Beyond War: Zainab Salbi on Women, the Earth, and Peace from the Ground Up

Photo by @ zainabsalbi on Instagram.

A Legacy of Listening — and Leading

Zainab Salbi has spent her life uplifting women’s voices in the aftermath of war, displacement, and oppression. But in recent years, she’s turned her attention to a different kind of crisis — one that threatens everyone’s home: our shared planet.

As the co-founder of Daughters for Earth, Zainab now champions women-led solutions to climate change, with a focus on land restoration, regenerative agriculture, and local leadership. The project funds initiatives across the globe that protect biodiversity and reimagine our relationship with the Earth — by centering care.

Why the Environment Is a Peace Issue

For Zainab, climate work isn't separate from peace work. It's an extension of it.

The environmental crises we face — deforestation, displacement, drought — are symptoms of deeper systems of extraction, domination, and disconnection. These are the same structural patterns the Peace Begins at Home Summit seeks to expose — patterns that begin in how we relate to each other, and ripple out into how we relate to the planet.

And just like with family violence or war, the people most impacted are often women — especially in the Global South — who are also the first to rise with solutions.

“We talk about climate in numbers, but we forget that this is about relationships — how we relate to the Earth, and how we relate to each other.”
(Source: Daughters for Earth, 2022 launch video)

Zainab believes that healing begins when we restore connection — between people and planet, between systems and soil, between survival and stewardship. Her work is a powerful reminder that to shift from harm to healing, we must confront domination in all its forms — including our relationship with the Earth.

From Conflict to Climate Action

Before Daughters for Earth, Zainab co-founded Women for Women International, helping over 400,000 women in post-conflict zones rebuild their lives through education, economic support, and community building. She’s written three books, including the memoir Between Two Worlds, and hosted acclaimed shows like #MeToo, Now What? on PBS.

In 2023, she was named a TIME100 Impact Award recipient for her leadership in global gender and climate justice.

At her core, Zainab is a storyteller — a bridge-builder between worlds often kept apart: the personal and political, the local and global, the feminine and environmental.

Hear Her at the Summit

On October 29, 2025, Zainab Salbi will join the Peace Begins at Home Summit to speak about women, climate, and the cultural shifts we need to truly heal our world.

Her session will explore how restoring our relationship with the Earth means more than offsetting carbon — it means confronting systems of domination and returning to something more fundamental: care, connection, and leadership that rises from the ground up.