Forward of SE Advisory Providers’ sponsorship of the Girls in Inexperienced Enterprise Awards 2026, Mireille Meneses Campos displays on her profession beginnings at Mexico’s Ministry of Surroundings, and why illustration is not only a quantity
BusinessGreen: What was your first position within the inexperienced economic system and what attracted you to the sector?
Mireille Meneses Campos: What attracted me was not the setting, it was the regulation. Finding out worldwide commerce, I found by means of Moot Courts and WTO simulations that resolving environmental disputes requires understanding ecosystems, geographies, and communities, not simply guidelines. Whereas finding out overseas, a professor launched me to the totally different mechanisms for pricing carbon and I used to be hooked, so I ended up writing my dissertation on carbon border adjustment mechanisms in 2012.
My first position within the inexperienced economic system was at Mexico’s Ministry of Surroundings (SEMARNAT) the place I supported the Paris Settlement negotiations, developed triangular cooperation methods with Latin American nations on NDCs, and supplied coverage suggestions on capability constructing and know-how switch throughout the area. Seeing local weather coverage from inside a growing nation authorities formed every part that got here after.
In what methods have the ladies you’re employed with impressed you, or helped form your profession?
Two ladies formed the inspiration of who I’m professionally. The primary grew to become my boss at SEMARNAT after I met her by means of the coed mobility programme. She taught me collaboration, diplomacy, humility, and to permit myself to make errors. The second was my worldwide commerce regulation professor, the explanation I didn’t drop out of regulation college. She made the topic so alive that leaving grew to become inconceivable. I owe her the profession I’ve now. Each ladies thrived visibly, and that visibility made my very own path really feel potential.
What makes delivering variety and tackling gender inequities so essential to the online zero transition?
Let’s carry some numbers. Local weather change may push as much as 158 million extra ladies and ladies into excessive poverty by 2050. Girls maintain solely 18 per cent of vitality sector management roles, and fewer than 40 per cent of nations combine gender equality into nationwide local weather plans. This exhibits a niche between those that bear the chance and people who make the selections. Sadly, this can be a elementary design flaw. The online zero transition will solely work whether it is constructed with the total vary of human expertise and expertise. For instance, carbon tasks have direct penalties for communities depending on ladies’s labour and data and if these ladies are absent from decision-making rooms, the options will mirror that absence. Range shouldn’t be seen as a facet initiative however a part of the infrastructure the transition requires.
What have been the largest indicators of progress in growing the participation and retention of girls within the inexperienced economic system to this point?
Participation is clearly enhancing however there may be extra to be accomplished on reaching decision-making energy. Girls now maintain 32 per cent of full-time renewable vitality jobs, and feminine illustration throughout UNFCCC constituted our bodies has reached 40 per cent. At COP28, ladies represented 34 per cent of nationwide delegates however led solely 19 per cent of delegations. The dialog in carbon markets has moved past whether or not ladies belong and is now targeted on how we allow extra ladies to steer. Networks, mentorship programmes, and business occasions have created visibility that didn’t exist once I began working on this house a decade in the past. Visibility is the important thing to retention as a result of when a younger girl sees somebody who seems to be like her in a senior position, the trail feels potential in a approach that no coverage can replicate.
What extra must be accomplished to make sure the inexperienced economic system is a spot ladies really feel they will construct lengthy, profitable, careers – and in the end take the lead?
The motherhood penalty, the sponsorship hole, and the shortage of funding in reskilling are three points that have to be addressed.
Girls return from parental depart to an organisation that has continued transferring with out them, and reintegration is usually handled as one thing the lady should navigate alone. Organisations should take accountability for that transition.
Girls additionally want senior individuals who will advocate for them and discuss their potential when they aren’t within the room. Mentoring issues, however recommendation alone doesn’t transfer careers ahead, sponsorship is what opens doorways. Lastly, the inexperienced economic system is constructed on jobs that don’t but exist. Giving ladies the chance to retrain and transfer throughout disciplines isn’t just good for retention, it’s how we construct the workforce the transition really wants. The way you make the inexperienced economic system an area the place a non-linear profession path is a power, not a legal responsibility.
What do you are feeling is the commonest mistake stakeholders within the inexperienced economic system are making of their efforts to extend the participation and retention of girls?
The most typical mistake is treating illustration as a quantity fairly than inclusion as a structural concern. A girl can seem on a panel or characteristic in a marketing campaign, but nonetheless be absent from the rooms the place funding, technique, and management selections are made. Sure, visibility issues, however it’s not the tip of the journey. Significant inclusion means entry to decision-making, development, and energy. We additionally have to cease making ladies answerable for fixing the inequality they expertise; the structural circumstances want to vary, not the ladies navigating them.
What do you are feeling is working nicely – what does the inexperienced economic system want extra of?
What I discover most encouraging is the power of the networks being constructed amongst ladies within the inexperienced economic system. These platforms create connection, construct confidence, and make seen what is feasible. What we’d like extra of is lively sponsorship, clear development, accountable management, and workplaces designed to retain ladies by means of totally different levels of their careers. Development for girls is just not linear so designing for that actuality ought to grow to be widespread follow.
What steps is SE Advisory Providers taking to deal with gender inequalities and enhance the participation and retention of girls within the inexperienced economic system?
We recognise that girls are sometimes on the entrance line of local weather change impacts, and due to this fact their data, priorities, and management are important to designing efficient and equitable local weather options. That is what significant participation means to us at SE Advisory Providers, and our three flagship tasks in Kenya and India display what that appears like in follow.
