The post People Rising: Carbon Justice appeared first on Namati.

Drawing on experience responding to carbon projects in more than 20 countries, members of the Grassroots Justice Network identified six principles necessary to make carbon projects fair. As Elijah Lempaira of Impact Kenya notes, “Without access to information, fair benefit sharing and genuine participation from local communities, justice is lost.” 

Verra’s updated standard reflects input from Namati and the Grassroots Justice Network, an alliance of justice groups from 180 countries. The new rules address common challenges in carbon projects and give communities greater power. Specifically:

• All land-based projects must obtain the free, prior, informed consent of affected communities. Developers and communities need to agree on a legally binding contract—this gives communities an opportunity to set the terms under which a project can move forward. 
• Project developers must share financial information with communities, including the total revenue received from carbon credit sales. 
• Project developers must share a portion of revenue with local communities for any projects on community land. 

“Today’s changes are a major step towards carbon justice,” said Namati CEO Vivek Maru.

Many communities want to pursue carbon projects if the terms are fair. For example, in October 2025, with legal support from Namati, more than 220 communities in Sittia Chiefdom, Sierra Leone signed a carbon agreement guided by the same carbon justice principles that shaped recommendations to Verra. That new agreement protects 79,000 hectares of mangrove forests (four times the size of Washington, D.C.). Communities will take the lead in stewarding the mangroves, and will receive at least 40% of gross revenue. 

We call for new commitments in the Verra standard to be reflected in other standards like ART-TREES and The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s Core Carbon Principles. 

Going forward, we would like to see further improvements in carbon standards, including a minimum proportion of gross revenue for local communities and a requirement that buyers of carbon credits responsibly curb their own emissions.

Please direct questions and/or interview requests to media@namati.org.

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Namati Sierra Leone, a legal advocacy group counseling all involved communities, said the agreement between the communities in the chiefdom of Sittia in Bonthe district and the Africa Conservation Initiative (ACI) is based on “carbon justice principles” aimed at making carbon projects fairer for communities.

The agreement targets the protection of roughly 79,000 hectares (about 195,213 acres) of mangroves in the Sherbro River Estuary, which hosts roughly half of the country’s mangrove forests. The estuary’s mangroves are threatened by growing demand for wood for cooking, smoking fish, farming and construction, according to James Harding, Sierra Leone director of West Africa Blue, ACI’s parent company.

The benefit-sharing agreement to protect these mangrove forests has been designed with reference to six carbon justice principles, said Daniel Sesay from Namati Sierra Leone. These principles were established by a global network of grassroots organizations based on their experience with past carbon projects.

The principles include “Fair participation,” where communities lead the stewardship of the natural resource; “No pay to pollute,” preventing polluters failing to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions from buying carbon credits; and “Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC)” of the communities — where “informed” also means disclosing all financial information throughout the project’s life cycle.

To reduce dependency on mangrove wood, ACI’s carbon project is offering communities alternatives, including efficient cookstoves and fish-smoking ovens, planting timber woodlots, and access to capital, Harding told Mongabay by email.

Independent audits will determine how much greenhouse gas reductions occur from these efforts and from mangrove restoration, after which ACI will be issued carbon credits that organizations can buy to offset their emissions, Harding added.

ACI has “agreed to follow specific criteria in selecting buyers,” which include not selling to buyers who don’t do enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Sesay said.

Transparency and accountability provisions in the agreement also “oblige the proponent to disclose sales and other related information,” he added.

Isa Mulder from Belgium-based think tank Carbon Market Watch, who wasn’t involved in the agreement, told Mongabay that the lack of price transparency is a huge barrier to communities being able to judge if they’re getting a fair share. Financial transparency, if it’s implemented, would be a “breakthrough,” she said.

“Fair compensation” is also a key climate justice principle, and Bonthe communities are set to receive 40-50% of gross revenue from the sale of carbon credits.

Some other carbon projects have a profit-sharing model, but these can get complicated, Sesay said. Developers might reinvest and expand a project over many years, making it unclear when profits actually begin, and communities typically lack access to the developer’s financial records to be able to determine actual profits.

“We have [had] some bad experience with profit share,” Sesay said. “We had to push away from profit share and stick to revenue share.”

ACI will retain between 42.5 and 52.5% of the gross revenue, while the government of Sierra Leone will receive 7.5-15.5%, Harding said.

“[The agreement] is a step in the right direction for the voluntary carbon market to address the many deep-rooted issues of fairness and even human rights violations,” Mulder said.

