Buzz Green: Climate Action Through a Micro Lens

As we kept returning to villages across Karnataka, something became starkly clear — the water was vanishing.

On one such visit to Malur in Kolar district, our co-founder Uthara, met Ajji ( grandmother in Kannada). She spoke with the quiet urgency of someone who had witnessed her environment change before her eyes. Her concerns were layered: women in her village had to walk increasingly long distances to fetch water. Many were now paying for water that had once been freely available. Around the lake — once a source of life — garbage had accumulated, and the water was no longer safe.

Ajji wasn’t just mourning a past. She was imagining a future. She told me: “We know this is happening because of human action. But why wait for someone else to fix it? We want to take charge.”

That conversation stayed with us. It wasn’t just about water. It was about dignity, agency, survival, and how deeply climate change is lived — especially by women.

Understanding Climate Through Women's Lives

In rural India, climate change is not an abstract idea. It is a daily reality that shows up as parched lands, failing crops, food scarcity, unpaid labour, and rising costs. For women like Ajji, climate change is not just an environmental issue — it’s an economic, social, and gendered crisis.

Women are disproportionately affected by climate change. They typically have less access to information and resources, limited decision-making powers, and fewer opportunities for wage work. During food scarcity, they eat last and least. They bear the burden of unpaid caregiving and face economic risks because of poverty and limited financial autonomy. Their lives are intimately tied to land, water, and waste — the very systems that are under stress.

Buzz Women’s 2023–24 Impact Assessment highlights this starkly:

• 47% of women identified themselves as homemakers — often underestimating their economic contributions.

• 94% of households have Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration cards, with an average household income of just approx. $203 (₹17,447) per month .

• Only 14% of women reported making household decisions independently, while 37% were not involved at all.

• 62% of menstruating women trained by Buzz use sanitary napkins, but 43% of menstrual waste is still disposed of by burning — further entangling health, environment, and gender injustice.

These statistics are not just numbers. They are insights into the everyday burdens that climate change places on women, often hidden in plain sight.

Buzz Green: Climate Action with a Ground-Up Vision

Ajji’s voice, and many others like hers, led us to ask: "How do we enable women to lead the creation of sustainable livelihoods and become climate resilient?"

This question gave birth to Buzz Green — our climate action program designed not as a top-down intervention, but as a grassroots movement led by rural women themselves.

We began with conversations — what some might call focus group discussions, but for us, they were deep listening sessions rooted in trust. Women shared that their soil was less fertile than ever before, their crops failing, their livelihoods threatened. These weren’t isolated concerns — they were shared struggles, and they demanded collective responses.

From these community-led insights, we built our Level 1 curriculum with a participatory, Freirean approach. At the heart of Buzz Green are women leaders we call Green Motivators — climate action agents from within the community.

Catalysing Collective Change

Green Motivators are local women trained by Buzz Women to lead climate action within their communities. They undergo a six-month training program to understand the causes and effects of climate change and learn practical adaptation and mitigation strategies tailored to their local contexts. As trusted community members, they lead by example—adopting eco-friendly practices in their own homes and farms, and inspiring others through visible change. Many begin with small, manageable steps like setting up backyard kitchen gardens using recycled wastewater. These low-cost, high-impact initiatives not only supplement family nutrition but also build confidence and demonstrate the tangible benefits of sustainable practices. As they see success, Green Motivators expand their efforts and encourage others to follow suit—fostering a ripple effect of climate awareness and action across villages. Their role is voluntary and deeply rooted in lived experience, making them powerful agents of grassroots change. .

Green Motivators bring together women, men, elders, and children to conduct Participatory Rural Appraisals (PRAs) — open gatherings where communities name the climate issues they face and collectively set “green goals” that are locally meaningful and achievable. They might start kitchen gardens irrigated with recycled water, shift to eco-friendly farming, or adopt sustainable waste disposal methods.

A Buzz Field Associate supports these efforts, but the knowledge and leadership come from the community itself. Because climate change looks different in every geography, it must be tackled by those who live and know it best.

From Ajji’s Lake to a Larger Movement

Buzz Green is a response to the lived experiences of rural women. It’s about recognising that climate action isn’t only about big policy shifts or global negotiations. It begins in homes, farms, kitchens, and lakes — with women like Ajji who refuse to wait.