In Jiko Sawa (Kenya), ladies helped form the venture from the outset, manufacture the cookstoves, maintain coordination roles, and function group ambassadors. In Hifadhi (Kenya), 120,000 cookstoves have been distributed by means of ladies’s empowerment teams throughout two phases. And in Sundari (India), the place most family earnings historically got here from males working outdoors the group, the venture ensures a minimum of 50% feminine employment in nursery setup, mangrove plantation, and monitoring actions. Over 100 ladies have already benefited from unbiased earnings for the primary time.
For us, significant participation means ladies serving to design local weather options, incomes from them, and more and more shaping the selections that have an effect on their communities.
What steps would you encourage males working within the inexperienced economic system to take to deal with day-to-day gender inequities and make workplaces extra inclusive?
Use your entry, your voice, and your platform. In case you are invited onto a panel and the lineup is all male, say so and counsel a alternative. Ask who advantages when occasion and coaching selections are made, and whether or not ladies are included by default or as an afterthought. Advocate for individuals who can not advocate for themselves, with out ready to be requested. And don’t make ladies answerable for educating you. Pause and hear, we’d like allies who’re genuinely keen to listen to us.
How necessary is it to carry key stakeholders, coverage makers, and sustainability executives collectively to have fun the position of girls within the inexperienced economic system at occasions just like the Girls in Inexperienced Enterprise Awards?
Recognition accelerates careers, however that is only one a part of the story. Occasions just like the Girls in Inexperienced Enterprise Awards make achievement seen in a room full of people that can act on it. A dialog over dessert can open a door that years of quiet, glorious work couldn’t. Girls have traditionally been excluded from the networks the place these conversations occur, so celebrating ladies’s achievements is an act of standard-setting.
How necessary is it that the subsequent technology of girls within the inexperienced economic system have position fashions to look as much as?
I virtually dropped out of regulation college as a result of I couldn’t see how my diploma would ever connect with conservation and nature. I discovered my approach finally, however I did it and not using a blueprint. Function fashions are proof of chance, and for girls from growing nations, from non-traditional backgrounds, that proof continues to be very uncommon. We’d like sponsors that present us the way in which so we may also help gentle the trail for the subsequent generations.
What are you most wanting ahead to from attending the Girls in Inexperienced Enterprise Awards? What do you hope to remove from the occasion?
Actually, the tales. You may learn anybody’s LinkedIn profile and know their job title and opinions, however what you can’t get is the backstory: the second somebody almost give up, the door that was closed, the selection no person else noticed. Each girl in that room could have come from someplace totally different and struggled with one thing totally different. Some can be moms. Some could have made a distinct selection. None of that seems on a speaker bio. I need to depart with a narrative that stays with me. That’s what I’m going for.
What elements of the inexperienced economic system are you most enthusiastic about?
What excites me, although I need to admit it’s a difficult one, is that we will now not afford to go away adaptation as an afterthought. It’s not only a enterprise choice anymore. It’s merely negligent to not act. After the intense climate occasions of 2026, the wildfires, floods, and droughts, I hope now we have reached the purpose the place adaptation is handled as urgently as mitigation. We now have spent years betting on applied sciences that don’t but exist, arguing about whether or not local weather change is actual, and questioning the integrity on nature-based options. Current occasions have settled that argument for us as individuals are impacted. I hope what we live by means of accelerates the shift from a greenback worth on carbon to a real reckoning with what local weather change prices in human phrases.
What’s the greatest false impression in regards to the inexperienced economic system?
That being inexperienced means planting bushes and switching to recycled paper. These issues aren’t unsuitable, however they aren’t the inexperienced economic system. The inexperienced economic system is about vitality transition, vitality entry, financial transformation, and basically rethinking how we produce, eat, and distribute worth. It’s advanced and requires structural adjustments. Youthful generations aren’t fooled by inexperienced credentials with out substance. They’re questioning what corporations stand for in a world experiencing local weather anxiousness at a scale now we have not seen earlier than. Firms that deal with the inexperienced economic system as a advertising and marketing alternative are misreading the room and, in the end, their very own clients.
What do you are feeling are the largest alternatives from the online zero transition?
The actual prize is a transition that doesn’t reproduce the inequalities of the economic system it replaces. We now have a novel alternative to resolve who participates, who advantages, and who leads. If we get it proper, we are going to ship not only a decrease carbon economic system however a fairer and extra resilient one which genuinely redirects non-public capital to the communities that want it most, fairly than solely to the tasks which can be best to make bankable. After we demand funding returns above all else, we’re placing a greenback determine on livelihoods which were undervalued for generations. The most important alternative is to cease doing that, to hearken to communities, and construct one thing that works for the folks implementing it on the bottom.
What would your inexperienced superpower be?
My inexperienced superpower is perspective. I’m from Mexico, a spot that teaches you to carry contradiction, to see a number of realities concurrently, to search out logic in what others name surreal. That intuition is important in carbon markets, the place the identical venture seems to be utterly totally different relying on whether or not you’re the policymaker, the developer, the federal government, or the client. I’ve sat in all of these chairs, half lawyer, half diplomat, half adviser, and I’ve realized that almost all issues in carbon markets aren’t technical. They’re translation issues. Having the ability to bridge disciplines and views, with out shedding sight of what the market is definitely for, is what I carry to each room I enter.
SE Advisory Providers sponsors the Girls in Inexperienced Enterprise Awards 2026, which occur on the night of Wednesday seventh October on the Marriott London Grosvenor Sq..