“These carbon justice principles were established by a diverse group of grassroots justice organisations and in my view, they embody what’s at the core of fair carbon markets,” she added.

“With Namati’s guidance, our communities gained confidence in partnering with ACI, ensuring youth participation,” Sandy Rogers, a youth leader in Sittia Chiefdom, said in a statement. “We anticipate employment and development for our communities.”

Sesay said it remains to be seen how the agreement is actually implemented. “We have to see how communities themselves will actually distribute their revenue; this a huge amount of money and the committees are not used to this amount of money,” he said.

“We also have to see how the proponents themselves play out the transparency and accountability, disclosing of buyers, and how communities will change their approach in using the mangroves to a more sustainable one.”

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To ensure that the revised standard is grounded in the needs of impacted communities, Namati and the Grassroots Justice Network have mobilized input from 150 frontline justice actors from 30 countries. 

“Indigenous and local communities are not observers in carbon narratives; we are the guardians of land and culture. We may not all have media platforms, but we hold lived truths.” Frank Setek, founder and executive director of Nkishon CBO.

What is Verra seeking to update:

As part of a public consultation process, Verra has introduced three key reforms to improve how the standards respond to community impacts as part of its Version 5: 

1. Strengthened requirements to clearly demonstrate project ownership and carbon rights
2. Enhanced safeguards and stakeholder engagement processes to ensure more inclusive participation
3. Increased financial transparency standards to improve accountability in benefit sharing. 

Recommendations from Frontline Communities: 

Overall, frontline justice actors welcome the changes from Verra that recognize the complexity of land tenure rights, improve access to information for communities, and require companies to understand and respond to social, environmental, and economic risks. 

“The direction of travel of Verra’s proposals is hopeful in that the carbon market industry is taking community needs seriously. However, to fully protect community rights, the standard must be clearer in addressing communal tenure, protecting defenders, and ensuring full transparency,” said Sonkita Conteh, Managing Director, Namati Sierra Leone.

Frontline communities have put forward clear, actionable recommendations, below, to ensure Verra’s proposed changes are not just adopted on paper, but meaningfully implemented on the ground.

• Land and Carbon Rights: Projects must follow the strongest legal protections—national or international—and recognize customary land rights, not just formal titles. FPIC processes must be supported to be genuine, and in places where that is not likely, including conflict zones, projects should be stopped or discouraged.
• Stakeholder Engagement & Safeguards: New risk assessment must have detailed provisions on protection of environmental rights defenders and the gendered impacts of projects. Those who want to create carbon projects should have to proactively explain how they will reduce these risks.
• Financial Transparency & Benefit Sharing: Projects must publicly disclose revenues, credit pricing, and benefit-sharing plans in accessible formats and local languages. It is not enough just to disclose this to direct project beneficiaries. Fair compensation standards must apply to all projects.

What’s Happening Now?

On August 11, 2025, Namati, the Grassroots Justice Network, and partners submitted final recommendations to Verra’s public consultation. As Verra reviews this crucial feedback and prepares to release updated standards by year’s end, we will continue advancing the Carbon Justice Campaign — a global movement anchored in six core principles essential to ensuring carbon projects are fair, just, and equitable.

The post Namati and the Grassroots Justice Network Call for Fair Carbon Standards appeared first on Namati.

As part of heightening awareness of carbon credit as a source for revenue generation, on Wednesday 26th February, 2025, Namati and Invest Salone held a consultative meeting with stakeholders at the Freetown City Council Building to deliberate on the development of a robust carbon credit strategy for Sierra Leone. The engagement, held on the 3rd floor of the council building, brought together policymakers, environmental experts, Paramount Chiefs, civil society organizations and private sector representatives to explore opportunities within the carbon credit market. The engagement aimed to build awareness and foster collaboration among key players in the environmental and financial sectors to position Sierra Leone as a competitive participant in the global carbon credit trading system.

Discussions centered around policy frameworks, regulatory measures, and investment opportunities that could drive sustainable development while addressing climate change. Speaking at the event, the Director of Namati Sierra Leone, Sonkita Conteh, emphasized the importance of a well-structured carbon credit strategy in mitigating environmental degradation and promoting green economic growth:

“Sierra Leone has vast potential in the carbon credit market and through collaborative efforts, we can develop a framework that ensures transparency, sustainability, and economic benefits for our communities.”

To read the rest of the article on Nature Newspaper’s social media account click here. 

