They’re building national parks, protecting endangered species, revealing environmental injustice and making crucial decisions that will affect the future of our planet. Or, maybe they’re just making it cool to be vegan. But in all their varied contributions, these 19 women – from global environmental leaders to community activists – are using their power, fame or sheer will to make the world a greener place.
Perhaps no woman alive fights harder for the rights of female farmers than Vandana Shiva, an Indian philosopher, physicist, ecofeminist and environmental activist. Shiva is an outspoken critic of industrialized globalized agriculture and proponent of traditional, sustainable farming methods, and has written about the impacts of corporate international trade agreements in books like Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit as well as Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. She founded the Navdanya movement to counter corporate seed control in 1991.