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Is Global Funding Reaching Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and Local Community Women?

Experiences from the Women in Global South Alliance (WiGSA)

Author: Rights and Resources Initiative and Women in Global South Alliance

Date: August 27, 2025

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In 2021, the UNFCCC CoP26 conference produced the Forest Tenure Pledge. It was a historic funding commitment to support Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ efforts and roles in preventing deforestation and engaging in climate and conservation efforts. Yet what remains unclear is how Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women have benefited directly from the Pledge.

The current lack of gender disaggregated data in international donor reports makes it difficult to track what, if any, global funding is reaching women’s organizations. Women are key actors in climate change and conservation action, traditional knowledge keepers and transmitters, food security and sovereignty caregivers, and have developed incredible resilience in environmental crises; however, they continue to be underrepresented and underfunded. Ensuring direct funding for women’s organizations and groups can transform the gender-based inequalities that have historically denied women their rights and locked them out of critical decision-making at the territorial, national, and international levels.

For this analysis, RRI collaborated with the Women in Global South Alliance (WiGSA) to analyze the level and types of funding provided to WiGSA network members. The preliminary analysis was released in 2024, and showed that investments in gender equality are on the decline, and Indigenous and Afro-descendant women remain severely underfunded. This new report presents the results of the second phase of this collaborative research: “Tracking Global Funding Reaching Women: Pilot Implementation,” which aims to identify and analyze the structural obstacles Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women face in accessing funding. The preliminary findings were published in 2024.

As COP30 approaches and a new funding Pledge is imminent, new data shows governments and donors that they must recognize women as crucial rightsholders in climate and conservation action. The new Pledge must concretely include a gender-responsive perspective to prevent women’s rights from being left behind in financial commitments.

https://doi.org/10.53892/TGZI8889
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Key Findings

  1. Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women face significant barriers in securing direct funding that intersects with women’s human and tenure rights and environmental and climate justice.
  2. 40% of WiGSA organizations identify institutional strengthening as the most challenging activity to fundraise for. Knowledge production and research (30%) and advocacy (25%) follow closely.
  3. Women’s organizations rely heavily on volunteer labor, compounding existing inequalities of unpaid work.
  4. 53% of WiGSA organizations report having no core funding or that it represents less than 10% of their total annual budget. Some have never received core funding.
  5. Afro-descendant women or Afro descendant women within mixed organizations have annual budgets that, on average, are less than half of those of other analyzed organizations.
  6. 85% of member organizations receive short-term grants of less than 24 months.
  7. 38% of organizations report having no savings or reserves, and 67% may go on for only up to 6 months without additional external funding.
  8. The major source of funding for WiGSA organizations comes from international NGOs. Private or philanthropic foundation donors are the next main sources of funding. It is noticeable that feminist funding and UN agencies play a relatively minor role, and human rights funds and national governments have an even more limited role as funding sources for the organizations.

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