Women for the Planet: Four Stories of Leadership, Resilience, and Nature-Positive Change

Across the globe, women are proving that protecting biodiversity, building resilient livelihoods, and strengthening local economies go hand in hand. Through efforts supported by UNDP’s Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) and the Enabling and Scaling up Market Adoption of Nature-related Financial Disclosures (IKI-TNFD) Project, as well as through women-led enterprises that champion inclusive and sustainable growth, Maggie, Diane, Shama and Roselyn show a powerful truth: when you invest in nature, you invest in women-and when you empower women, nature wins too.

Maggie | Chief Executive Officer, CredorSave | Zambia

“It’s the communities at the frontline that are dealing with the impacts of biodiversity loss. They are the ones who live with, and in harmony with nature. Therefore, whatever mechanism exists to protect that harmony and relationship need to go directly to the communities.”

Maggie’s journey into biodiversity finance began with what she witnessed on the ground in Zambia. Development aid and traditional lenders in her community were failing to reach the families that needed support the most. From this reality, she knew that locally led, affordable, and flexible financing was the solution.

In Zambia, where 66 percent of people depend on smallholder farming and 95 percent of those farmers rely on rain-fed agriculture, persistent droughts pose a serious threat to crops and livelihoods. When harvests fail, families often turn to cutting down trees for charcoal, accelerating biodiversity loss and environmental degradation.

CredorSave, the company Maggie now leads with her co-founder, Geoffrey Mwelwa, breaks this cycle through a simple but effective solution: financing that empowers farmers, many of whom are women, to invest in year-round, climate-smart agriculture. By providing drip irrigation systems, loans, quality seeds, and tailored agronomy advice, CredorSave enables farmers to grow food throughout the year, regardless of rainfall.

“We have very good groundwater resources, but it’s the money that communities don’t have to utilize the groundwater,” Maggie explains.

Her innovation extends beyond irrigation. Recognizing that women farmers in Zambia often lack land titles and collateral required for traditional bank loans, CredorSave works with existing women’s farmer groups. Without requiring collateral or formal banking histories, the model builds on women’s social networks. Repayment rates are high, as women support and encourage one another — creating a sustainable economic solution rooted in trust.

The impact has been transformative. Drip irrigation dramatically increases productivity while reducing the hours women spend manually watering crops, freeing time to rest, socialize, or pursue other activities. Families can keep children in school, and forests are left standing.

“If people have food and can take their children to school, it becomes easier to talk about biodiversity and its protection,” Maggie notes.

As a female founder in a patriarchal society, Maggie believes true gender equality requires partnership and buy-in from the men in her life and community. “Women should not have to choose between career ambitions and family obligations. We should all be able to live to our fullest potential.” In Zambia, she notes, silent resistance is often harder to address than policy barriers.

Still, she persists, because she knows that the most powerful path to gender equality is ownership. When women own their land, their labor, and their futures, they can make monumental strides for themselves and for the planet.

Mukasahaha Diane | Founder of DIKAM Garment Manufacturing | Rwanda

“If we create opportunities for women in local industries, we reduce dependence on imports and lessen pressure on our environment. Empowering women and protecting nature go hand in hand.”

Visiting Diane’s factory in Kigali feels like stepping into the early days of a startup story — a woman with a simple idea, relentless vision, and the courage to transform an entire sector from the ground up.

Diane began her journey in healthcare, not business. After years of working in the medical field, she bought a single sewing machine to support her family. What started as a small household venture has grown into DIKAM, a thriving textile manufacturing company employing more than 400 people, most of them women.

Many arrived with no formal training; some had been dismissed or underestimated elsewhere. One woman came in covered in dust from a construction site where she worked as a day laborer. Diane offered her a chance. Today, she is a permanent employee of DIKAM, managing the company’s finances.

Diane built her enterprise around the needs of women. She introduced a pension scheme, rare in the textile sector, and created a nursery inside the factory so mothers can work with dignity and peace of mind. Her husband left his job to support the company’s rapid growth, while her 18-year-old son, Lorenzo, who studies in the United States, developed software during his summer holiday to help DIKAM streamline production and sales tracking.

Rwanda’s enabling environment has played an important role in DIKAM’s growth. The country’s financial institutions offer dedicated financing windows for women entrepreneurs, which Diane used to expand operations. She built her own factory, explored installing solar panels, and is now planning a second production site to meet growing demand.

Standing on the factory floor, surrounded by the hum of machines and the steady rhythm of women creating beauty stitch by stitch, the link to biodiversity may not appear immediately. Yet it runs throughout Diane’s model. DIKAM’s focus on local production reduces the environmental footprint associated with imported textiles. She prioritizes sourcing natural, locally grown fibers, strengthening rural value chains where women play central roles in managing land, water, and natural resources.

