Blog

Indigenous women bear the worst consequences of the climate crisis, and their voices are too often ignored. PIFEVA launched a project to give them the means to act and to have their rights fully recognised.

The starting point is a contradiction found in every climate report: those who pay the highest price are the ones least listened to. In the DRC, Indigenous women are on the front line of climate impacts, yet largely absent from the spaces where responses are decided.

3,600 women equipped to act

Under this project, 3,600 Indigenous women have been trained and now play a key role within their communities in protecting ecosystems. Their work spans forest restoration, the management and dissemination of traditional agricultural seeds, and the preservation of ancestral knowledge. They have been supported in defending their territories against exploitation, in a logic of resilience and sustainability for future generations.

The project covers the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Maniema, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Guardians of seeds and medicinal plants

In many communities, it is Indigenous women who manage seeds and medicinal plants. In that role, they are essential to the survival of Indigenous peoples' food and knowledge systems. This function, rarely written into any organisational chart or statute, is nonetheless one of the country's real pillars of food security.

Advocating for inclusion

Their rights are still not fully recognised or respected. PIFEVA advocates for their inclusion in decision-making and policy spaces — an essential condition for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and building a sustainable future, including in nutritional terms.

This is a long-term commitment: for some twenty years, PIFEVA has supported and accompanied Indigenous women in protecting forest and natural resources in the DRC. Indigenous women are intimately bound to their territories and consider themselves the foremost guardians of nature. At its core, the project simply makes visible and operational what they have always carried.