Indigenous Women on Front Lines of Climate Change Speak Out at COP20

Climate change has a disproportionate impact on women, who make up 70 percent of the world's poor....

This week indigenous women leaders on the front lines of defending the Earth from climate change spoke out on gender Day" at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP20), a day that acknowledges the disproportionate impact of climate change on women.

In an event hosted off-site by our friends at WECAN, a panel of indigenous women from around the world met to share their solutions to climate change.

Speakers included Patricia Gualinga, a Kichwa leader from Sarayaku, Ecuador, and her niece, Nina Gualinga. In 2012, the Sarayaku community won a case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against the Ecuadorean government after a foreign oil company was permitted to encroach on and spoil their land.

Gender day at the COP20 may be to acknowledge the disproportionate impact of climate change on women, but it also highlights that women united together are an unstoppable force for change and integral in strategies to shape a healthy and equitable world.

Here is video coverage of the panel discussion, including translations.

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