Women's Water House: Mayan women leading water resilience in Yucatán

Climate justice begins with the people experiencing climate change first-hand.

Across Mexico’s rural Yucatán Peninsula, access to safe, reliable drinking water is a daily challenge. As climate change intensifies droughts and water shortages people on the frontline are facing growing risks to their health, income and wellbeing.

Globally, around 1.8 billion people live without direct access to clean water. Women and girls shoulder the greatest burden, as 70% of the times they are the ones collecting water, despite often having no say over how water resources are managed.

With support from the Future Fund, the Women's Water House (Casa del Agua) initiative is changing that.

The project is the first community-led response focused on safe water access in rural southern Yucatán, working across the municipalities of Tekax and Tzucacab. It’s not just delivering clean water, it’s also setting a ne direction of managing the available water with Mayan women at the centre of decision-making, strengthening climate resilience from the ground up.

Building climate resilience through local leadership

As temperatures rise and water becomes increasingly scarce, water management that is climate-shock proof is essential.

Mayan women lead two Women’s Water Houses committees that operate and maintain water purification systems, monitoring water quality and oversee the long-term management of the facilities. By ensuring local women lead, the initiative is strengthening both water security and community resilience.

The project was developed in close collaboration with the women, ensuring communities shaped the design, operation, local context, and future of the Water Houses themselves.

Investing in green skills

More than 80 women have received training in water stewardship, hygiene, climate change, financial management, leadership and cooperative governance. Equipped with new technical and organisational skills, they are now managing the Water Houses, overseeing finances and helping to build a sustainable community enterprise that will continue long after the project concludes.

These new skills are also strengthening environmental awareness and promoting the responsible management of water resources across their communities.

Preparing for a changing climate

Community members worked together to develop locally led Climate Action Plans that identify water-related climate risks and practical adaptation measures for extreme weather events.

Alongside this, each Water House has developed a Financial Sustainability Plan, establishing mechanisms for affordable pricing, maintenance, reserve funds and future investment. Together, these plans ensure the initiative can continue providing safe water while remaining resilient to future climate shocks. And the impact doesn’t stop there. The state Government of Yucatan is hoping to replicate the project in other communities.

Delivering lasting impact

The Women's Water Houses are already making a tangible difference.

Families can now access affordable, purified drinking water closer to home, reducing the need for long journeys and lowering the cost of accessing safe water. The initiative is also serving neighbouring communities, extending its benefits beyond the original project locations.

Just as importantly, the Water Houses have become more than water purification facilities. They are now community spaces where women lead, organise and strengthen local resilience, demonstrating how climate action can also advance gender equality and community empowerment.

Climate justice in action

The Women's Water House demonstrates what climate justice looks like in practice: investing in local leadership, recognising lived experience and ensuring the communities most affected by climate change have the resources, skills and authority to shape their own solutions.

This is the vision of the Future Fund. By investing in community-led climate action, the Fund is helping to build lasting resilience, strengthen local leadership and create solutions that can be replicated in communities facing similar challenges around the world.

Because climate resilience is about more than infrastructure. It is about empowering people to shape their own future and ensuring no one is left behind.