By Abdullahi Lukman
Women affected by climate change in Nigeria say their voices and experiences remain absent from global climate negotiations, despite world leaders meeting at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, to decide the future of global climate action. COP30, held November 10–21, 2025, is the annual United Nations climate summit where countries negotiate pathways to limit global warming, support vulnerable communities and advance net-zero goals.
Speaking at a farm visit and dialogue in Kaduna, Olanike Olugboji-Daramola, Founder of the Women Initiative for Sustainable Environment (WISE), said it was troubling that women who bear the brunt of climate impacts are rarely represented at major climate forums. She noted that most rural women farmers—whose livelihoods are threatened by erratic rainfall, crop failures and land loss—are unaware such global meetings even take place.
Olugboji-Daramola said COP30 should have provided space for grassroots women to share their experiences, but the process had been “hijacked by big players and corporations,” sidelining those directly affected.
She said WISE was creating local platforms to help women understand global processes, articulate their challenges and highlight their leadership, supported by initiatives such as a regenerative agriculture accelerator and a clean-cooking entrepreneurship programme that has produced more than 2,000 women entrepreneurs nationwide.
Joanne Kuria of the Association of Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), Kenya, who visited Nigeria to collaborate with WISE, said the real climate stories are unfolding in African communities where women farmers face harsher temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, shrinking farmlands and systemic barriers to land ownership. She called for stronger collective action so African women can influence global climate decisions with a unified voice.
Rural women farmers at the Kaduna gathering expressed frustration at being excluded from COP platforms.
Hajiya Asibi Hassan, a cooperative leader, described losing her entire bean harvest to theft and said she would have used a COP platform to raise issues of insecurity, land rights and the impact of late and early rainfall on yields.
She urged government collaboration with grassroots groups and tighter enforcement of environmental practices such as sanitation and protection of waterways.
Another farmer, Juliana Turaki, said women remain constrained by limited access to land and inheritance systems that favour men, despite women’s central role in food production.
She argued that recognising women as full agricultural actors and granting them land rights would strengthen food security in climate-stressed communities.
Participants said the discussions in Kaduna highlight the urgent need to rethink climate representation and ensure global climate decisions reflect the lived realities of grassroots women who experience climate shocks firsthand.