We were finishing this article when we learned of the terrorist attack on the United States. One of us was in a plane headed to Nairobi, the other in a train headed to New York City. We were both turned back and have since spent the days alternating between numb shock and renewed commitment, between hope that this horror will awaken people to the futility of violence and fear that it will trigger yet more violence against the innocent. As our emotions swung moment to moment, we realized they are a sped-up version of what we have been feeling for some time. Last year, we travelled on five continents to write Hope's Edge, a sequel to my 1971 Diet for a Small Planet. The more we saw and the more we experienced, the more we knew that it is impossible to find clear grounds for hope. As a planet, we are moving in two contradictory directions at once. For women, this paradox is especially acute.

In Kenya, we saw women defying the judgements of government foresters to create a nationwide network of 6,000 village nurseries as part of the Green Belt Movement, founded by Dr. Wangari Mathaai. Twenty years and twenty million trees later, the village-based movement has been a key player in averting desertification in Kenya. In a drought that, we were told, was one of the worst in history, we saw the brutal consequences of a single-minded focus on export crops that has been the path encouraged by “development experts”. Sitting with 72-year-old Green Belt member Lea Kisomo, she explained to us how the root crops and traditional plants that could withstand the drought have long since been replaced by cash crops like coffee, whose market price is now at lows not seen in decades.

Asked what food she missed most, she paused pensively before saying, “porridge made from millet - it’s sweet and strong”, almost as if she was tasting it again. We thought of the lifeless white bread and powdered coffee we were served for breakfast. As we were leaving, Lea looked us straight in the eyes and said: “When you go home, tell your people that we Kamba people had lost our food culture, but we’re going to regain it.” With the strength of the Green Belt Movement igniting self-confidence and teaching basic household food security among Kenyan women, Lea may be absolutely right. Yet, a recent survey reports that the majority of Kenyan women are beaten by their husbands. We were also told how powerless women there feel about protecting themselves from AIDS when their husbands are unwilling to use condoms.

When Champa Grew Up-12 (1984), Tempera on paper. Artwork by Nilima Sheikh, courtesy of the Asia Society, New York.

In Bangladesh, we were moved to learn that over two million women have faced their fear of criticism, divorce and physical abuse, and taken loans through the Grameen Bank to improve their families’ lives. At the same time, we learned that of the Bank’s 10,000-member staff, only 8 per cent are women - and their representation is shrinking. We observed women gaining influence and agency - however slowly - through their new roles in the economy. But looking back, we also realized we were naive. We assumed that while Western corporate infiltration into Bangladesh had many downsides, it at least might bring more enlightened views toward women. So we were taken aback to be told that the dowry system, never significant in Bangladeshi culture, was taking hold with new vigour - in part precisely because of Western influence. The growing appetite for consumer goods - spurred by billboards spreading on Dhaka streets - translated into higher dowry demands by men, in some cases accompanied by threats against wives whose families did not cooperate. And we were horrified to learn of the recent rash of acid attacks - hundreds of women painfully disfigured or killed with burning chemicals from regular car battery acid.

In India, we travelled in villages linked through Navdanya - a movement of farmers initiated by Dr. Vandana Shiva, a powerful female leader. We saw close up the revival of the art of seed-saving and sharing, which revalues the work of women. Yet, we were also aware that none of the spokespeople in the villages we met with were women; and the push toward genetically modified seeds and industrial agriculture worldwide is further undermining the role of women in farming.

Elsewhere in Brazil and here at home, we saw similar paradoxes: advance and retreat for women, simultaneously. The consequences are for all humanity and the natural world, for we know that women’s rights are not just a question of justice for them. They are at the very heart of any movement for healthy development.

“Government, business and environmental organizations cannot create a sustainable society”, Paul Hawken writes in The Ecology of Commerce. “[A sustainable society] will only come about through the accumulated effects of daily acts of eager participants.” And, we would add, we’ll never have those billions of eager participants until the half of the planet’s people now treated as inferior achieves equal status.

As we grieve for the loss of thousands of our fellow citizens, as we sit with the troubling contradictions witnessed while writing our book, one thing has become clearer: no one can make a case for hope in today’s world by tallying up the evidence. No one can “justify” hope by proving something good and positive. Hope is more a verb than noun - an action, not a stance. It is movement. It is jumping into the messiness of it all. It is listening, learning, trying, stumbling; it is false starts and contradictory evidence. Such honest hope we choose because we must; we choose because our planet needs us to.