The Stories
Cordillera Real, Bolivia
Floods
Melamchi, Nepal
Health worker Rachana Shrestha watched the Melamchi River roar through her town in June 2021, washing away her family’s fields and forcing neighbors to wait out the night on rooftops as power failed. Years later, she still wakes gasping from panic attacks, and the family depends on her single income after the farm vanished under mud. Missing Perspectives
Nearby, shopkeeper Pratishtha Donwar points to the cracked wall where the water pushed in. Crops gone, furniture ruined, she remembers pregnant women cut off from care when clinics flooded. Both women say the fear lingers each monsoon—that another wall of water will come when rain and landslides again turn the river into a weapon.
Missing Perspectives
Multan, Pakistan
When the Chenab burst its banks in September 2025, Rubina Nawaz climbed to her roof with three children as water rose to the eaves. Rescuers ferried them to a crowded camp where her youngest now shows signs of severe cholera; clean water and doctors are scarce, and stagnant pools buzz with mosquitos. The Guardian
Across the tents, Sumera Bibi says women face illness and harassment without private latrines or bathing spaces. “We need proper medical attention,” she pleads, as diarrheal disease, malaria, and dengue surge in the flood’s wake—a second crisis born of contaminated water and heat.The Guardian
Melting Glaciers
Aymara climbing guides Suibel Gonzales and her mother, Lidia Huayllas—“Cholita” climbers—remember when Huayna Potosí’s glaciers crackled under crampons. Now, they hear meltwater running beneath their feet and pick their way over bare rock. Retreating ice means fewer clients and less income in a trade built on snow. AP News
“Where there used to be a white blanket, now there is only rock,” Lidia says. Tours are down, pay has fallen, and the women must climb higher to find remaining ice. The loss isn’t only cultural—it’s economic and hydrological, as shrinking glaciers imperil downstream water supplies that cities and farms depend on.AP News
Droughts
Samburu County, Kenya
Christine Sitiyan left an abusive marriage as drought erased her family’s livestock and any sense of safety. In Umoja, a women-only village, she and her neighbors walk long distances to the Ewaso Ng’iro riverbed, digging into sand for seepage, watching for men and crocodiles, and rationing cloudy water that often makes them ill. “No place is safe for us,” she says of the daily calculus between thirst and danger. The Guardian
On some days, Christine joins Jane Nomong’en, Paulina Lekureiya, and Kareni Lematile to scoop water for hours. They’ve seen a teenager killed by a crocodile and a pregnant woman attacked, even as drought and sand-mining leave the river alternately bone-dry or flash-flooded. The trek costs time, schooling, and any chance to earn; the water they carry home still isn’t clean.The Guardian
Marathwada, India
Shobha Londhe’s husband, Tatya, was a small farmer in Beed district. As wells and rivers dried, debts mounted with each failed crop until Tatya died by suicide; now Shobha keeps the household afloat, queuing for government tankers, pouring precious drinking water over an overheating cow, and wondering how long she can keep going. AP News
She describes summers when there’s no farm work, no irrigation—only cracked riverbeds and bone-dry hand pumps. Tanker deliveries bring a few barrels, but not enough to grow food or earn wages. “It is becoming difficult for us to survive,” she says, as climate-driven drought and groundwater depletion make every season harsher than the last.AP News
Rising Seas
Carteret Islands, Papua New Guinea
On Huene atoll, land passes through women’s clans. Ursula Rakova has spent more than a decade leading community-run relocations after tides chewed gardens and salinized wells, leaving families reliant on rations. She’s helped dozens of households move to Bougainville so they can grow food again, but hundreds more still wait for support.