Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International and co-founder of Daughters for Earth, shares why she is putting women in positions of power to fight the climate crisis.

Opening Bell

Women Hold the Key to our Climate Future

All month long, I've been able to speak with powerful women who are transforming our world. And as March comes to a close, I want to share my conversation with Z Salie, author, activist and founder of the organization's Women for Women International and daughters. For I grew up in Baghdad Iraq. And few things really defined my life. And that led me to be an activist and a humanitarian. One is I grew up in war. And at a very young age, I realize the world only discuss war from a man's perspective as in how it's the wars are fought. And really the world discusses the world war or peace from a woman's perspective, which is how to keep life going in the midst of wars and after in the aftermath of peace. Um And that very much defined how I see the world, where are the women? I always, when I enter a room, when I look at any issue, I always look at where are the women and what women have to say about this issue. And how do we understand that? Not only from a male perspective but women's perspective? Um That's why I studied women from international. I also um I also grew up with a very strong Iraqi mother. She was the first feminist in my life who taught me that I have to be independent and strong and I need to um fight for women's rights all my life. And that sort of defined how I look at the world, as I said, and dedicating my life to serving women and the voices of women and marginalized voices worldwide. Why do you wanna focus on empowering women uh fighting the climate crisis as one of your key focuses? Well, it's interesting because just like, you know, as I said, I grew up in war, I then worked war for 30 years in my life as the founder and former CEO of former, former international. And to be honest, I wasn't paying attention to climate change until I realized that the same arc of the story that impacts women in conflict is is having with women in climate change as in women are impacted severely if not the most by climate change. With all the displacement, food insecurity, water insecurity, they are doing some magnificent work to keep life going just like they do in war in this case, to protect and restore the earth, which is one of the most important actions that we need to do to address climate change, which is the conservation of biodiversity protection and regenerative agriculture. And they are not getting any attention, not much media attention. Gets to women and what they are doing to protect our earth. And in terms of financing the women are getting two cents out of every environmental philanthropic dollar compared to 10 cents out of every humanitarian philanthropic dollar. So you can see there like the arc of the stories of women do so much work. Their work is not finance, their work is not being respected and mostly they're not being encrypted in the decision making table when I realized that it was like time to change that story. And that's how we found the daughters for Earth, which is really, we wanna mobilize $100 million to find fund and celebrate the heck out of women uh climate actions worldwide. And this is our two years anniversary. And within two years, we supported more than 100 women efforts in 30 countries. And we realize women are, when it comes to the protection of earth, women do not need to be empowered. Women are in their power. What they need is for the power to be recognized, supported, financially endorsed and to be included at the decision making tables. And I really invite everyone, this woman's to join women's actions and to pay attention to women's actions as it comes to restoring and protecting our earth. Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more. I think you have a very powerful message here and uh sticking with daughters for her talking about the, the three real priorities here with that on the two year anniversary. Congratulations, by the way, uh, in terms of what you're focused on moving forward. Listen, I mean, we wanna mobilize $100 million. We need to get the two cents that is given to women to, you know, 50 cents. That's one of our biggest, uh, goal. We invite everyone to join that pool of funds, you know. Um, not only we have found a network of women that help us identify some of the most amazing women supporting, protecting the mangroves in Brazil and major nature conservation in Indonesia rewilded in college campuses here in the US, protecting uh orphan elephants in Kenya. I mean they are magnificent work. We turn the stories into graphic novels which everyone can get it for $11 a month. Uh monthly contribution of you get the graphic novels of these women that you can read your kids. But most importantly, the science behind connecting the dots. Why protecting wildlife and why protect rewilding our lawns is actually part of climate solutions Zainab to that. And what kind of regulation do you wanna see in order to see change when it comes to climate change? Very, very good question. We need to protect 50% of our earth. This is scientifically mapped, this is scientifically backed. This is not me saying, but hundreds of science are saying the fastest solution to the protection of earth and addressing climate change is conservation. Basically, it is to leave 50% of earth alone. That means our rivers, our oceans, our water, our, our lands, we need to do that. We need to activate, we have the road map on how to do that. We just need to activate policies to really encourage the protection of nature. The second thing is we need to shift to regenerative agriculture. Again, we can all do that. This is about policies and about financing women happen to be between 40 to 60% of small scale farmers that is important. They are already shifting to regent of agriculture. But there's a lot of industrial agriculture. These needs industrial uh companies need need regulations to shift from the agriculture that we're having special agriculture to regenerative one that where the health of the soil is at the essence in terms of renewable energy, which is the third indicators of how we can mitigate climate change. It's already, there's a lot of attention going on. There's a lot of uh it's almost monopolizing the attention. I'm not, I'm saying it is good. It's wonderful, but we cannot actually leave these Nature Based Solutions alone. If you choose to step down from women for women International, why did you feel like it was the right time to move on from that? Oh, great question. You know, listen, I'm from Iraq. I grew up in a dictatorship and when I started women from the International, I was only 23 years old and I remember bowing to myself when I was 23 years old, that when it is 20 years old, I will leave it and I and leave it to another leader to take over. I am as proud rather of founding woman from international and leading this amazing organization that works with women around the world as I am. Uh believe it and handing it over in a healthy way with our amazing leader, Laurie Adams who is thriving and, and, and running the organization 31 years, 10 years after my departure. And so it's uh it's demonstrating our values and not to hold on to things because, because they're close to us. But I really believe in the healthy power of rotating leadership.