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Without involvement of communities impacted by the projects, countries across Africa were strapped into memorandums of agreement with 30 years of commitments. Reports suggested that Blue Carbon was retaining upwards of 70% of the project revenues while impacting the livelihoods of millions. The audacious scale of the project shocked the conscience.

Read Rebecca Iwerks and Alain Frechette’s full article in IPS here. 

The post After Gaps in UN Agreement, National Laws Must Step Up To Protect Community Land Rights appeared first on Namati.

A Case Study: The Village of Ngovokpahun

Namati’s Eastern Region office received a formal request for assistance from a small village called Ngovokpahun. The community reported that an Italian agricultural company, to which they had leased a significant portion of their land, had defaulted on its payments and become unreachable. According to the villagers, the company had failed to pay rent for more than two years.

Namati took up the case and successfully located the company’s president, Dr. Roberto Mariani. After clarifying the management difficulties that had affected the business, Dr. Mariani ordered a temporary suspension of operations so he could personally resolve the outstanding issues — both administrative and community-related. However, the Ebola epidemic, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, caused further delays.

Upon his return to Sierra Leone, and after a series of meetings with the community and Namati representatives, the discussion took on a new, more collaborative tone.

The Broader Context: A Needed Reform

For decades, land investments in Sierra Leone have been plagued by non transparent agreements, often concluded between investment companies and chiefdom councils without the effective participation of the landowning families. Excluded from the decision-making process, these families were routinely denied their right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) and ended up with unfavorable lease terms. They received inadequate and inconsistent compensation while suffering the environmental consequences of corporate operations — polluted water, degraded soil, and unfulfilled promises.

Commitments made by companies to build local infrastructure — roads, schools, health facilities — often went unkept.

The Turning Point in Ngovokpahun

In Ngovokpahun, landowners complained not only about inadequate payments but also suspected that Italian Agriculture had failed to measure the leased area correctly.

“We decided to push for a renegotiation of the agreement,” recalls Baindu Koroma, a Namati program officer.

The process began with a participatory land mapping exercise involving Namati, the company, the landowning families, and officials from the Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Country Planning. Once consensus was reached on the total acreage involved, negotiations resumed with renewed energy.

The COVID-19 pandemic temporarily halted progress, but two years later, talks resumed in a new legal environment — one defined by the recent enactment of the Customary Land Rights Act (CLRA) and the National Land Commission Act.

A New Partnership

Following a formal termination of the contract between the landowners and Italian Agriculture, Dr. Mariani proposed a more transparent and compliant solution. All subsequent negotiations were transferred to One More Seed Ltd., a company duly registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and operating in full compliance with national laws.

The new lease agreement was negotiated in accordance with the Customary Land Rights Act, designed to eliminate discrimination under customary law and ensure equitable terms for communities.

“Under the new provisions, landowners are now entitled to receive 90% of the lease payments — up from just 50% previously,” explains Baindu. “The law also requires that landowning families negotiate directly with investors, rather than through chiefdom councils.”

With these protections in place, Ngovokpahun’s landowners successfully increased their annual lease rate from US$5 to US$15 per acre — a significant step toward economic justice and community empowerment.

A Model for the Future

The signing of the new lease agreement between One More Seed Ltd. and the landowning families of Ngovokpahun stands as a landmark achievement — tangible proof that Sierra Leone’s new land laws can deliver on their promise of fairness and transparency.

It also demonstrates that responsible investors exist — companies willing to believe in the country’s future while upholding community rights and respecting the law.

A hopeful future — one that, as on that historic day, still echoes in the rhythm of drums and the dance of celebration.

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What experience or individual inspired you to join the fight for land and environmental justice?

Workshop on the draft environmental code with members of parliament (Photo Credit: Natural Justice)

I always had a passion for law. As soon as I graduated from high school, I was [already] in the law department of my university, and at first, my goal was to become an advocate lawyer. In university, I met a professor who was engaged in environmental law. This professor helped me get my first internship at the International Union for Conservation (IUCN) and that was very useful for my future career. Another inspirational experience was when I was working around natural resource management, and that gave me a major source of knowledge – managing environmental resources is a very important issue in developing countries.

When I finished my master’s degree, my first job was in an environmental assessment firm in Senegal. That helped me have a look at the big picture of how the extractive industry impacts communities. And all of this pushed me to say I am passionate about environmental law. During this time, I also met a very strong movement of women who were really engaged to defend the environment in Senegal, particularly in managing natural resources.

