In 2025, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) advanced land and livelihood rights for Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities while marking its 20th anniversary with a renewed focus on rightsholder-led governance and coalition expansion.
This document captures emerging lessons from CLARIFI’s three-year learning journey. CLARIFI is RRI’s Indigenous and local community-led funding mechanism, and these lessons draw on collaboration with hundreds of partners worldwide to examine how resources can move directly to Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community organizations. Beyond documenting programmatic learning, it underscores a clear message that effective and equitable climate action depends on financing that is long-term, flexible, directly accessible to communities, and firmly anchored in secure land and territorial rights.
This report represents two decades of working together across continents, cultures, and movements to build a more just and sustainable planet for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples—particularly the women and youth within them.
This report gives a snapshot of just some of our coalition’s pivotal successes that give us hope and vigor, particularly as we embark upon our new 5-year Strategic Program.