Against the Tide

In Chile’s artisanal fishing communities, climate change is already reshaping life by the sea. Fish are moving, marine resources are disappearing, and the impacts are not felt equally: while men can often follow the catch, women are left to adapt on land – processing seafood, supporting households, rebuilding after disasters and keeping communities going. 

In this episode of Against the Tide, Claire Stam speaks with Sara Garrido Cortés, president of Chile’s National Network of Women in Fisheries, about how fisherwomen turned invisible labour into political power.

From Coliumo, in Chile’s Bíobio region, Sara tells the story of a women-led movement that organised across the country, pushed for three groundbreaking laws, and brought the demands of Chile’s fisherwomen from the shoreline to Parliament – and into international spaces such as FAO.

For Sara, women are not just living through the water crisis. They are agents of change: the ones who organise, rebuild, demand recognition and keep communities moving forward.

Against the Tide is a podcast on gender, water and climate, hosted by Claire Stam and produced by Seden Anlar, with support from the Heinrich Böll Stiftung European Union Office.

In Kenya, droughts are becoming more frequent, rivers and boreholes are running low, and access to clean drinking water can no longer be taken for granted. For many women and girls, water scarcity is measured not only in litres or distance, but in hours spent walking, school days missed, bodies exhausted and opportunities lost.

In this episode of Against the Tide, Claire Stam speaks with Beth Koigi, co-founder and CEO of Majik Water, about what happens when the burden of water scarcity becomes the starting point for a new kind of solution.

Today, Majik Water reaches thousands of people and produces hundreds of thousands of litres of clean drinking water every month. But for Beth, the story is not only about technology. It is about bringing water closer to people, reducing the hours spent fetching it, and giving women and girls back time for school, work, safety and choice.

For Beth, women are not just living through the water crisis. They are problem-solvers: the ones responding to everyday challenges, organising locally, building trust and creating ripple effects far beyond their communities.

From her childhood in Kenya to her first direct experiences of drought and water scarcity in the country’s eastern region, Beth tells the story of how she began working with communities – first through simple water filtration, and later through Majik Water, a social enterprise harvesting drinking water from the air for schools, hospitals, refugee communities and drought-affected areas.