Nepaya Mayombe uses a traditional medicinal plant to treat illnesses. All photos credit: Maria Matui, Women Action Towards Economic Development (WATED)
In the heart of Migoli village in Tanzania’s Iringa Region, lives Ms. Nepaya Mayombe, an indigenous woman and traditional healer whose life story captures the struggle, wisdom, and resilience of communities facing the harsh realities of climate change.
As the dry seasons grow longer and rainfall becomes increasingly unreliable, drought has become a defining feature of life in Migoli. Rivers that once ran through the village have slowed to a trickle. Crops fail more often. Yet amidst this harsh climate, Ms. Nepaya has become a symbol of hope and knowledge, using indigenous methods of restoration and healing to care not only for her community’s health, but for its connection to nature.
For decades, Ms. Nepaya has used traditional medicinal plants to treat illnesses and guide others in understanding the relationship between the land, water, and human well-being.
She has learned to identify and preserve drought-resistant species and uses her land as a teaching space to pass on this ancestral knowledge to other women and young people.
But Ms. Nepaya’s work goes beyond healing. She is also a land restorer. Through simple but powerful techniques like seed saving, mulching, and planting native trees, she protects biodiversity and revives soil on degraded lands. In doing so, she demonstrates that climate adaptation does not always require modern technologies; it often begins with recognising the value of local and indigenous systems.
Understanding the critical role women like Ms. Nepaya play in protecting nature, Women Action Towards Economic Development (WATED), a member of the Stand for Her Land (S4HL) Campaign, has partnered with her and other women in Migoli to support collective learning and action. WATED played a key role in the formalisation of the Migoli Hamasisha Group, a community-based platform that empowers indigenous women to share knowledge, engage with local authorities, and form partnerships for nature-based solutions.
Through this collaboration, Ms. Nepaya and her peers are not only preserving traditional practices but also gaining visibility and voice in community, national and regional conversations around climate resilience, biodiversity, and land governance.
Their work is a living example of how women, land, and climate are deeply interconnected, and how empowering women at the grassroots is key to achieving sustainable development.
Ms. Nepaya’s story reminds us that behind every effort to restore the land is a woman restoring dignity, balance, and future for her people.
World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought or Desertification and Drought Day is observed annually on 17 June. It has a rich history rooted in global recognition of land degradation’s severe environmental and socio-economic challenges.
The origins can be traced back to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, also known as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). At this landmark summit, desertification, climate change and biodiversity loss, were identified as the greatest threats to sustainable development. The participating nations recognised the urgent need for a legally binding international instrument to address these issues.
This led to the establishment of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The UNCCD was adopted in Paris on June 17, 1994, and entered into force in December 1996. It is the sole legally binding international agreement that links environment and development to sustainable land management, specifically addressing the arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas of the world, known as drylands.
The 2025 theme is, Restore the land. Unlock the opportunities. It highlights the potential to restore 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land and kickstart a trillion-dollar land restoration economy by 2030, creating jobs, boosting food security, and supporting climate action.
Last year, for Desertification and Drought Day, we unveiled a powerful story from Kamatira, West Pokot, Kenya. Watch how the resilient women of Kamatira are leading vital efforts to restore a significant part of the vast Kamatira Forest, demonstrating remarkable indigenous solutions to combat land degradation.
