A corporation set its sight on an opportunity in rural Indonesia. They aspired to spearhead a climate project that would harness the potential of biofuels, a renewable energy source that promised to reshape the way the world looked at sustainability. They received funding from a development bank interested in biofuel investment.

In the corporation's relentless pursuit of biofuel production, it became increasingly apparent that their primary goal was profit, and social welfare was a distant afterthought. They saw an opportunity in the vulnerability of local communities and the low wages they would command, and they implemented the extraction effort in a calculated manner. The development bank also failed to hold the corporation accountable to looking at their initiative through a gender lens.

The harmful consequences of this biofuel endeavor disproportionately impacted women in the communities where it was implemented. Land ownership was a complex issue, and the corporation knowingly took advantage of the fact that women often had limited land ownership rights. Instead of engaging all stakeholders in land lease negotiations, they chose to deal exclusively with male landowners, sidelining the women who frequently had a more significant stake in agricultural and resource management.

The employment practices within the project were equally troubling. The corporation intentionally hired women for physically demanding and hazardous roles, such as manual labor in the forests that were being transformed and the factories where the biofuel was being produced. The wages offered to these women were substantially lower than those provided to their male counterparts, and basic safety measures were absent, let alone any protections needed for women who were pregnant or planned to become pregnant.

The project's environmental footprint further exacerbated the crisis. It disregarded the fact that these communities relied on the local environment for subsistence farming and the collection of firewood, two tasks that were largely taken on by women.

Women in these local communities, who should have been among the primary beneficiaries of a sustainable energy project, found themselves on the wrong end of the bargain. They were actively exploited, discriminated against, and harmed by the very initiative that was meant to usher in a new era of sustainability. It underscores the necessity for ethical and equitable practices in sustainability projects, where the needs and rights of local communities, particularly women, must take precedence over financial gain.

Deforestation for biofuel production disrupted the delicate balance of the ecosystem, imperiling women's access to essential resources they depended upon for their livelihoods.