Lastly, I worked with a local NGO who focused on helping communities, protecting their biodiversity and ecosystems, and setting up their livelihoods. This work, combined with the LERPDES (Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherche en Politique et Droit de l’Environnement et de la Santé), enabled me to question environmental legislation and public policy, and that helped me paint a big picture of how it’s going in the country. I saw that supporting communities through legal empowerment is the best way to bring about systemic transformation involving the state, private actors and citizens.

Was there a turning point or particular moment in your life that shaped you or had a lasting impact on your journey?

Training of judicial actors from Senegal, Burkina Faso and Guinea on the application of environmental law (Photo Credit: Natural Justice)

Some events or interactions really make you very proud. These were high points of my involvement in supporting communities and their decision-making. The interactions I have had with communities, especially with women, showed me they are really the ones most dedicated to rise up to the environmental challenge, despite the daily difficulties.

A particular experience with women had a lasting impact on my journey. Waste management is a very big challenge in Senegal, and in Senegalese culture, women play a big role in managing waste at home and in the cities. The environmental issues here are almost always linked with health issues.

“I wanted to be part of a powerful community of women, and I really saw that even if they face so many challenges, they are very determined to protect and support the environment and advocate for a healthy and sustainable environment. This influenced my choice to stay with communities and work with them.”

The women I met were working on making waste management easy for both the communities and the municipal government. Then, we submitted a project to the European Union delegation, and they were able to provide the financial support we needed to implement a new system. We saw that the municipality didn’t have the human resources, financial capacity, or logistics know-how, so we organized the community and helped them to have all the logistics they needed. After that, we had the municipality manage some areas and see how they can be used for agriculture. At the end of the project, the communities were so happy. An immediate effect could be felt, especially during the rainy season. During the rainy months, people were always sick because of unhygienic water and poor sanitation. At the end of the project, we were at the hospital, and we saw the hospitalization percentage drop. The women made the project very strong.  

How have you been able to bring community voices and solutions into global and regional advocacy spaces? How have you made those spaces relevant to communities?

We have to work in the local circles and see how you can link them to the regional, sub-regional, and global levels.  As Natural Justice is part of the National Committee of Climate Change, I was part of the Senegalese delegation to COP. That meant I had access to the room. I was in the group discussion around the G77+ China and every morning, we had meetings to prepare and see where we were around gender, adaptation, agriculture, Loss and Damage,  and all other points in the agenda. I was focused on loss and damage issues. As I was part of the delegation, this gave me the opportunity to lobby with other delegates and push them to think about how we can integrate human rights in the discussion going on at COP.  

“If you are part of a delegation like this, it gives you access to last minute information, and you can be the bridge between communities or civil society who work in support of communities. You can give timely updates and information from this and hopefully, some good results.”

 

That also gave us the opportunity to set up a panel around one topic.  Last year, we were focused on gender and climate change issues.  We had a panel in the Senegalese pavilion; all the big women’s organizations like FemNET and the Gender Constituency were in the panel, and that was a critical moment for advocacy and lobbying. It’s really helpful to have events like this.

My role as a civil society member is to have a joint agenda or action when we go to COP. We need to have a joint agenda on how we can advocate together, whether we are in the Global South or Global North. For movement building, it’s really valuable to have a movie or documentary to share with communities when they are in this space. The work must be done before we come to COP.

This work can be challenging and difficult. What inspires you and helps you keep going?

First of all, we all agree that it is very challenging to do this work. But I come from a place of passion for this type of work, and that’s the most important thing for me. 

When I think of the impact or change I’m making, or when I’m contributing to changing the lives of communities, it is an added motivation for me too.

Sometimes we have an impact on legislation or global decisions – like the role civil society played in the UN’s recognition of the right to a healthy and sustainable environment. Some of this is inspiring and this helps us say “Okay, even though there are challenges, it is an improvement  in supporting communities on the ground.”

“Lastly, when I wake up in the morning and see my kids at home, I’m asking myself: “What kind of environment, what kind of world, do we leave for our children?” When I’m thinking about the future generation, that’s a big motivation for doing my work.”

—

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What experience or individual inspired you to join the fight for land and environmental justice?

Rakhma Mary has been working with communities for almost 17 years.

Shortly after I graduated from the faculty of law, I was able to join the Semarang Legal Aid Institute.

During this time, I was in the land division, which fit with my interests. I started to learn about the land conflicts in Central Java, and how to facilitate and provide critical legal education and empowerment to the farmers. That was the first time I became a volunteer, and that was also the first time I learned about agrarian conflicts in Central Java itself. In most of the cases I handled, the majority of the farmers were criminalized. That was difficult to face: we were the facilitators and organizers for the community, but at the same time, when we knew that the farmers had been criminalized, we had to switch our position from the community organizer to litigator.

