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

From a single sewing machine and a small household venture to a thriving textile manufacturing company employing more than 400 people, this is one of many success stories of a movement which demonstrates that investing in women is investing in communities.

UNA-NYC is pleased to present the following excerpts from a recent blog by one of our 2025 Summer Scholars, Adriana Corto, who was a UNDP-BIOFIN Fellow stationed in Istanbul, Turkey. The blog's co-writer was Jasmin Blessing, Gender Equality and Safeguards Specialist at UNDP Biofin.

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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 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 Bukowa
Chief Executive Officer, CredorSave | Zambia

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.

"It's the communities at the frontline that are dealing with the impacts of biodiversity loss," she says. "They are the ones who live with, and in harmony with, nature. Therefore, whatever mechanism exists to protect that harmony and relationship needs to go directly to the communities."

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.

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Mukasahaha Diane
Founder of DIKAM Garment Manufacturing | Rwanda

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 DIKAM employee managing the company's finances.

Diane built her enterprise around women's needs. 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.

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

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

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

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. This drives my commitment to championing nature-positive finance." 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.

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

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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.

Read the full, original blog by Jasmin Blessing and Adriana Curto

Learn more about BIOFIN's Gender Approach