Sparking imagination and challenging traditional approaches to power dynamics in global aid.

As a global women’s advocacy organization, WEDO, alongside many women’s rights and climate justice groups, united to present the Feminist Green New Deal Principles of Engagement, addressing the root causes and scale of the climate crisis. By intertwining feminist principles and considering gender needs, we recognized that this approach is not only morally right but also strategically smart. Our role as artists was to bring these ideas to life visually—crafting worlds where the Feminist Green New Deal could take shape, rewriting the narrative through bold, impactful imagery that inspires and transforms.

Climate change is accelerating and impacting more and more communities around the world. The impact ranges from rising sea levels, and increasing temperatures to extreme weather conditions. Among the affected and vulnerable marginalised groups have the fewest opportunities to protect themselves. Due to discrimination and gender norms, women and men are impacted differently by climate change.

In many developing countries, men work away from the home, while women cultivate tiny plots of land, without irrigation, to produce food for their families. Climate change directly affects their ability to grow crops. On top of that, women often face barriers to basic education, employment, and owning property.

We created illustrations for the 10 principles of the Green New Deal guided by codes of justice and accountability. The Principles of Engagement for the Green New Deal are:

In our deeply unequal society, gender interacts with sexuality, race, class, and other identities to shape access to power and resources, leaving some disproportionately impacted by climate disruption. Climate policies, plans and actions must address systemic exclusion and exploitation and be transformative to challenge inequality.

To avert climate catastrophe, global cooperation is necessary and urgent. We must recognize the global implications of U.S. climate policy, including by repairing the harm the U.S. has caused to the Global South as the world’s largest historic carbon polluter. 

We need to tackle systemic oppressions in our communities, movements, and policymaking spaces and fight for a true, participatory democracy. Unless we tackle these systems head-on, they will continue to undermine the climate solutions we seek.

To accurately reflect substantive solutions to the climate crisis, Indigenous sovereignty and solutions are paramount. This includes binding recognition of Indigenous land rights, real enforcement of the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent framework, and recognition of the Rights of Nature. 

Our fights for climate justice and for bodily autonomy are linked. We reject arguments that affix the blame for climate change on people’s, especially women’s, reproductive capacities, and we affirm that a sustainable future requires bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights in all circumstances.

Effective climate solutions must be community-owned and community-led, prioritize community self-determination, and draw from, uplift and support women and community-led solutions to the climate crisis.

We reject false ‘solutions,’ such as carbon trading, biofuels, and techno “fixes,” that allow drivers of the climate crisis to persist, perpetuate oppressions, and greenwash their harms. Instead, we must tackle the root causes: the extractive and agribusiness industries responsible for fueling this crisis.

A just transition requires transforming extractive economies into just, sustainable economies that redress power and wealth inequalities, respect and balance nature’s regenerative capacity, value and center care work, and shift away from privatization and commodification of nature towards sustainable, equitable production and resource use.

Young feminists know there is an urgency to act. We must embrace youth leadership and work across generations to make major, far-reaching changes quickly.

Radical imagination is the catalyst for building new worlds—it dares to envision futures beyond the confines of the present, challenging existing systems of power and oppression. It is through radical imagination that we can dream of worlds rooted in justice, equity, and sustainability, where marginalized voices are centered and new possibilities emerge. As artists, our role is to give form to these dreams, to breathe life into these imagined worlds through our craft. We create the visual language that allows others to see, feel, and believe in these possibilities, transforming abstract ideas into powerful representations that inspire action and shape reality.