most of those decisions are still being made by people who are largely sitting on the sidelines when it comes to experiencing the full force of climate change. 

Or, from people who’ve never had to make the choice between having enough water and personal safety.

Here’s a stat I read recently, and yes, I’m now thinking about my daughters and those looks, but according to the UN, less than 3% of global climate finance goes to projects that specifically support women and girls. 3%.

At the same time, educating girls and giving them access to things like reproductive health is one of the most powerful climate solutions we have, bar none. That’s not opinion by the way. That’s data—from Project Drawdown, from the UN, from multiple peer-reviewed studies.

Give a girl an education, and you boost a community’s resilience. You shrink the carbon footprint. And you give it a little bit more of a fighting chance.

Now, some people have pushed back on that argument. The concern is that as girls become more educated and empowered, they might earn more, consume more, and in the process, emit more. More electricity, more travel, more stuff.

And I get that, that argument isn’t without its merits. But if we’re being honest, framing it that way kinda misses the forest for the trees. Because the goal here it’s not to keep people poor or disempowered just to protect the planet. That’s not a climate solution. That’s just inequality with a green wrapper on it.

What’s actually more interesting though, and more promising, is what happens when women step into those leadership roles. Research shows, and again I can’t get those images of my daughters out of my mind, that women are more likely to prioritize clean water, food access, and community well-being in climate decisions. For example, in countries where more women serve in government, we tend to see stronger environmental policies and lower emissions.

And while I don’t have an exact number, on things like how many climate nonprofits are led by women vs men, what I do know is this: some of the most innovative, grassroots solutions I’ve seen, whether it’s reforesting land, whether it’s setting up early warning systems, or restoring water access, are led by women.

So yeah, consumption may increase. But so does stewardship. And if we’re looking for real solutions, i.e., ones that last, we want the people most impacted by climate change not just to be protected, but also to be in charge. They’re the ones who see and experience this first hand so, making them part of the solution, kinda makes sense.

[Dream Mapping in Odisha] 

Moving on though, let me tell you about a group of women in Odisha, India.

They live in Adivasi communities—Indigenous groups that have been on the frontlines of both environmental damage and social exclusion. Sounds like a fun place to be, right? Rainfall amounts have declined and the forests have kinda thinned a little bit. These women though, they didn’t wait around for outside help. They picked up a bunch of pens and markers and started drawing what they called dream maps, and these are visual plans for what a healthy, restored version of their village could look like.

And at first glance, I imagine that it looked a little bit like art therapy. But there was a lot of strategy involved here.

They compared these dream maps to old government records and found something kinda interesting. They discovered a 25% loss in the communal lands that they rely on for food, for fuel, and for medicine.

And, armed with that data, they’ve started advocating for almost $2 million in restoration funds, that’s a pretty good chunk of change. But even more powerful than the money, they’re demanding legal rights to manage those lands themselves.

They’re not waiting around for permission either. Based on what I read, it seems like they’re being pretty aggressive. They’re reclaiming authority over the environment that they know better than anyone else, It’s kind of a cool story.

But that’s what happens when you give people, not just women, but entire communities, the tools to rewrite their own story.

[Let’s Talk About Power] 

Talking about power now, let’s tug on this thing a little bit further. Because patriarchy, what we started off with, it not about who cooks the dinner or who puts the kids to bed. It’s about who owns land. Who controls resources. Who actually gets listened to.

And more often than not, it’s not the women doing the farming, the caregiving, or hauling the water who get listened to, let alone even being asked what they need.

Globally speaking, women make up the majority of the agricultural workforce in many regions. But they most often do this without lack legal rights to the land they work. That means they can’t access loans. Can’t invest in sustainable practices. They can’t plan for the future, because it’s not legally theirs to plan.

Meanwhile, global climate talks still look like the boardroom of a mid-'90s tech startup, you’ll see a lot of suits, mostly from countries that built these vast empires and who did that colonizing. And now who hold the mic while the rest of us are busy doing damage control. And I probably sound like I’m making light of this, but I’m certainly not. It’s just kind of my way of navigating through it.