At least 10 cases of criminalization appeared in the year 2000, and more than 30 farmers had been jailed. It was then I realized that if our farmers don’t have land, or the lands are grabbed by companies or by the government, they will not have something to live for. It’s not as easy as what the government thinks, where farmers sell their land, and then the developers build infrastructure projects and offer compensation. In Indonesia, especially in Java, land is closely related to religious, economic, and socio-cultural aspects. 

I almost never stayed in the office too – I was just back to the office writing reports from the field. So mostly, almost every day I went to a village, and I moved to other villages to facilitate discussions and deliberate on the next actions with the community. 

“Because I have been involved for quite a long time in this work, I can see the difference in how the system and policies change through legal empowerment and action research.”

 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but what we were doing was Participatory Action Research. All of our work making reports and taking action based on what the community wanted to do – that was Participatory Action Research and legal empowerment combined.

Was there a turning point or particular moment in your life that shaped you or had a lasting impact on your journey?

There are two particular moments: one was a case about land redistribution in Semarang District, and the second case about a cement company. 

The land redistribution case was one that we won against a company. The land owned originally by the farmers was grabbed and abandoned by this company.

Women protesting in the city.

The farmer community – about 6,000 farmers – rallied and demonstrated in various locations, including the national land agency, the prosecutor’s office, and the police office. Because of this, some of the community leaders were criminalized. The demonstrations continued even with the ongoing charges, until, because of their organizing, all of the community leaders were released from jail. They also finally got the land redistribution titles after the national land agency revoked the company’s permits. That’s when I learned a lot about community organizing and people power, and how it can actually do so much.

The second turning point was when I was involved in filing a case against a cement company. This company wanted to operate in karst area with natural caves and underground rivers, namely Kendeng Mountains. Even without our office intervening, their community really understood the impact of cement mining – for women, specifically, they realized that they will lose their water source for daily and agricultural consumption and put the next generation in danger. They realized that they need to fight for environmental protection.

The government continued the development of the cement factory. As a form of protest, the community members cemented their feet – both women and men. There were nine women during the first demonstration, and then around 65 people joined at the second demonstration.  After that, some of the activists also cemented their feet, including me. I only joined for about 2 or 3 hours in front of the German Embassy in Jakarta, but the others cemented their feet for a week.

One of the women who participated in the demonstration died on the second day of protest in the YLBHI office. That experience struck me most, and I realized that this meant everything: for the environment, for the people, and for their land.

If we cannot assist them, if we cannot support them, we have to feel very ashamed. If the cement mining was in my community, I questioned myself: could I go through the same struggles, like the women who cemented their feet for days? I realize that the situation may be different, but we have to support them, as far as we can.

This work can be challenging and difficult. What inspires you and helps you keep going?

I think this links back to ourselves. Are we just involved in this ‘activity’? Is it just for fun? Or do we really want to make the situation better? If there is still injustice, and the government is getting worse, or their policies are not getting better, we would need to be there. If I don’t have the same motivation, or the same vision with YLBHI, maybe it will be difficult. 

The next generation needs to be educated and be equipped with knowledge. When I joined YLBHI, I had to be idealistic and ideological about structural legal aid and about human rights.

“Wherever we are, we are ‘alumni’ of legal aid and of human rights. We need to keep our values, not only when we have activities.”

Right now, I am in YLBHI, but maybe one day I won’t be in this field anymore. The challenge for me and for all of us is: who will be the next alumni of legal aid, and can they uphold the values of legal aid even when they are outside of this field? This will depend on ourselves and on the people around us.

Above: Photos from Rakhma’s meetings with communities.

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Nyaradzo speaking at a meeting.

What experience or individual inspired you to join the fight for land and environmental and gender justice? 

My interest began when I was doing a module on women and women’s law as part of my undergraduate degree. Before that, I was taking corporate courses: banking, insurance, company law, and intellectual property law. I started studying women’s law, and then we went into the field for the first time to the communities. We were researching how women have been able to access the courts. I was part of a team that went to the region where I come from in Zimbabwe. We would go to the courts and find out what kind of cases women have been bringing to court and how long it has been taking them to get solutions to the different problems that they were facing as women, and whether they were getting proper access to justice.

