On June 5, Asar’s Gender and Climate Community marked World Environment Day with powerful, women-led initiatives across India, highlighting the intersection of climate justice and women’s leadership.
In Delhi, youth groups supported by Cornerstone Knowledge Builders painted wall murals on household air pollution, promoting the use of clean cooking fuels in areas like Kanchan Kunj.
In Dhanbad, Bokaro, and Lohardaga (Jharkhand), Paryavaran Sakhis, SHG members, and ASHA workers—supported by Deshaj Abhikram and Hope—led awareness walks and discussions on air pollution and cooking fuel practices.
In Maharashtra, women from Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) continued to champion climate-resilient farming, supporting families in drought-hit regions.
These actions reflect the growing strength of women-led climate efforts across India. We’re proud to stand with them.
Women Leaders in Koraput Engage on Climate, Gender, and Commons
On June 26, Asar, in collaboration with Step Ahead, held an online orientation with 10 women leaders from Koraput, Odisha, marking the start of our work on Gender, Climate, and Commons.
The session explored how indigenous women perceive climate change within their local realities. Discussions centered on the role of commons, women’s contributions to climate resilience, and the importance of regional vocabularies to better communicate climate issues.
This dialogue laid the groundwork for a community-led approach to climate action rooted in local knowledge and leadership.
On Friday, May 10, Asar hosted an ideation meetup on ‘Mitigating Household Air Pollution in Delhi’s Low-Income Neighborhoods’ at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. Over 30 participants from diverse sectors and focus areas including clean cooking, air pollution, climate change, health, housing and urban planning, governance, research and gender advocacy, came together to deliberate on the issue. 🌍🏠💡
Here are some key insights that emerged from the three sessions that were part of the ideation meetup:
➡️The first session highlighted the need to strengthen the discourse around clean cooking in the context of larger issue of black carbon and climate change, use the narrative of inequality in exposure to household air pollution and highlight economic benefits of shifting to clean cooking and medical costs saved💬💰
➡️The second session emphasized the multi-sectoral nature of the clean cooking challenge, requiring coordinated action from various departments such as health, women and child development, urban planning, housing, energy, environment, and corporate affairs. Insights from existing literature were shared to advocate for collaborative efforts across these sectors. 🤝🏢🔍
➡️The third session underscored the importance of exploring alternative clean cooking technologies beyond LPG, such as electric, smokeless solutions, and solar options. Creating community awareness about these alternatives emerged as a crucial step toward sustainable adoption. ☀💡
The meet up was extremely useful for Asar, its partners and the larger ecosystem working on the issue to work on some important solutions for making clean cooking fuel more accessible to disadvantaged communities and explore different ways of doing so.
Asar, in partnership with the Community for Gender Equality and Climate Justice, is excited to launch the Gender and Climate Learning Series! The webinar series aims at deepening the understanding, sparking meaningful dialogue and strengthening action at the critical intersection of gender and climate change. Through this series, we seek to bridge knowledge gaps, enhance implementation, and build a stronger evidence base for placing gender justice at the heart of climate action.
The first webinar in the series is on Women-led Climate Resilient Livelihoods in collaboration with SPREAD Odisha on July 11, 4-5.30pm IST. It will spotlight powerful stories from the ground, featuring Adivasi women from Koraput, Odisha, who are leading efforts to build climate-resilient livelihoods. Through the use of renewable energy, early warning systems, and locally anchored climate action, these women are driving change in their communities. Their leadership is rooted in feminist principles and indigenous knowledge systems, offering transformative, community-driven pathways to resilience.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Moutushi Sengupta, Co-founder of Oneworld Colab, a regional advisory firm focused on human-centric approaches to solving the climate crisis in Asia. With senior leadership experience at Co-Impact, MacArthur Foundation, Oxfam India, and the UK’s Department for International Development, Moutushi brings a unique lens on systems change, equity, and innovation.
Arief Rabik, Executive Director of Bamboo Village Trustand a second-generation bamboo advocate. Through the Bamboo Village Initiative, he partners with rural communities across the tropics to regenerate degraded lands and build sustainable, inclusive livelihoods—placing women and marginalised communities at the heart of climate-resilient development.
Dipti Khara (36), an indigenous woman leader from Koraput, has established a climate-resilient poultry unit with 2,000 birds, powered by a decentralised solar energy system. Her model represents innovation rooted in local knowledge and sustainable energy access.
Lachhama Kantari, an artisan from the indigenous community, is reviving and reimagining tribal textile traditions through climate-resilient livelihoods in weaving and natural dyeing. Her work protects both ecological balance and cultural identity in the Koraput region.
Bidyut Mohanty, founder and secretary of SPREAD, brings over two decades of experience working on tribal rights and development in Koraput. With an M.Phil in Tribal Studies, he has championed participatory models for securing indigenous communities’ rights to commons and sustainable futures.
