Sisters in Arms

In the late 1990s, Julia "Butterfly" Hill impressed the world with her extraordinary tenacity in the service of a great cause: For 738 days, the 23-year-old activist camped at the top of a Californian sequoia tree, without coming down, to prevent the destruction of a thousand-year-old patch of forest. Her victory against deforestation has become a source of inspiration for generations of radical young women, outraged by the climate crisis.

 In the wake of the climate strikes launched by Greta Thunberg in 2018, campaigns that are spreading around the world are often led by young women: Anuna De Wever and Adélaïde Charlier in Belgium, Léna Lazare in France, Luisa Neubauer in Germany, Mitzi Jonelle Tan in the Philippines and Leah Namugerwa in Uganda. Environmental activism is also a form of feminism for them.