Women as Agents of Change for Adaptation - Lesotho

Women as Agents of Change for Adaptation is training local Lesotho women as solar ambassadors and creating the opportunity for them to act as agents of change within their communities. Women are raising awareness about alternative technologies and climate change adaptation.

Fast facts:

Eleven women are currently acting as solar ambassadors and have directly benefitted from training and awareness building;
Women across the four pilot villages have benefitted from being introduced to the alternative technologies equipment and many have already bought or are actively saving towards buying the equipment. These villages each comprise between 100 and 300 households.

The problem

Households in the Lesotho highlands are highly resource dependent and are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their limited means to buffer their livelihoods from the impacts and shocks associated with climate change. Increasing environmental pressure is being driven by households’ strategies to address this vulnerability and the agro-ecological implications of climate change. This is escalating environmental degradation and the erosion of critical ecosystem services, which further undermines the resilience of these resource dependent communities. The rural areas of Lesotho remain largely patriarchal. Women’s important roles and contributions in the household, agriculture and the informal sector activities remain largely unrecognized.

The solution

The effective role that women are playing as solar ambassadors in their villages is addressing these issues. This activity is introducing alternative technologies to help households meet their domestic energy requirements, reducing pressure on natural resources and creating awareness about the need to reverse current trends in degradation of ecological infrastructure and ecosystem services. Solar water heaters, cookers, lighting and battery chargers, as well as energy efficient stoves, reduce the vulnerability of households who already struggle daily to meet their fuel needs due to a scarcity of woody vegetation. The appropriateness and demand for these technologies is evident in the fact that local households are setting up savings schemes to help individual households afford to purchase the equipment.

Helping the planet

Once households have made the transition to these technologies it is unlikely going to willingly go back to burning large quantities of wood on a daily basis.

Helping people

Women are raising awareness about climate change and the need for adaptation that builds the resilience of livelihoods and ecosystems. Women volunteers have taken up the role of solar ambassadors, and take the lead in organizing and rolling out regular demonstration events at the sustainability commons in their villages. During the demonstrations the solar ambassadors put the equipment to work and prepare food, heat water, power lights and charge mobile phone batteries, while explaining the advantages of this equipment and the contribution it can make. The audiences at these demonstrations are also largely women, but not exclusively, and they in turn return to their homes and families after the demonstrations and share the information they have gained.

Scaling Up

As more women become familiar with alternative technologies through the demonstrations at the sustainability commons, and as the uptake of the equipment increases, more women will start acting as solar ambassadors and replicate the demonstrations hey have attended at the sustainability commons. Women who have purchased some of the new technologies will also be able to demonstrate their equipment to others in their own homes, which could act as smaller satellite sustainability commons. So as the awareness and uptake of the new technologies grows, so the number of people acting as solar ambassadors and the number of small demonstration sites will grow, and the scale of the initiative will grow with it. The up scaling has the potential to occur not only within the current villages (i.e. reaching more beneficiaries within the villages) but also in other villages