Meet Yemi Knight: “Your experience is expertise”

What does it mean for you to receive an award named after Irene Dankelman?

I spent years doing this work from behind a screen. As a queer person, I learned early which rooms welcomed me and which did not. Irene Dankelman believed that women and local communities are agents of change with real expertise, and she spent her career, proving it. Receiving an award in her name tells me that people like me, and the communities I come from, hold knowledge worth recognising.

It also confirms something I believe about care. Ecofeminism values relationships, cooperation, empathy and the daily maintenance of life, such as clean water, food, community and housing, over profit-driven growth. Irene’s work lived in that space. This award honours the quiet, often unseen work of caring for people and place, which is the work that built AnchorBridge, and it gives me a responsibility to open doors for the young people behind me.

How are you contributing to gender and climate justice as an ecofeminist?

For me, ecofeminism begins with an ethic of care and a hard look at who pays the price when nature is damaged. Pollution, floods, storms and degraded land fall hardest on people with the least power, who contributed the least to causing them. Women, especially marginalised women, carry much of that burden. In the Caribbean, LGBTQ+ people, girls, young boys, persons with disabilities, houseless people, irregular migrants and the elderly carry it too, and they are often left out of disaster plans and climate decisions.

I work on that in practice. I contributed to the gender and human rights sections of Barbados’s Second Nationally Determined Contribution. AnchorBridge wrote a policy brief on the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people in evacuation and disaster planning, which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights cited in 2025. We were also the only civil society organisation, alongside the United Nations, to make a submission on environmental provisions in Barbados’s constitutional reform process. I also see care in simple things. Green spaces and third spaces, the places beyond home and school where young people gather, are disappearing, and people of every age need to get into nature.

What are you focusing on in your work right now?

In December, we are running Island Sprouts, an enrichment programme for rural youth in Trinidad, rooted in the way island communities look after one another with whatever they have. AnchorBridge is also directing a disaster recovery initiative for marginalised communities in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa. We have plans and committed people ready to carry all of this out. What we need is support.

Beyond the award ceremony, what are your plans at the CBD COP in Armenia?

At COP17, beyond the ceremony, I want to do three things. First, connect with people doing LGBTQ+ inclusion in the climate and biodiversity space, so that we can learn from each other and stop working in isolation. Second, meet Caribbean delegations to see where we can collaborate. Third, secure funding for AnchorBridge. We have a plan and people ready to execute it, and with support we can do this vital work at a much larger scale.

What is your message to young ecofeminist leaders?

The people who advocate for others are often advocating for themselves too, and many of us work in the very hostile environments we work to change. I know that because I live it. So look after yourself and each other. Build coalitions and partner with people, because no one carries this work alone, and a network of care outlasts any single leader. Write down what you do, share the load. Your experience is expertise, and the world needs your voice.

About the award: The Irene Dankelman Young Ecofeminist Award honours young ecofeminists and environmental and human rights defenders whose courageous, rights-based work shows that gender and social justice are prerequisites for effective biodiversity protection. It is named after Irene Dankelman, one of the founders of Both ENDS and a pioneer of women, environment and development work since the 1970s. The award is granted by WECF International, the Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO), IUCN NL and Both ENDS. The 2026 awardees are Sarah Adongo (Uganda), Yemi Knight (Barbados) and Monitte Lantas (Philippines).