How Grassroots Women-Led Networks are Strengthening Resilience and Reducing Climate-Conflict Risks: Experience from Latin America and the Caribbean

Aug 21, 2025 | Nohelia Palou Zúniga and Ignacio Madurga-Lopez

Across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), women are uniquely positioned to address the dual crises of climate change and conflict. Their community networks, rooted in caregiving, mutual aid, and local knowledge, play a critical and often underrecognized role in strengthening social cohesion, protecting natural resources, and responding to environmental shocks.

Context

LAC is one of the most climate-vulnerable and unequal regions in the world. With rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and increasing environmental degradation, the region faces growing threats to livelihoods, food security, and societal stability. At the same time, it has some of the highest rates of gender-based violence, femicides, and social inequality globally.

Women, particularly in rural, Indigenous, and Afro-descendant communities, face compounded risks from loss of land and income to increased unpaid care burdens and exposure to violence. Despite this, they are leading transformative responses through informal community structures. Examples such as early warning systems, informal savings groups, seed exchange networks, and collective childcare demonstrate how women are creating resilient support systems that respond quickly to shocks, particularly in areas where formal systems are weak, absent, or inaccessible due to insecurity or discrimination.

Key lessons from the field

  • Women's community networks act as first responders. In La Masica, Honduras, during Hurricane Mitch, a locally led early warning system, coordinated by Garifuna women, ensured that no lives were lost. Women organized timely evacuations, disseminated risk information through informal communication channels, and coordinated post-disaster support. Also, in the aftermath, women's grassroots groups in Honduras were not only involved in rescue operations but also led long-term recovery work. They established community seed banks, advocated for safe housing, and participated in political processes to secure resources and recognition for their communities.
  • Social capital supports peacebuilding: In El Salvador, WFP programs evaluated by SIPRI revealed how women's groups not only improved food security in communities affected by gang violence but also fostered mutual support and collective trust. Through revolving community funds, women helped families cover health and education costs alleviating tensions in areas deeply affected by violence and climate shocks.
  • Local leadership matters: In Bolivia's Cochabamba Valley, women's collectives have organized to monitor the quantity and quality of water in drought-prone municipalities. These networks were formed in response to water privatization to help establish communal agreements that ensure access for both domestic and agricultural use, thereby safeguarding food and water security, while preventing conflict.
  • Mobility does not erase women's agency: Migrant women play vital roles in both origin and host communities by sending remittances, organizing support structures, and fostering social cohesion in precarious urban contexts. For example, in Peru, Venezuelan women have created and managed community kitchens in precarious urban settlements. These kitchens provide daily meals to food-insecure families while also becoming hubs of solidarity, knowledge exchange, and social cohesion between migrants and host populations.  Research also shows that women migrants remit money more consistently than men. Women in local communities tend to direct those remittances toward healthcare, education, and community development. This financial agency enhances household resilience and supports collective well-being in contexts of climate and conflict vulnerability.

What needs to happen next?

To unlock the full potential of women-led social capital in climate security, it is necessary to:

  • Invest in grassroots women's networks that are already responding to climate and conflict challenges;
  • Ensure their inclusion in formal governance structures, from disaster risk management to natural resource management;
  • Design gender-responsive climate adaptation strategies that value and build on existing social cohesion mechanisms; and
  • Recognize women as agents of change, not just vulnerable populations, especially in fragile, conflict-affected, and climate-exposed settings.

The experiences shared across LAC highlight a powerful, often-overlooked truth: women are not only among the most affected by climate change and insecurity, but they are also among the most effective actors in responding to them. Through their informal yet deeply rooted community networks, women are reshaping what resilience looks like in contexts where institutions are weak or absent, and where risks are compounded by inequality, violence, and environmental degradation. Their leadership has the potential to bring about significant positive change.

The collective actions led by women showcase how social capital can serve as a bridge between immediate response and long-term transformation. These networks do more than fill gaps left by state or humanitarian actors; they create new possibilities for peace, equity, and sustainability by anchoring solutions in local realities and relational trust.

However, this work continues to unfold on the margins of formal climate and peacebuilding frameworks. Too often, women's leadership is seen as incidental or informal, rather than recognized as foundational to community resilience and social cohesion. This leadership must be integrated into formal policy, programming, and funding streams, as governments and development actors risk missing one of the most effective entry points for addressing the climate-conflict nexus.

As the region faces increasing climate stress and deepening social divides, the role of women's social capital must move from the periphery to the center of climate security efforts. Supporting women-led initiatives is not only a gender equality imperative but also a strategic investment in more inclusive, just, and effective responses to some of the region's most pressing challenges.

Empowering women to lead, connect, and act at all levels, from neighborhoods to national platforms, requires more than acknowledgment. It calls for intentional action: meaningful participation in governance, tailored financial support, capacity strengthening, and mechanisms that respect and scale up local knowledge. Crucially, it means designing climate and peacebuilding strategies that do not treat women as vulnerable groups to be protected, but as active agents to be engaged. The future of climate resilience and peace in Latin America and the Caribbean will depend not only on technical solutions or institutional reform, but on the strength of the social bonds that hold communities together in times of crisis, for which women are the most important actor.

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This Spotlight is based on insights from the policy brief "Women as actors of change: Climate, peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean" by Nohelia Palou Zúniga and Ignacio Madurga-Lopez, published by the Alliance of Bioversity-CIAT and the CGIAR Climate Security (2025) https://cgspace.cgiar.org/items/49ec10ff-64e4-40c8-b4f4-35159ae0b8b6