“Women leaders acknowledge how the protection and restoration of nature becomes lasting when it is rooted in people’s wellbeing and livelihoods. For them, conservation is not separate from caring for human life; it is human life. They begin by addressing community needs because behind every degraded ecosystem, they see degraded living conditions, broken relationships, and lost possibilities for dignity and stability. Rather than treating community vulnerability from a charity perspective or means to an end, they address it with care and a clear orientation toward meaningful, lasting results.” 

—Women Weaving the Way Forward report from Daughters for Earth

Across the globe, women are leading some of the most effective responses to the planetary crisis, restoring ecosystems while strengthening communities, livelihoods, and cultural connections to nature.

Zainab Salbi has spent much of her life working alongside women in the world’s most complex and fragile environments, from war zones to conservation hotspots. As the co-founder of Daughters for Earth, a global fund and movement supporting women-led climate and conservation solutions, she is helping shift the narrative from one of victimhood to one of agency, resilience, and systemic change.

Her organization’s newly released 2025 impact study, Women Weaving the Way Forward, examines 24 women-led conservation initiatives across diverse ecosystems and cultures. The findings reveal a powerful pattern: When women lead, ecological restoration becomes inseparable from social, economic, and cultural renewal. These projects not only restore landscapes and wildlife, but also strengthen community wellbeing — even as they face persistent funding gaps and gender-based barriers.

In this conversation, writer and community activist Anneke Campbell speaks with Salbi about what her team uncovered, how women are reshaping conservation through holistic, integrated approaches, and what this research reveals about leadership, language, and collaboration in a changing world.

(This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.)

Anneke: What feels most meaningful and exciting to you about this study? 

Zainab: The narrative around how women are impacted by the planetary health crisis, particularly climate change and biodiversity loss, is often very prominent and negative. And yet, as someone who has worked closely with women in war zones and conflict settings, I also know their agency is not passive. They are warriors. So I knew there was another story here.

This study looks at the world from a woman’s perspective — not only as victims, but as warriors, as wise women, and as lantern carriers.

I followed my gut and took a leap of faith. I said, Let’s find the women. For three-and-a-half years, we searched globally for women working in conservation hotspots, putting funding behind their efforts and eventually asking: What’s the common thread? We supported 103 projects across seven ecosystems in 11 countries.

We’ve now completed a six-month pilot study that shows us a clear path forward. We’re seeing strong commonalities: Women take a holistic and highly practical approach. They create solutions grounded in common sense, addressing people’s needs at the community level, and weaving environmental solutions together with social, economic, and cultural priorities. Most importantly, they’re producing lasting change and modeling a new kind of leadership in the process.

Anneke: That’s exactly what our newsletter is about: leading from the feminine — and your work shows what that looks like. How did you select the groups you researched and funded?

Zainab: Scientists have already identified which regions, species, and biodiverse areas most urgently need protection, so we’re really just following their roadmap. It’s not controversial. On that map, we overlay where women-led action is happening. That’s the uniqueness of our work: finding the women who are leading conservation projects grounded in biodiversity priorities.

Then we measure the conservation data, as scientists do, and we’re discovering all these powerful byproducts. Suddenly, this work becomes valuable not just for conservationists, but also for economists, sociologists, and women’s rights advocates. We’re tracking how these projects address the economic needs of communities and how they support girls’ and women’s empowerment, which is especially exciting. These women are modeling leadership, addressing behavior change toward nature, and weaving in cultural and traditional stories, which every culture holds.

All of these threads are coming together. And I believe, having come from a different culture myself, that every single culture carries beautiful stories of humans intertwined with nature in a loving way. I still remember those stories from my own grandparents.

Anneke: One thing that stands out in this work is how it challenges dominant, top-down approaches to climate action. Can you talk about how your study rethinks the role of technology, funding, and community?

Zainab: We have to be careful not to generalize, because we’re not denying the value of technical solutions. That said, people are often more willing to take risks when it comes to technology than when it comes to community-based approaches. As a result, the vast majority of climate funding goes toward technical solutions.

One of the key findings of this study is how these women-led projects merge technology with traditional narratives about nature. For example, Lion Guardians blend ancestral Maasai tracking skills with modern tools like GPS and data collection, creating a living, evolving model of conservation that unites heritage and science in service of both people and wildlife. Some technological solutions are excellent; some are not. The problem with focusing only on technology is that it often fails to address immediate community needs, while expecting people to adopt change right away. That’s a very Western-centric — or perhaps masculine-centric — approach.

In the endangered lion conservation project, for instance, the team first had to understand the economic realities driving human–wildlife conflict. What began as a way to prevent retaliatory killings has evolved into active stewardship: Former hunters now track and protect lions, teach coexistence, and mediate conflicts. Another example is the Mara–Meru Cheetah Project, which has trained more than 150 safari guides — who once saw cheetahs primarily as tourist attractions — to understand their behavior, minimize disturbance, and actively contribute to conservation data collection.

