Research

FOSTERING STRENGTH

Romani Feminist Leadership for Climate Action

The climate crisis does not affect everyone equally.

Where we live, the condition of our housing, our health, our access to resources and services and the inequalities running through our lives also shape our exposure to environmental risks and our capacity to respond to them. For many European Romani communities, the climate crisis meets inequalities that have been building for generations.

Fostering Strength: Romani Feminist Leadership for Climate Action (2025–2028) was born to research that intersection and to help fill a gap still present both in research and in the spaces where climate justice is decided: the absence of Romani voices and perspectives, especially feminist and intersectional ones.

The project is part of the Roma Program for Health and Human Rights at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University, and runs in Bulgaria, Slovakia, Spain, Hungary and Italy. CHANIPEN takes part in the project by supporting its development in Spain.

The climate crisis is also a matter of inequality

Climate change is global. Its consequences are not.

Racialised and socially marginalised groups — and especially women and people facing multiple inequalities — may be disproportionately exposed to its effects. The available evidence points to Romani people and families, particularly those living in segregated neighbourhoods and settlements, being among these groups.

Extreme heat, pollution and other environmental risks do not appear in a social vacuum. They interact with housing conditions, health, territory, access to services and resources and with pre-existing structural inequalities. Studying the Romani experience of the climate crisis therefore also requires studying the structures that shape that experience.

We cannot talk about climate justice without asking who is most exposed, why, and who takes part in building the responses.

Researching from our own communities

Fostering Strength starts from a fundamental principle: Romani people themselves must lead the identification of priorities and the development of solutions. The project has therefore set up a working group of ten Romani feminists taking part in an international process of training, study visits and mentoring on climate justice theory, research, advocacy and leadership.

The programme is built from feminist, Indigenous and anti-racist perspectives and connects climate justice with questions such as health, environmental racism, structural discrimination, colonialism, extractivism and dispossession.

But the training is only the beginning. The participants work directly with Romani communities to research how climate and environmental risks are affecting their everyday lives.

Romani people thus stop appearing only as subjects that knowledge is produced about. They take part in deciding what to research, produce knowledge from their own communities and help build the responses.

Data and stories to understand a complex reality

Understanding climate inequality takes more than one form of knowledge. The research therefore combines surveys and personal accounts gathered directly with people from Romani communities and neighbourhoods.

The data will make it possible to identify shared patterns and dimensions. The stories will make it possible to understand how those risks are actually experienced in everyday life. Together, both approaches will build a fuller picture of the realities faced by Romani women, girls, boys and families in the face of climate risks across different European contexts.

The project seeks to identify both the shared experiences and the particularities across Bulgaria, Slovakia, Spain, Hungary and Italy.

From training to fieldwork

The first stage of the project has been devoted to building the tools needed to research. Between October 2025 and September 2026, the group developed an international itinerary of training and mentoring on climate justice, health and research.

The process covered questions such as the health impacts of climate change, environmental risk factors and reproductive health, extreme heat, the mental health effects of climate disasters, environmental racism and climate justice advocacy. The training also explored racism as a determinant of health and the relationships between climate, colonialism, extractivism and dispossession.

The itinerary combined online training with in-person meetings, including a research and teamwork workshop held at Harvard University in April 2026.

From October 2026 the project enters a new stage: fieldwork, data collection and analysis, and the writing of the national case studies.

The study in Spain

CHANIPEN supports the development of the Spanish component of Fostering Strength. Our participation covers coordination and language collaboration, support for the project's development in Spain and, in the new phase, contributions to data collection, analysis and the writing of the Spanish case study.

The research will document experiences and generate evidence on the relationships between climate and environmental risks, health, inequality and the structural conditions running through the lives of Romani communities. The Spanish study will be part of a wider piece of research bringing the experiences of Romani communities in the five participating countries into dialogue.

Researching locally to understand a reality that crosses borders.

Romani feminist leadership

Fostering Strength is not only about producing new data. It also seeks to help change who holds the tools, the networks and the power to produce knowledge and to intervene in debates on the climate crisis.

Maria Dumitru, co-founder of CHANIPEN, is part of the international group of ten Romani feminists taking part in Fostering Strength. Her participation connects the work carried out in Spain with a transnational network of Romani women training, researching and working together on climate justice from different European contexts.

The aim is to strengthen the capacities, networks and leadership of a new generation of Romani feminists, contributing to fairer and more inclusive environmental, social and political responses.

From research to action

Research does not end when the data is collected. The results of Fostering Strength are designed to circulate beyond academic spaces as well. Alongside contributing to scientific publications, the project plans to share its findings through practical, accessible formats that can support communities' own advocacy and dialogue with policymakers.

The participants will also build connections with Indigenous leaders working for climate justice locally and internationally and will take part in European and global spaces devoted to these questions. Research, training, community and advocacy are thus part of one single process.

Because producing knowledge about an inequality matters. Making that knowledge help transform it matters even more.

CHANIPEN: Research, Memory and Justice takes part in Fostering Strength: Romani Feminist Leadership for Climate Action (2025–2028), an initiative of the Roma Program for Health and Human Rights at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University.

The project is part of the Roma Program's Health and Well-being Initiative, focused on the structural and eco-social determinants of Romani health and, in particular, on documenting the relationships between anti-Roma racism and health outcomes. Fostering Strength brings together training, community research, knowledge production, leadership and advocacy to understand how climate risks affect Romani communities and to help ensure that their own voices are part of the responses.

Discover Fostering Strength and the Roma Program at Harvard FXB ↗

Fostering Strength — Romani feminist leadership for a climate justice built from our own communities too