Razia Khatoon (Mirani Muhalla, Guddu, District, Kashmore) is a member of a traditional fisher family from the riverine village of Bakhshan Shah, located just downstream of Guddu Barrage in Sindh. Having grown up along the Indus River, she shares a deep connection with the river that supports her community and way of life.
For the past four years, she has been working as a Bhulan Saheli, or Friend of the Dolphin, where she actively monitors the Indus River Dolphin and the river’s health. By recording dolphin sightings and observing threats through the Bhulan Dost Data Toolkits, she contributes valuable local knowledge to conservation efforts. Through her dedication and hands-on involvement, Razia Khatoon represents the important and growing role of fisherwomen in protecting river biodiversity and ensuring a safer future for the Indus River Dolphin.
Baithak
This session explores women as natural stewards and leaders, "friends of nature", whose intimate relationships with land, water, wildlife, and culture are essential to keeping ecosystems alive. Across mountains, rivers, forests, plains, and coasts, women act as the eyes and ears on the ground, protecting biodiversity through care, knowledge, and courage. From mountain landscapes where Wildlife Sheroes safeguard leopards, medicinal plants, and fragile ecosystems, the baithak examines how women-led conservation and monitoring emerge from lived connection rather than distant management. These women embody a mountain consciousness, observant and resilient, offering a distinctly feminine lens to conservation. The session journeys into stories and symbols, where a woman transforms into a dolphin to protect the river, echoing programmes such as sakhi, and reflecting the mystic bond between the feminine and water. The dolphin, often imagined as a female guardian, becomes a symbol of fluid intelligence, protection, and kinship with rivers. In agricultural plains, women steward the land from sowing to harvest, especially in cash-crop landscapes like cotton. They serve as vital connectors between nature, livelihoods, and sustainability, holding ecological knowledge that bridges soil health, water use, and community well-being. We also explore forests and mangroves, including sacred landscapes such as Karoonjhar, where the divine feminine is inseparable from nature, and regions that serve as strongholds for species like vultures. Across traditions and local folklore, women, species, and ecosystems intertwine, each reflecting and sustaining the other through story, ritual, and belief. Finally, the session would acknowledge the vulnerabilities of women, species, and ecosystems alike, highlighting how environmental degradation, climate change, and social inequities threaten these relationships, while also revealing women’s leadership as a powerful pathway toward resilience and regeneration.
