On December 5, WECAN hosted our formal UN Side Event at COP28, “Women Implementing Climate Justice Solutions to Mitigate and Adapt to the Climate Crisis.” During the side event,

On December 5, WECAN hosted our formal UN Side Event at COP28, “Women Implementing Climate Justice Solutions to Mitigate and Adapt to the Climate Crisis.” During the side event, grassroots, Indigenous and frontline women, and representatives of global organizations presented climate justice strategies and solutions, including forest and biodiversity protection, Indigenous rights, agro-ecology, renewable energy and a Just Transition, fossil fuel phase out and divestment, and protection of women land defenders.

Speakers included: Lucy Mulenkei (Maasai), Executive Director, Indigenous Information Network, Kenya; Eriel Tchekwie Deranger (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation), Executive Director, Indigenous Climate Action, Canada; Braulina Baniwa (Baniwa), Executive Director, National Articulation of Indigenous Women Ancestrality Warriors (ANMIGA), Brazil; Taily Terena (Terena Nation), Indigenous rights activist, WECAN Coordinator in Brazil, Brazil; Casey Camp Horinek (Ponca Nation), Ponca Nation Environmental Ambassador and WECAN Board Member, Turtle Island, USA; Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director, Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), USA

During the event we also had a special appearance by Sonia Guajajara, Minister of Indigenous Peoples in Brazil, who shared a powerful testimony to the leadership of women in Brazil and globally. We are honored to have worked with Minister Guajajara for the past several years, and to see her continue her advocacy efforts in her newly appointed position.

On International Women's Day 2024 we are releasing a new WECAN video that highlights the advocacy of global women leaders fighting to end the era of fossil fuels while advancing a Just Transition

On International Women's Day 2024 we are releasing a new WECAN video that highlights the advocacy of global women leaders fighting to end the era of fossil fuels while advancing a Just Transition and advocating for climate solutions, Indigenous and human rights, rights of nature, and thriving communities and planet.

82 views  Sep 12, 2024

On September 12, WECAN held a virtual launch event for the report, "The Gendered and Racial Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Industry in North America and Complicit

82 views  Sep 12, 2024

On September 12, WECAN held a virtual launch event for the report, "The Gendered and Racial Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Industry in North America and Complicit Financial Institutions (Fourth Edition).” 

From rising cancer rates to escalating violence, the report details the numerous disproportionate health and safety risks and impacts women in all their diversity are experiencing due to fossil fuel extraction, which is also perpetuating Indigenous and human rights violations. The report highlights regional case studies from Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities in North America, as well as the corresponding financial institutions that are contributing to these egregious harms. The report outlines recommendations for the banks to move toward accountability and a just transition. 

During the online event, we heard from frontline women leaders, health experts, and advocates who are demanding accountability from financial institutions to take action for the health of our communities, ecosystems, and the climate. Speakers included: 

Roishetta Sibley Ozane M.S., Founder of Vessel Project of Louisiana and Gulf Fossil Finance Coordinator, Louisiana

Rene Ann Goodrich (Bad River Ojibwe), Native Lives Matter Coalition and Wisconsin Department of Justice Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) Task Force Member, Wisconsin

Sharon Lavigne, Founder of RISE St. James, and 2021 Goldman Prize Winner, Louisiana

Patricia Garcia-Nelson (Oraricha Tribes of Mexico and the Chichimeca), Colorado Fossil Fuel Just Transition Advocate for Green Latinos, Northern Colorado

Casey Camp Horinek (Ponca Nation), Environmental Ambassador for the Ponca Nation, and Board Member and Project Coordinator for WECAN, Oklahoma

Antonia Juhasz, Investigative Journalist, author, lecturer, Washington, DC

Dr. Nneoma Nwachuku Ojiaku, MD, MPH Obstetrician-Gynecologist, Climate Health Now

Osprey Orielle Lake, Report Co-author, and Founder and Executive Director of Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN)

Many thanks to the amazing speakers!

Visionary clean energy entrepreneur Danny Kennedy explores the promise and challenges of the epic civilizational transition to renewable energy. Without doubt, the shift has hit the fan, but will

Visionary clean energy entrepreneur Danny Kennedy explores the promise and challenges of the epic civilizational transition to renewable energy. Without doubt, the shift has hit the fan, but will we make the transition in time to avert complete climate breakdown? Danny Kennedy says we can - and the real heroes and sheroes will be millions of clean energy entrepreneurs and startups, in partnership with the determined leadership of Indigenous Peoples arising worldwide.

As a backlash against LGBTQ rights escalates into an authoritarian crusade, acclaimed author and queer activist Taylor Brorby asks how we can still be fighting this battle? As a writer addressing

As a backlash against LGBTQ rights escalates into an authoritarian crusade, acclaimed author and queer activist Taylor Brorby asks how we can still be fighting this battle? As a writer addressing the fossil fuel industry’s acceleration in the midst of climate chaos, Taylor is forced to choose between the existential crises of the assaults on nature and on LGBTQ people. It’s all connected, he says, as he seeks to reconcile nature, culture, diversity, and a sense of belonging.

