Nairobi cannot claim to be serious about climate action while sidelining the very people holding vulnerable communities together, because in the city’s informal settlements climate change is not discussed as theory but experienced as disruption that arrives through floods, failing drainage systems, unmanaged waste, and heat that worsens already difficult living conditions.
In these spaces, women environmental defenders are not waiting for direction or external intervention, since they are already organizing waste collection, reopening blocked drainage channels, advancing clean energy practices, and mobilizing communities to respond to risks that grow more frequent and more severe, which makes them central to any honest conversation about climate resilience.
What stands out is not the absence of solutions but the failure of systems to recognize and support the solutions that already exist, because climate finance continues to move in ways that are difficult to track, inaccessible to grassroots actors, and disconnected from the lived realities it is meant to address, while participation frameworks create the impression of inclusion without allowing women to influence final decisions in any meaningful way.
This disconnect weakens the entire climate response, since it removes insight from those who understand the problems most clearly and replaces it with processes that struggle to translate policy into impact on the ground.
At the same time, women environmental defenders operate under pressure that rarely enters policy discussions, as advocacy exposes them to intimidation, harassment, and at times arrest, creating a situation where leadership is expected without any parallel commitment to safety, which raises a basic question about how a city can depend on these actors while failing to protect them.
Addressing this gap requires more than statements of intent, because it demands clear and deliberate shifts in how Nairobi approaches climate governance.
A starting point lies in restructuring climate finance so that it directly supports women-led initiatives, with transparent allocation systems that make it possible to trace funds from source to community level, ensuring that resources do not stall within institutions but reach the people already doing the work.
Participation must also move beyond symbolic engagement toward practical inclusion, which means designing processes that communities can actually access, providing support such as transport and childcare, and sharing information early enough for engagement to shape outcomes rather than react to decisions already made.
Most urgent is the need to establish a Women Environmental Defender Protection Fund that responds to the risks these women face through legal support, emergency healthcare, temporary relocation where necessary, and psychosocial care because without protection the continuity of this work remains uncertain.
Supporting women environmental defenders is often framed as a question of fairness, yet the stronger argument lies in effectiveness, since community-led action tends to move faster, adapt more accurately to local conditions, and use resources in ways that produce lasting results, which means that excluding these actors is not only unjust but inefficient.
The idea behind Our Power, Our Planet suggests that solutions already exist within communities, and in Nairobi that power is visible in the work women are doing every day; yet, what remains missing is the recognition, investment, and protection required to sustain and scale that work.
If the city intends to build a credible climate future, then it must align its commitments with those already delivering results, because when women environmental defenders are supported, climate action becomes practical, responsive, and capable of working for everyone.
The author is the Executive Director of Beyond the Scars CBO and a woman in the Ecological Justice Network, working with the Women Human Rights Defenders Hub.