Blog: Haki Ardhi: Women, Land and Climate Justice
08 March 2025
How women in Kenya are challenging gender-based land injustices and advocating for a more just and sustainable future.
Across Kenya, women are the backbone of rural communities, working the land to feed their families and support local economies. Yet, despite their contributions, they remain locked out of land ownership. Less than 25% of women own land, and only 3.1% have registered titles as sole owners without a primary male right-holder. Why? Because in many places, women’s land rights are still tied to their relationships with men by marriage or family. That means if a woman is widowed or divorced, she can lose everything.
But women are fighting back. In Kakamega and Taita Taveta counties, they are using the Haki Ardhi monitoring tool, developed by the Kenya Land Alliance (KLA), TMG and RFUK, to document the injustices they face and push for change. By collecting real-time data on land rights violations, the women and KLA can track patterns of dispossession, compile evidence, build evidence-based advocacy campaigns and demand policy reforms that protect women’s rights.
The many faces of land injustice
The challenges vary across regions. Several comparative analyses between Kakamega and Taita Taveta, further corroborated by reports from KLA, show that in Taita Taveta, married women are often evicted by their husbands – 65% of land disputes involve marital property and farmland. In Kakamega, widows often face a different struggle, battling their late husbands’ families for their right to stay on the land. Without formal ownership, they remain vulnerable to eviction and economic ruin.
Even when women manage to secure formal land titles, their problems don’t always end. In many cases, patriarchal norms override legal protections. One widow in Kakamega lost her land when her brother-in-law completed a succession process behind her back, leaving her with no legal recourse.
Climate solutions that leave women behind
Climate change is already making life harder for rural women. Many initiatives aimed at tackling the crisis – like reforestation projects – unintentionally make things worse. In Kakamega, women have been displaced after government-backed tree-planting schemes took over their land. They lost not only farmland but also access to vital forest resources like medicinal plants and firewood.
Other so-called climate solutions, like agroforestry and soil conservation techniques, have improved yields and boosted household incomes. But for some women, success has come at a cost. One woman described how, after improving her farm’s productivity, her jealous brother-in-law forced her off the land, “Yes, my land became fertile and produced a good yield of maize for the last two years. And that is why my brother-in-law started to get jealous and removed me from farming the land.”
Why women must be at the heart of climate action
This International Women’s Day, we must recognise that climate justice and gender justice go hand in hand. Women are not just victims of land injustice – they are also key to the solutions. When women have secure land rights, they can invest in climate-smart farming, protect forests and build resilience against environmental shocks. But without rights, they remain trapped in cycles of poverty and exclusion.
The data from Haki Ardhi is clear: climate solutions that ignore gender inequality risk reinforcing the very injustices they seek to solve. A just and sustainable future must put women at the centre – recognising their land rights, protecting them from displacement and ensuring they have a say in environmental policies that shape their lives.
This 8th March, let’s stand with the women of Kenya and beyond who are fighting for their land, their rights and their future.
This blog was written based on research and an essay by Tosin Aremu, a graduate of International Development from the University of Sheffield who interned with Rainforest Foundation UK. Her research work was recognised with a distinction.
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