Fuller Defenders 2026: meet the women fighting for your water

Nemonte Nenquimo
Indigenous Waorani leader

Nemonte Nenquimo is no stranger to taking on the world’s biggest oil giants. When the Ecuadorian government attempted to auction half a million acres of her ancestral Waorani lands in the Amazon rainforest to oil companies in 2019, Nenquimo and her tribe took them to court in a historic lawsuit to protect their land and water.

This isn’t her only achievement. She has helped communities install rainwater harvesting systems and solar panels, while also playing a key role in mapping more than 500,000 acres of Waorani territory using Indigenous knowledge to protect native resources like sacred trees and medicinal plants.

True to her name, which means “many stars” in the native Waorani tongue, Nenquimo has illuminated Indigenous communities across the Amazon to fight for climate justice.

Key quote: “This is not just Indigenous people’s work. It’s not about thinking that only those far away in the Amazon are affected and that others aren’t because we’re all connected to the rainforest.” 

Big win: Led the Waorani people to a landmark legal victory against the Ecuadorian government after it auctioned off their ancestral land through a faulty consultation process. The court ruling protected parts of the Amazon rainforest from oil drilling.

Water access: In Ecuador, more than 80% of urban residents have access to safe drinking water compared to less than half of rural populations.

Sharon Day
Indigenous leader and activist

Sharon Day is an Indigenous water walker. She gathers water at the headwaters of a river, carries it on a long journey while singing prayers, until she reaches the mouth of the river and pours it back. Part of a self-governing Ojibwe community, this is about showing respect for the water and supporting its health. She has led more than a dozen of these walks along US rivers. In 1998, she joined the M’dewin – a sacred traditional medicine and spiritual society – to help the Mendota Dakota people protect a sacred spring from road construction. Today, the spring still flows but at a diminishing rate.

As an Ojibwe leader and executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force, she helps provide health services, housing initiatives, and cultural programs to fellow Native Americans. 

Key quote: “In our Ojibwe ways, women are responsible for the water… Whenever you see pictures around the world of people carrying water, it’s always the women. It’s always women. And that just stuck with me, that, you know, what would happen if all the women in the world said no more?” 

Big win: Founded the Indigenous Peoples Task Force in 1987, creating one of the first culturally centered organizations in the US to support Indigenous communities during the HIV/Aids pandemic, while also leading thousands of miles of water walks to mobilize action for clean water and environmental justice.

Water access: Since 2019, water levels across all five Great Lakes in North America have seen a drop of two to four feet as the climate crisis accelerates. 

Charitie Ropati
Water engineer and climate justice advocate

For Charitie Ropati, clean water is inseparable from Indigenous rights, climate justice and community wellbeing. Growing up in the Yup'ik community of Kongiganak in southwest Alaska, she witnessed how climate change threatens the lands and waters that have sustained her people for generations. Today, Ropati is a water engineer designing infrastructure for rural Alaska Native communities, while championing Indigenous knowledge in global climate policy. Appointed to the UN Secretary-General's Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change, she has become an influential advocate for ensuring Indigenous communities help shape decisions on water, climate and environmental protection.

Key quote: “I believe every single person, especially Native people, deserves access to clean water and good sanitation infrastructure.”

Big win: Ropati helped improve access to clean water in rural Alaska Native communities by designing climate-resilient water infrastructure, while elevating Indigenous voices on water and climate justice on the international stage. 

Global water access: More than 3,300 rural Alaska homes still lack running water and a flush toilet, forcing many families to haul water by hand. Limited access to safe water increases the burden on women and caregivers and contributes to higher rates of infectious disease in remote communities.

Maude Barlow
Water rights campaigner and author 

For Maude Barlow, water is not a commodity to be bought and sold – it is a fundamental human right. As senior advisor on water to the President of the UN General Assembly from 2008 to 2009, Barlow helped lead the global campaign that resulted in the UN recognizing access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a basic human right in 2010. Since then, for more than three decades, the Canadian author and activist has been one of the world's leading voices defending freshwater from privatization, pollution and over-extraction.

As founder of the water justice organization Blue Planet Project, she has mobilized communities worldwide to protect rivers, lakes and aquifers while fighting to ensure water is managed for the public good rather than private profit. Through her 21 books and advocacy, she continues to champion water justice worldwide.

Key quote: “I have never discovered any more powerful truth than this: the world will only be transformed from the bottom up, from people fighting in their own communities because they care.”

Big win: Played a key role in the campaign that resulted in the UN recognizing access to safe drinking water as an indispensable human right, which is fundamental to a person's health, dignity and prosperity.

Water access: Despite Canada holding one-fifth of the world's freshwater, inequalities persist on Indigenous reserves and some First Nations communities still go without reliable, safe drinking water. 

Anita Soina
Indigenous rights advocate and environmental campaigner

For Anita Soina, the climate crisis begins with the search for water. From Kenya's drought-prone Maasai community, she saw women and girls walk long distances to collect water, often at the expense of their education, health and livelihoods. Today, she is one of Kenya's best-known youth environmental campaigners, working to improve access to clean water while championing Indigenous knowledge as part of the solution to the climate crisis. Through the Soina Foundation, she has supported community-led projects, including the development of boreholes, rainwater harvesting and water, sanitation, and hygiene initiatives in rural areas.

Soina has become a prominent international advocate, arguing that lasting water security depends on giving Indigenous and local communities a central role in managing the ecosystems they have protected for generations. She is also known for highlighting how climate-induced water scarcity drives vulnerability among women and girls, including school dropouts and forced child marriage.