When I finished that module, I joined a team of students. We had an office on campus where we would provide free legal advice and would allocate specific times to attend to different clients. What I noticed was that most of the clients visiting were women. When I began to research, I looked at the types of cases that women were bringing and the bottom line was that women did not have access to and control over resources, like land. Our inheritance and customary laws, and our patriarchal system, was inhibiting women’s access to land. When it comes to decision making and influencing laws and policies, what [the women] said was not considered to be important. And for me, that really sparked my passion to do more.

I’ve always carried a passion when it comes to women’s rights and I carry it in all the spaces that I’ve worked in. So when I joined ZELA, I continued to work to empower communities. What inspires me is the amount of passion the communities have. When I go into the communities, I meet so many women who are passionate and willing to use their own time and the limited resources that they have to raise awareness about the law for other women in their communities. For me, it is so humbling to find that women are dedicating their time to this. It’s a very difficult situation in our rural community because of the constant fight to put food on the table. And yet you have women who take time to say, “apart from all these duties that I have, I’m going to find time without being paid, without any incentive to go and speak to other women to say, as women, we can build our power.”

Was there a turning point or particular moment in your life that shaped you or had a lasting impact on your journey?

There have been many turning points, but one specific point still drives the kind of work that we [ZELA] do…One time, when we visited the Manicaland community during a drought, the mining companies had diverted all the water from the river. The women said, “Okay, Nyaradzo, let’s take you to the river so that you see what is happening.” They dug on the riverbed through the sand, and waited for the water to begin to come out from the ground. And they used the little water that came out to fill a 20-liter container. For me, that was really shocking. 

That was a moment that I said to myself, ‘this is a turning point, we can’t do nothing in the face of such injustice.’

This inspired us to create a campaign on women’s access to clean water in mining communities. We drilled boreholes, but also took the companies to court. We ended up doing an entire media campaign, and in the end, the company was forced to open up the water source for the communities to have access to water. This happened in a mining site, protected by the military and the armed forces. But the women really had been pushed to the point…where they said ‘Okay, we need to take action.’ So for me, that was a very important turning point.

Being part of movements like the Legal Empowerment Network and the Feminists for a Binding Treaty Movement, where you are able to look at your own local struggles, look at the challenges when it comes to access to justice for women and marginalized groups, and see that local fights are connected to big issues – helps you see that the work that you are doing in your own local space matters, because it also can be used to influence global and regional frameworks, laws, and policies.

This work can be challenging and difficult. What inspires you and helps you keep going?

It takes a lot of resilience. At a personal level, I’ve found solidarity, support, and inspiration in the least expected places. You may be feeling discouraged – maybe you have taken a particular matter to court and maybe it’s dismissed on technicalities – and at the end of the day, [it feels like] you have failed to make that particular change in people’s lives that you would’ve liked to see.

But there is always that encouragement where even the communities can say, “Okay, let’s look at the silver lining. We may have failed to do this, but the fact that we have actually taken this issue to court is in itself a statement that we have made.”

For me, there’s always an inspiration in the communities that we work with, where I find most of them very supportive. Even the grassroots activists, they’re re-energized and inspired because of the work that they themselves will be doing. We lean on each other and keep each other going during difficult times.

Part of what also keeps us going is the fact that we [are] trying to manage expectations; [we] are also just being realistic. It’s also part of being in such a closed or shrinking civic space situation in Zimbabwe. I started doing this work in 2006. It’s been the same context [since]. I was just with some young people here from Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. We were trying to design a youth initiative on a corporate accountability campaign, and you would hear the young people in Zambia saying “we are actually going to do a march,” but for Zimbabwe, they would say, “we can do a Zoom meeting.” That’s how closed the space is. So in that closed space, I think what has also really kept me going is to create, to be innovative. It forces you to be creative.

I looked at the space of women and land and environmental justice, and I actually sat down with two other lawyers working in different organizations and said, “we need to create a separate space where women can speak about extractives.”

Women in mining communities need to have a free space. So this year, I’m happy to say we created the gender and extractives platform, and we managed to rope in the support of other organizations. Next week, we’re going to be having a seventh edition of the gender and extractive symposium that is being hosted by the platform. Finding ways to be be creative and innovative helps to keep us going because we really need to adapt to the context and find new ways of making sure that women continue to have their voice heard, that their rights are respected.

Through the platform on gender and extractives we have been calling for the promotion of women’s participation in the mining sector. It is important to note that it has been a fulfilling journey seeing artisanal and small-scale miners such as Shuvai Maphosa (above) contributing to the sector and making names for themselves.

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