Anneke: What you’re illustrating is an incredibly holistic approach that sees all the parts as connected — as they are in reality. What does that mean for how we design solutions and policies?

Zainab: These integrated, woven solutions show that we also need integrated policies. Right now, our policies are deeply fragmented, and we’re calling for integration at every level.

A few years ago, I was very sick, and I experienced this fragmentation firsthand. The heart doctor didn’t want to talk to the lung doctor, who didn’t want to talk to the physical therapist. Eventually, I found an integrative medicine doctor who combined Western medicine with Arabic medicine, Chinese medicine, and naturopathic approaches, and that’s when I finally began to heal.

Anneke: “Integrative medicine for planetary health” is such a powerful concept. But integrative medicine is often expensive and seen as inaccessible. How are you thinking about the economics and what this approach asks us to rethink more broadly?

Zainab: Yes, it is expensive, and that’s an important point. In fact, our focus in the coming months is to deepen our analysis of the economics and deconstruct the dollar impact of this work, so we have tangible evidence. This is not a sentimental study; we’re going to prove its value economically. And we’re doing that while still honoring narrative, spiritual, emotional, and cultural dimensions, rather than imposing an external story. I love that part of this study.

We need new language, new metrics, and new measurements to talk about this existential issue. In this field, you often see spiritual people speaking in spiritual language, and analytical people speaking in analytical language, and it’s very hard to integrate the two. What we’re discovering is that instead of being limited by purely mind-led indicators, we need to dare to introduce new ones — psychological indicators, spiritual indicators — new ways of measuring what protection of the Earth really means.

When we only speak from the heart, it can shut down the mind, because people don’t always trust that language. We need to bring the two together, to marry mind and heart, technical and spiritual solutions, and not separate them. And that’s exactly what these women are doing.

I’ve interviewed many of the women leading these initiatives. They’re not women’s studies scholars, they’re conservationists. And they’ll say, We did this, we did that, and I’ll think, Wow. They’re doing it simply because they’re wired differently, because they see differently — and that difference is needed. So we have to find new language, and we need to be playful in that space, like musicians playing before they find the tune. We need that same openness to discover new ways of talking about planetary health.

This matters deeply to me because I come from another culture. I often ask myself: How do I talk about this issue with my own family when I go home to Iraq? Climate change, as it’s usually framed, is seen as a very Western concept. So what are the real entry points? Scientifically, it’s undeniable. But experientially, how do we open the conversation in ways that resonate across cultures and invite people in?

Anneke: Given everything you’ve learned, how are you hoping to share this work with funders, communities, and the wider world?

Zainab: We’ve entered 2026 at a time when climate change is still being denied by some, and fear around immediate resources is overwhelming concern for planetary health. At a moment when climate change and biodiversity loss demand deeper collaboration, we’re instead becoming more divided and increasing our investments in war.

That said, the hope my team and I are holding onto is at the community level. People are not waiting for governments to act. Communities are stepping forward because they have to. In this chaotic moment, our goal is to use these four years before the world reconvenes in 2030 to reassess global agreements, from climate and biodiversity frameworks to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

We want to double down on supporting these women, because they’re leading us toward a new pathway for action. They’re focused on the how. And that, for me, is the secret sauce.

Anneke: For readers who feel inspired by this work, what actions can they take? 

Zainab: This is an invitation. We cannot do this alone. The work becomes most transformative and impactful when we do it together. So it’s an invitation to everyone whose heart is calling to join us in whatever way you know how, and to become part of this movement. Some people know how to communicate, some know how to donate, some know how to bring communities together. The world feels like it’s going mad, but in that chaos, there’s also an opportunity to focus our actions. In the madness, a door is opening.

At a practical level, we’re working to build a $100 million fund so we can continue supporting these women and researching women-led projects. It’s an invitation for women philanthropists — and really for everyone — to participate at any level. I’m not a high donor myself, and philanthropy is not limited to big checks.

We often share the story of the hummingbird: There was a forest fire, and all the animals panicked except for a tiny hummingbird. She rushed to the river, took a single drop of water in her beak, and dropped it onto the fire — again and again. The other animals said, You’re so small. What difference can one drop make? And she replied, I’m doing everything I can. Why don’t you join me instead of criticizing me? Her action inspired the others to bring their own drops of water — for some, a bucket; for others, a tiny drop.

If your heart is calling you to a specific region, we can connect you with women’s groups working there. If it’s a particular species, we can share the women-led projects protecting it. And if you want to be part of this movement, please come with your drop of water so together, we can make a river.

Support Women Leading the Way Forward

Daughters for Earth supports hundreds of women-led conservation initiatives across the globe, protecting ecosystems while strengthening community resilience, cultural continuity, and economic wellbeing. You can explore their work, learn more about the Women Weaving the Way Forward study, and find ways to support women-led climate solutions here.