In recent years, we have seen increased momentum around financing for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities’ rights, climate, and conservation action. With the historic IPLC Pledge made at CoP26 by the Forest Tenure Funders Group expiring in 2025, CoP30 in Brazil will have a heightened focus on these communities and presents a strategic opportunity to promote a new pledge that’s more responsive to communities’ feedback and lessons from the prior 5 years, and clearly links with impacts on the ground. 

To support this momentum, RRI is using upcoming global platforms on climate and conservation to inform and promote a new, more ambitious funding pledge for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples. Learn more at the campaign’s website.

What is the Pledge We Want?

Any new pledge for Indigenous and local communities must address the following current challenges with funding for community rights in the climate and conservation arenas:

•  Despite increased donor commitments to prioritize direct funding to community rightsholder organizations, little of this funding reaches these organizations directly.
• Most current funding mechanisms are not “fit for purpose,” meaning they are not responsive enough to the needs of communities; not gender-inclusive; lack flexibility, transparency, and mutual accountability for donors and beneficiaries; lack a long-term vision for addressing diverse community needs; and are neither timely nor accessible to a large number of community-led organizations.
• Direct funding for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women’s organizations is still inadequate and data on this funding is sparse.  For example, while 32% of all IP and LC tenure and forest management funding from 2011 to 2020 included at least one gender-related keyword, just 18% included language suggesting gender equality or women’s rights or governance.

“The Pledge We Want” must put at the center of climate and conservation funding approaches the 1.8 billion Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples who are pivotal in the fight for a more resilient planet.

So what do we need to make a pledge like this happen?

• We urgently need principles that can guide, scale up, and add effectiveness to donor support over the next 5 years. These principles must be co-designed and led by rightsholders themselves from bottom up.
• Donors must continue to collaborate through initiatives like RRI’s Path to Scale and support the next generation of the Indigenous and local community-led global movement for rights by supporting their own funding mechanisms. 
• Donors must prioritize fit for purpose funding for community women’s organizations that have historically been excluded from decision-making processes in the design and implementation of programs and financial instruments that affect them. See Our Call to Action to learn why this is critical.
• We must revolutionize climate and conservation finance by supporting IP- and LC-led funding mechanisms such as CLARIFI, which can provide a trusted bridge to deploy funds to frontline communities guided by their own priorities.

Helpful reading 

Check out the campaign’s website to sign on for support and see resources for donors and financial mechanisms interested in scaling up direct funding for rights-based climate and conservation action.