And I’m not trying to throw around a lot of guilt either, it’s not about guilt, it’s about clarity. Because if we want to solve a problem as big as climate change, we’re going to have to ask those hard questions. Some of those questions need to be who’s been left out of the conversation, and what we’re losing because of it.

[Flipping the Narrative – From Victim to Leader] 

There is a little bit of hope that shows up in the conversation though.

Because women are starting to lead more, especially on climate issues, the solutions are tending to look a little different; the solutions are likely to be more local; they’re likely to be more sustainable. They’re more focused on long-term community health instead of short-term profits. Again, keep in mind that research that shows what women are more likely to prioritize.

In Nepal though, women-run forest committees have dramatically reduced deforestation. In Guatemala, female-led cooperatives are restoring degraded land using traditional ecological knowledge. In Nigeria, women are leading solar energy initiatives that power rural clinics and schools, and the list goes on and on…

This isn’t charity. It’s intentional and smart climate policy. And yet, it’s still kinda seen as “soft” work. Or worse, optional, because the people doing it? They don’t happen to wear those suits.

[The Core Question – What Does Real Power Look Like?] 

Looking at all of this, it could be that the real question here isn’t “How do we fix climate change?” Maybe it’s “Who gets to decide what fixing climate change looks like?”

If we keep solving the climate crisis, this mess that we find ourselves in, using the same systems that created it, systems built on extraction, domination, and inequality, we just might hit those emissions targets, but, most likely, it’s at the risk of leaving half the world behind.

I don’t call that a solution. I call that a rebrand.

At this point, I’m thinking that we need something deeper. A redistribution of power, not just politically, but socially, economically, and yes, gender-wise.

And just so we’re clear, I’m not trying to make a sweeping moral statements here.

As much as it might sound like it, I’m not out to lecture governments, or anybody, on how immoral men have been when it comes to gender equity. That’s a whole other conversation, that’s not what I’m saying.

This is simply about strategy. If we’re serious about solving a problem this big, we simply have to be really honest about what’s missing, and who’s missing.

If this were a business plan, and the goal was to actually hit a target, empowering women wouldn’t be a nice-to-have. It’d be one of the first things you do.

[Closing – A Quiet Call Forward] 

So what does that mean for us, for you and me? Maybe it means we pay closer attention to the stories we don’t often hear. Maybe it means we think twice before assuming that, in order to be better, it has to be big and it has to be technical. And that “local” doesn’t always mean small-time. Maybe it just means remembering that resilience isn’t built in labs. It’s grown in places like Sheba’s village, in the hands of people, I.e., women, who’ve been adapting their whole lives.

Solving climate change isn’t just about reducing emissions, that’s a huge part. But it’s more about rebalancing the scales. And sometimes, it starts with listening to the people who’ve been left out the longest, those people who are being impacted, but who we never really see. Again, I’m in Indonesia a lot; I see farmers, I see children, these people have faces, they have names. 

And these people? They might just have those keys that we’ve been searching for all along. 

Man, I seem to be wrapping up with some cheesy lines here, but again, I see these people all of the time and there’s a wisdom that exists among some of these people. I mean, there’s also the opposite, but there’s a certain wisdom that comes from farming the same land for multiple generations. 

If we think for a second that these people have no valuable input, we’re leaving a lot of voices out of the equation. But anyways, I’m starting to ramble here.

I think with that, I will call that a wrap. So what is up next? Next week, we’re zoning in on a question that is so simple, but it’s also pretty complex. And it’s one of those things that we don’t like to talk about because of the natural consequences. 

Here it is: What does it look like to “live sustainably”, especially when the systems around us aren’t built for that? So next week,

we’re looking at what sustainability actually costs, who can afford it, and who’s being left behind in the “green” movement.

Spoiler alert: it’s not always about reusable water bottles and solar panels.

Sometimes it’s about survival, sometimes it’s about dignity, and sometimes it’s not having to choose between the planet and your paycheck.

Again, thank you so much for joining me today on Running my mouth off. I’m Dave and I hope you have an amazing week.