INSIGHT by Rights and Resources Initiative & Rainforest Foundation Norway
The tenure rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples (IPs, LCs, and ADPs) are inextricably linked to the health and resilience of key ecosystems and carbon stores. Yet, efforts to strengthen them receive only a fraction of total donor funding for climate and conservation solutions. In recent years, recognition of this fact in the international donor community has led to increased commitments, pledges, and innovations to fund IP, LC, and ADP tenure rights and forest guardianship, but more needs to be done to improve donor coordination and fill critical gaps in the funding landscape.
To improve coordination and transparency, the Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN) and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) developed the Path to Scale Funding Dashboard — an innovative tracking tool that opens access to all publicly available funding data on IP, LC, and ADP tenure rights and forest guardianship projects since 2011. Up to this point, publicly available data on funding flows have been complex, fragmented, and inaccessible, but the dashboard makes data available through a user-friendly online platform, allowing donors and other stakeholders to analyze, filter, and export historical data, understand current funding flows, and identify key opportunities to scale up funding for IPs, LCs, and ADPs.
The launch of the Path to Scale Dashboard is accompanied by a new analysis, titled, “State of Funding for Tenure Rights and Forest Guardianship.” This brief analyzes key funding trends from 2011 through 2023, focusing on developments since 2020.
| Key findings in the brief include:
- Global climate funding committed to these groups averaged US$517 million per year between 2020 and 2023, up 36 percent over the preceding four years.
- Despite this rise, there is no evidence of a systematic increase in direct donor funding to rightsholders’ own organizations.
- Most current funding for IPs and LCs is still driven by bilateral and multilateral sources. In 2023, multilaterals accounted for 42 percent of total disbursements. Funding from private foundations has increased from 8 percent to 17 percent of the total funding.
- World Bank and Germany continue to predominantly fund government institutions in tropical forested countries, with projects largely driven by multilateral finance.
- Norway channels a significant amount of funding directly to NGOs. RFN is its main implementing organization and regrants to IP and LC organizations, but many Norwegian grants also go directly to rightsholders’ own organizations and national NGOs in tropical forest countries.
- USAID relies largely on consulting firms to implement its large-scale tenure and participatory conservation projects. For example, ARD Inc. has been its major implementer in Colombia, Indonesia, Peru, Cambodia, and Liberia. But there are positive signs that USAID is adapting more rights-based approaches: its localization bill, currently pending in U.S. Congress, seeks to implement reforms that would put local organizations in the lead and strengthen local communities and systems.
- Community-led organizations mainly receive funding indirectly through international and national NGOs and conservation organizations. They are far more likely to receive direct funding through tailored small grant schemes that provide funding for thousands of small-scale projects, typically $30-$50,000 (e.g., Global Environment Facility’s Small Grants Program).
- There are few instances of community-led organizations receiving over US$1 million from donors, and most include a co-implementing organization (e.g., RRI and the Global Alliance for Territorial Communities for Bezos Earth Fund projects in the Congo Basin and Tropical Andes).
- In response to substantial demands from communities for direct support, many new rightsholder-led regranting mechanisms have emerged since 2020, but these have yet to disburse significant amounts of funding.
| All opinions expressed are those of the author and/or quoted sources. investESG.eu is an independent and neutral platform dedicated to generating debate around ESG investing topics.