By providing stable employment and income, Diane strengthens household decision-making that supports sustainable resource use. Her story shows how inclusive, women-led enterprises contribute to nature-positive economic growth. When women access finance, build resilient businesses, and lift other women with them, they gain power, choice, and economic security, creating ripple effects across communities through greener value chains and stronger local economies.

She began with a sewing machine. Today, she leads a movement that demonstrates how investing in women is investing in communities and ultimately, investing in nature.

Shama G. | Owner of Mango Villas Arugambay Panama | Sri Lanka

“At a time when we were economically shattered by the war, this gave us hope, a sense of safety, and the opportunity for empowerment.”

When the civil war in Sri Lanka closed doors to traditional employment, Shama found an unexpected path forward. Unable to travel safely for the government job she wanted to pursue, she was one of 100 applicants chosen by UNDP to receive training on how to run a homestay in the tourism industry. 

What began as an idea at BIOFIN training has since grown into a successful business model for sustainable tourism. The Sustainable Tourism Certification displayed at Shama’s property is symbolic of her values rooted in sustainability, biodiversity conservation, and hospitality. The certification has also contributed to increased tourism, particularly amongst Europeans, who are drawn to the business’s eco-friendly practices such as eliminating plastic, providing refill stations, sourcing food locally, and offering cooking classes that immerse tourists in local culture. 

Shama’s story is proof that BIOFIN’s finance solutions are working to strengthen pathways for whole communities of women to benefit through income generation, employment, entrepreneurship, and broader economic empowerment. Many women in Sri Lanka still struggle to access finance or recognition unless they have support and training.

“My success doesn’t stop with me—it spreads to others,” Shama says. 

By outsourcing laundry to neighbors, employing local gardeners, and redirecting overflow bookings, Shama is encouraging women to start their own ventures, leaving a positive ripple effect for women’s participation in the formal economy. 

But running a business reliant fully on nature can be risky, as the island has lost approximately 50% of its forest cover within about 50 years. Shama has witnessed altered weather patterns and disrupted agriculture, impacting the tourism sector. This direct link between biodiversity, climate, and livelihoods drives her commitment to sustainable practices.

“For me, economic empowerment through this homestay gave me confidence and respect, both within my family and in the community.” Her earnings now support her entire household, funding her son's university education and her daughter's studies while her husband's salary goes to savings.

By practicing sustainable tourism, Shayma is modeling how biodiversity finance can close gender gaps—creating income opportunities for women, encouraging savings, and shifting norms about women’s role in business and decision-making spaces. 

Roselyne N. | Senior Sustainability Specialist at Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) | Kenya

“Nature loss is a social loss. This drives my commitment to championing nature-positive finance.”

Beginning her career in community-based nonprofits, Roselyne saw firsthand how environmental triggers such as droughts and food insecurity devastated families and communities in Kenya. Her experience planted a seed: what if finance could be redirected toward nature and the people who protect it?

Now at the Kenya Bankers Association (KBA), Roselyne is reshaping how the financial sector views nature-not as a constraint, but as an investment opportunity. She recently led a groundbreaking study on nature-related financing and investment opportunities in Kenya, aiming to shift banks' perspective from risk to opportunity in sectors where women are predominantly active.

In Kenya, gender barriers are stark. In the country’s banking sector, there are only 8 female CEOs. Women entrepreneurs struggle to access loans without collateral or land titles. But Roselyne sees these challenges as interconnected: “Nature loss is a social loss.” Creating access for more women in Kenya to be in executive roles and leadership spaces means more advocates for inclusive financial products and capital flowing to underserved communities.

Through KBA’s Centre for Sustainable Finance and Enterprise Development (CSFED), Roselyne is ensuring women and other underserved segments are actively being supported with de-risking interventions through financial literacy capacity building, and peer mentorship with the aim of enhancing their ability to access affordable finance. Through her leadership while engaging various banks, over 5.8 billion shillings has been lent to de-risked enterprises supported under the Centre by banks. She is also supporting banks in developing nature transition plans under the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), deliberately targeting sectors with high female participation, such as the agricultural sector

For Roselyne, when women have access to finance and decision-making power, they invest in their communities and the natural systems that sustain them. 

While their paths differ-spanning biodiversity finance, sustainable tourism, manufacturing, and financial sector reform-these women share a common mission: building resilient communities and nurturing the natural systems that sustain us. Their stories show that empowering women is one of the most effective ways to drive lasting, nature-positive change. To learn more about BIOFIN’s Gender Approach, visit https://www.biofin.org/basic-page/our-gender-approach