For Indira Rawat and her family, farming alone could not cover their expenses. So each winter, her husband would leave their home in Nepal for India to seek temporary work.

Women weavers in Goenpa Kabab, a remote village in Bhutan’s mountain districts, have always made exquisite silk dresses. Now they are combining this tradition and modern techniques.

For the Xukuru Indigenous Peoples, caring for the Ororubá land is their sacred duty, blending cosmogony, biocentrism, ecosystems reading and Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge with state-of-the-art technology. 

The Tonle Sap basin and flood plain is one of Cambodia’s most important agricultural regions, but it is also the most vulnerable to floods and droughts. For farmers in this region, climate change has contributed to a 20–30 percent loss in total crop yields.

“For us, the forest is sacred: from it we get our medicine, firewood, everything,” says Teodora Vera, a 55-year-old member of the Avá Guaraní, Indigenous Peoples’ community of Y’aka Poty. “The forest is our life.”

Iracema Da Luz Ferreyra’s community in Colonia Alegría, Argentina has seen the effects of deforestation and have awakened to the importance of trees for their lives and livelihoods.

When Zarnigor faced the daunting challenge of supporting her entire family on her own, she began beekeeping, a trade she learned from her father. 

Solar power and smart irrigation reinvigorate fields and lives in Angola

Initially seeking a different path, Ryoujin returned to Jeju and decided to become a haenyeo (or sea woman) like her mother and grandmother before her.

In Düzce, Türkiye, 32 percent of youth are unemployed. Many opt to move to the city in search of work. Beekeeping offers young people an alternative path and income opportunities in rural areas.

Indigenous Women lead climate action to preserve agrobiodiversity in Ecuador’s highlands

Lush with rainforests and cocoa plantations, the island country of Sao Tome and Principe is rich in biodiversity but faces increasing forest and land degradation due to agricultural expansion, changes in land use and the impacts of climate change.

Cambodia’s wet season is becoming unpredictable, but now improved flood-resistant seeds are helping Seuy Phok and other rice farmers have more reliable harvests. 

In the heart of Tajikistan, a woman has defied the odds, shattered social norms and transformed the agricultural landscape of communities.

The potato is now a symbol of national transformation. Lesotho chose the potato as its priority product and joined FAO’s One Country One Priority Product (OCOP) initiative in 2022. 

Five hours. That's how long women in energy-poor households spend each day on cooking-related tasks—time not spent in school, earning income, or caring for themselves. 

In this district of Jabal Saraj, in the northeastern Parwan province of Afghanistan, these women turned producing jams and pickles into their way of making a living.

In Jharkhand’s Gumla district, one small community hub is alive with activity. Inside, women of all ages – some with toddlers on their laps – gather for a producer group meeting.

The farmer field schools are a key component of the Building a Resilient Churia Region in Nepal project, funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) together with the Government of Nepal. 

Latin America and the Caribbean are home to some of the planet’s greatest biodiversity. Here are three GEF-funded, FAO projects conserving and restoring ecosystems across Brazil, Chile and Venezuela.