Key quote: “With water scarcity comes conflict and inequalities. For starters, it prevents young women and girls, who are often the main water carriers, from completing their studies and contributes to an increase in child marriages in exchange for money or livestock for families.” 

Big win: Founded the Soina Foundation, which has expanded access to clean water hygiene in Maasai communities, while amplifying Indigenous voices in global climate discussions.

Water access: Only 59% of Kenyans have access to safe drinking water. Kenya is expected to be hard hit by the upcoming El Niño, with increased risk of flooding contaminating drinking water sources and sanitation. 

Eucharia Oluchi Nwaichi
Environmental toxicologist and water pollution expert

In Nigeria's Niger Delta, where oil-slicked creeks and polluted rivers have become an everyday reality for many communities, scientist Eucharia Oluchi Nwaichi has spent more than 15 years uncovering the hidden toll of contamination on people and freshwater ecosystems. A professor of environmental biochemistry at the University of Port Harcourt, she studies how toxic chemicals and heavy metals from decades of crude production, as well as oil spills, contaminate freshwater ecosystems and threaten public health. Her research has helped shape efforts to restore polluted ecosystems, including the use of nature-based solutions such as phytoremediation, which harnesses plants to remove contaminants from soil and water.

Beyond the laboratory, Nwaichi has advised government agencies and industry on environmental clean-ups while championing the role of women in science. Her contributions have earned international recognition, including the UNESCO-L'Oréal For Women in Science Fellowship, the Next Einstein Forum Fellowship, the John Maddox Prize and the Evidence Leader Africa award. 

Key quote: “We want solutions that are green and based on nature. We aim to do no harm in everything we do.”

Big win: Influenced Nigeria's environmental restoration agenda through her research on oil pollution in the Niger Delta, contributing to remediation strategies.

Global water access: Oil pollution has left many communities in Nigeria's Niger Delta without safe local water sources. Only about 70% of Nigerians have access to basic drinking water services.

Sunita Narain
Environmentalist and author

For more than four decades, Sunita Narain has been one of India's most influential voices on water justice, championing practical solutions to water scarcity and climate change long before they became mainstream. As head of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), she focuses on rainwater harvesting, decentralized wastewater treatment and promoting community-led water management. Through research, bestselling books and influential policy reports, she helped revive traditional water conservation practices – such as underground rainwater storage tanks – and shape India’s policy on sanitation and river restoration. Her advocacy has helped to raise recognition of the key role Indigenous and forest communities play in preserving the environment.

In 2005, Narain was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest civilian honours, recognizing her contribution to environmental protection and sustainable development. 

Key quote: “Water is the key to dealing with the twin challenges of poverty and growth.” 

Big win: Led the public research group, CSE, to win the 2005 Stockholm Water Prize for helping build a “water-literate society” – showing how local solutions can transform water security in India and beyond.

Global water access: India has 18% of the world’s people but only 4% of its water resources. Some 600 million people face water stress, while floods and droughts are becoming more frequent. As of August 2026, 64% of farmland in India is experiencing drought stress due to insufficient rainfall. 

Ola Al-Aghbari
Water mediator and peacebuilder

In the historic walled city of Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, Ola Al-Aghbari emerged to lead mediation efforts with military actors to restore water access after the Houthis laid siege in 2015. With many residents facing severe water shortages and dependent on expensive trucked water, Al-Aghbari has brought different parties to the negotiating table, from local community and religious leaders to lawmakers in Taiz, to help improve water access. Her diplomacy contributed to a preliminary agreement in 2025, signed by representatives from both sides of the conflict, culminating in a roadmap to rebuild the damaged water sector.

The work of Al-Aghbari offers a rare example of the crucial role women can play as water diplomats in a country where women are rarely seen at the negotiating table and are largely absent from water conflict resolution.

Key quote: “[Initially], they wouldn’t accept me negotiating as a woman, but when they saw all the local leaders in the city in the alliance, all the religious men and local authorities from the city, they agreed to talk.”

Big win: In 2021, Al-Aghbari successfully mediated with military actors in Taiz to hand over reservoirs and wells to the local water authority, helping restore access to clean water for around 41,000 residents.

Water access: Yemen is one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. Only around half the population has access to basic drinking water services, while conflict has damaged water infrastructure and left millions dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Anne Poelina
Professor and river rights advocate

Anne Poelina recognizes rivers as living ancestral beings – so much so that she names the Martuwarra River of Life as the first author in her published research articles. As a Nyikina Warrwa and Warlunguru woman, an Indigenous person of the Kimberley region of Western Australia, her people have long been the traditional custodians of the Martuwarra Fitzroy River. But over the years, the river has faced many threats, including drought, overuse of water for irrigation, and fracking.

In 2025, Poelina, a university professor, was appointed global commissioner for the World Health Organization Lancet Commission on Sea Level Rise, Health and Justice, while holding roles in other organizations that address water justice. Most recently, in June 2026, she, along with nine others, filed a legal case with the UN claiming the Australian government has violated their human rights by continuing to support fossil fuels in a country that is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and gas.

Key quote: “When the river is healthy, our people are healthy. When the river suffers, our people suffer.” 

Big win: Led the creation of an all-Indigenous peoples council that brought together senior elders across the Martuwarra Fitzroy River, culminating in a landmark UN Human Rights Committee legal complaint. It argued that government-backed fossil fuel expansion directly violates Indigenous human rights and cultural survival. 

Water access: Australians in more than 400 remote or regional communities lack access to safe and clean drinking water, while about two million people – about 8% of Australia’s population – are excluded in national reporting on access to clean water.