With climate advocates subject to surveillance and censorship and giant companies controlling the ways information and knowledge flow around the world, the fight to save our climate is now

With climate advocates subject to surveillance and censorship and giant companies controlling the ways information and knowledge flow around the world, the fight to save our climate is now inextricably intertwined with digital rights. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has long been at the forefront of protecting those rights, has helped environmental activists protect their emails from Chevron, understand the surveillance they are under and develop “Security Self-Defense” practices to protect themselves. Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Executive Director, one of the nation’s leading civil liberties attorneys specializing in Internet law, will explain why EFF’s push for open access to scientific information, for net neutrality, for open source/patents, “creative commons” licenses, and more, is critical in the fight to prevent climatic unraveling.

This keynote talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference. To see other talks from the conference, visit http://www.bioneers.org

Taylor Brorby grew in the dynamic shortgrass prairie of western North Dakota, a youth that coincided with the brutal physical and psychic scarring of his surroundings by the coal and oil industry,

Taylor Brorby grew in the dynamic shortgrass prairie of western North Dakota, a youth that coincided with the brutal physical and psychic scarring of his surroundings by the coal and oil industry, a fate not made any easier by being a young gay boy enthralled by classical music, art, fishing, and poetry. From here, Taylor became a brilliant poet, writer and dedicated activist, one of the most eloquent and profound critics of the fossil fuel industry in the nation, penning, among other works, the extraordinary memoir: Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land, the powerful essays in Civil Disobedience, and co-editing: Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. He shares some of his life story and seeks to inflame us with the passion we will need to stop the carbon-burning Leviathans from destroying the biosphere.

Taylor Brorby is also the author of Crude: Poems. His work has appeared in many leading publications, including The NY Times, LitHub and Orion, and he has been supported by several prestigious fellowships, including from the MacDowell Colony and the National Book Critics Circle. He also serves on the editorial boards of Hub City Press and Terrain.org, is a contributing editor at North American Review, and teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Alabama.

This keynote talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference. To see other talks from the conference, visit http://www.bioneers.org

Most fungi live out of sight, yet they make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. The symbiotic mycorrhizal networks formed by plants and

Most fungi live out of sight, yet they make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. The symbiotic mycorrhizal networks formed by plants and fungi comprise an ancient life-support system that easily qualifies as one of the wonders of the living world. Yet climate change strategies, conservation agendas and restoration efforts overlook fungi and focus overwhelmingly on animals and plants. This is a problem: the destruction of underground fungal networks accelerates both climate change and biodiversity loss and interrupts vital global nutrient cycles.

In this session, Merlin Sheldrake, the biologist and bestselling author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our World, drives home just how critically important fungi are and discuss the visionary work of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) and its efforts to map and protect the mycorrhizal fungal communities of the planet. He also presents cutting-edge research into the flow dynamics of carbon and nutrients within mycorrhizal fungal networks.

This keynote talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

The energy transition race is on. Fossils fuels have peaked. What do we need to get renewables to prevail as fast as possible, and can we make that victory good for everyone? The 2020s will be the

The energy transition race is on. Fossils fuels have peaked. What do we need to get renewables to prevail as fast as possible, and can we make that victory good for everyone? The 2020s will be the decisive decade in the climate justice fight. Where and how we create the new energy economy, who gets to lead it, who owns it and who works in it now matter more than ever. We must prepare for a large pulse of eco-industrial activity the likes of which the world has never known. As we race to the finish line of the transition away from fossil fuels, visionary “green” entrepreneur and founder of New Energy Nexus Danny Kennedy presents a plan to build out the full 3D potential of clean energy—not just distributed energy, but decentralized in ownership and democratized in control. Highly decentralized global grassroots entrepreneurship is central, as the pathfinding work of New Energy Nexus is demonstrating.

Danny Kennedy, with a long background in eco activism, has become one of the nation’s leading figures in clean-technology entrepreneurship and the capitalization of the transition to a “green” economy. Co-founder of the solar energy company, Sungevity, and the clean energy incubator Powerhouse, Kennedy supports the clean technology and energy fields in myriad ways. In addition to leading roles with Third Derivative (a joint venture with the Rocky Mountain Institute) and the California Clean Energy Fund, Kennedy is currently CEO of New Energy Nexus, a global nonprofit providing funds, accelerators, and networks to drive clean energy innovation and adoption.

Learn more at http://www.bioneers.org

How we imagine what’s possible, what matters. Who we are shapes what we do, and what we do in the present shapes the future. In addition to the many practical, scientific and material

How we imagine what’s possible, what matters. Who we are shapes what we do, and what we do in the present shapes the future. In addition to the many practical, scientific and material aspects, the climate crisis has cultural aspects with which we need to engage in order to meet this emergency. Drawing from the new anthology she co-edited, "Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility", Rebecca Solnit talks about the stories emerging from what science, Indigenous leadership, good organizing, and visionary thinkers are giving us. These stories offer the grounds for hope and the work hope does. What are the ways that what the climate requires of us could mean ushering in an age of abundance rather than austerity?

Rebecca Solnit, one of our nation’s most influential writers, thinkers, historians and activists, is the author of 20+ books, including: Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Solnit writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and just launched the climate project Not Too Late.

Learn more at http://www.bioneers.org