Decolonial Feminism offers a pathway toward climate action rooted in care, dignity and justice. Nnenna Onwuka, Wen’s Feminist Climate Justice Policy Campaigner, looks at how it shapes how our programmes are designed and delivered.
Decolonial feminism is often framed as something that applies elsewhere – in former colonies or the global South. But the UK was central to building colonial systems and patriarchy, and their impacts are woven through our institutions, including the charity and climate sectors.
For UK-based organisations like Wen, a decolonial feminist approach means reckoning with power, questioning whose voices are amplified, and creating space for communities most affected by environmental injustice to lead.
Power and Responsibility in the Charity Sector
Charities often hold significant power: access to funding, policy influence and public platforms. Without intentional reflection, this power can reinforce the very hierarchies decolonial feminism seeks to dismantle.
Decolonial feminism asks charities to shift from speaking for communities to working with them and stepping back so others can lead.
From ‘Helping’ to Shared Leadership
A decolonial feminist approach resists narratives that position Black and brown women as passive recipients of support. Instead, it recognises people as agents of change with valuable expertise, not only in professional knowledge and creative practice but also rooted in lived experience.
At Wen, this principle shapes how programmes are designed and delivered.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Climate Sisters and Climate Siblings challenge who has a seat at the climate table. The programmes support women, particularly from racialised and marginalised communities, to take part in climate conversations by valuing lived expertise, compensating participants for their time, and building peer networks rather than extracting stories.
The Just FACT programme used participatory grant-making, recognising that local residents are best placed to decide what will work in their communities.
Across Wen’s work, the focus is on co-creation, mutual learning and shared power – not defining problems or solutions from the top down.
Looking Forward
Decolonial feminism offers more than critique. It offers a pathway toward climate action rooted in care, dignity and justice.
When communities lead, transformation happens.
Read our blog ‘Why decolonial feminism is essential to climate justice’.
Read the Wen briefing ‘Decolonial Feminism and Climate Justice.’
NNENNA ONWUKA, FEMINIST CLIMATE JUSTICE POLICY CAMPAIGNER
