Governments and Foundations Make $1.7 Billion Pledge for Indigenous Protection of Tropical Forests
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Burning in the middle of the forest area near Porto Velho in Brazil. Photo credit: Bruno Kelly/Amazonia Real
When governments recognize Indigenous people’s rights to their land, fewer acres are lost to deforestation, preserving some of our planet’s most biodiverse tropical forests while reducing carbon emissions—all at a low cost.
Bolstered by reams of studies, this reality has become undeniable in recent years, yet Indigenous communities continue to receive a small fraction of funding aimed at preventing deforestation. A philanthropic pledge announced yesterday takes a step toward correcting that imbalance.
Five nations and 17 funders have promised $1.7 billion in financing over five years in support of Indigenous land rights in tropical forests. The move signals an overdue recognition of the vital role those communities play in conservation and climate solutions, though funding remains far below what either climate imperatives or historical imbalances suggest are warranted.
“For far too long, those of us in development have overlooked the best guardians of the forest,” said Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, which is pledging $100 million toward the effort, during a press call. He added that the pledge is “not about charity. It’s not about generosity. It’s about justice. And it is about good science.”
Between half and two-thirds of the world’s land is managed by Indigenous peoples and other local communities, but they only have formal legal ownership of about 10% of that land. And two-thirds of the small share of land they hold rights to is in just five countries: China, Canada, Brazil, Australia and Mexico, according to data compiled in a new report by the World Resources Institute.
Who is supporting
One portion of the pledge comes from a list of mostly U.S.-based philanthropies, including the Ford Foundation, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Christensen Fund, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Sobrato Philanthropies, Good Energies Foundation, Oak Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Some of those foundations have supported such efforts in the past. Ford puts securing land rights for Indigenous peoples and local communities at the center of its strategy on natural resources and climate change. Christensen is a longtime philanthropic leader in funding for Indigenous communities. And Packard and Hewlett have supported locally led conservation efforts and Native intermediary funds.
The governments of the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, United States and the Netherlands also signed on to the pledge. “In this instance, the philanthropic commitment is a very significant part of the total,” which both helped lead to national contributions—and hopefully will lead to other pledges, said Anthony Bebbington, international program director for natural resources and climate change at Ford.
Another chunk of the pledge comes from the funders behind the previously announced 10-year, $5 billion commitment to create, expand and manage protected areas around the globe, known as the Protecting Our Planet Challenge. The group has agreed to earmark 20%, or $1 billion, over a decade for work with Indigenous communities, specifically on securing their land rights, according to Kevin Currey, a program officer with Ford’s natural resources and climate change program. Additional funds from the pledge may also support other Indigenous conservation work.
Those funders include Arcadia, Bezos Earth Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Nia Tero, Rainforest Trust, Re:wild, Rob and Melani Walton Foundation and Wyss Foundation.
Ford’s commitment will come from a combination of funds from its regular budget, new money from social bonds and its BUILD program. For other contributors, it is unclear how much they have pledged individually or what portion of the pledge will be in grants versus other forms of support.
How the pledge will work
While each participating foundation or government will follow its own process, the pledge has two primary criteria. First, money will support to Indigenous peoples and local communities—a term widely used in conservation circles and typically shortened to IPLCs. Second, it will support work to secure, strengthen and protect those groups’ land and resource rights.
While the pledge does aim to get money closer to the ground, not all funding will go directly to Indigenous groups, said Currey, who leads global work for the Climate and Land Use Alliance, a foundation collaborative on forests and land use that several of the pledgers support. Intermediary funds and nonprofits working in partnership with local people will also receive support, with an emphasis on groups with close relationships to Indigenous communities.
What impact could this new funding have? Path to Scale, an initiative to expand Indigenous land rights in line with the Paris Agreement, has estimated that $10 billion over 10 years could secure community land tenure rights for at least 400 million hectares of tropical forest by 2030, which would put roughly half of all tropical forests in the hands of Indigenous peoples and local communities. In other words, this funding serves as a first step toward that goal.
“The pledge should be seen as a starting point and not an end point,” said Bebbington. “This is both a historic commitment and still an insufficient one.”
Studies show limited funding, but big results
Research shows very little money goes toward Indigenous people’s efforts to stop deforestation, secure land rights and manage forests—and most of that funding flows through other people’s hands.
Just $270 million a year goes to such causes from private philanthropies, governments and international organizations, less than 1% of all official development assistance for climate change mitigation and adaptation, according to a recent study by Rainforest Foundation Norway.
And only $46.3 million of that sum goes directly to projects that include one or more organizations run by Indigenous people and local communities. That echoes research from groups like Native Americans in Philanthropy, which, with support from Candid, has found that just 0.4% of funding from large foundations goes to Native communities.
Yet report after report has found that Indigenous people are among the most effective stewards of natural resources in the world. “The evidence for their effectiveness has just become overwhelming,” Currey said.
Deforestation rates in Indigenous and tribal territories when governments have recognized those groups’ collective land rights are one-third to one-half the rate of similar forests, and supporting such recognition is five to 42 times cheaper than the average cost of carbon capture and storage for fossil fuel power plants, according to an analysis of more than 300 studies published in March by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.
One study released this month found that forests historically managed by Indigenous peoples contain roughly a quarter of all above-ground carbon—and could provide more than a third of the emissions reductions needed to meet the targets governments agreed to in the Paris Agreement. Improving access to finance will be key, including adapting approaches to local realities and making more direct investments, according to the report from PRISMA.
Benefits go far beyond reducing deforestation and carbon emissions. When land rights are recognized, studies have shown environmental conditions generally improve and incomes often increase, according to the October literature review by the World Resource Institute. The landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report from earlier this year also recognized the importance of securing community land for Indigenous peoples.
“The scientists are now confirming and affirming what we announced hundreds of years ago: We have to protect the Earth, its resources,” said Tuntiak Katan, an Indigenous Shuar leader from Ecuador, translated from Spanish, on a press call about the funding pledge. Katan serves as general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities and vice-coordinator of the Congress of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin River,
“We hold the best carbon-capture technology our planet has to offer—our forests,” Katan added in a press release.
Some funders perpetuate “the same colonial kind of thinking”
It is encouraging to see recent pledges focus on Indigenous peoples’ role in stewarding their territories, but there remain many concerns, said Lourdes Inga, executive director of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples.
There’s a widespread desire among Indigenous communities for greater transparency around the distribution of these pledges, as well as direct access to funding, Inga said. It’s also important that foundations put emphasis on ensuring “free, prior and informed consent” as recognized by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“Some of this funding continues to go to organizations which are allies and have been doing incredible work, but are not Indigenous-led organizations,” she said.
Even when foundations fund Indigenous communities, some funders continue to “perpetuate the same colonial kind of thinking” in those relationships, Inga said. For instance, some ask Indigenous-led organizations to rely on external, Western-trained experts for advice. Others fund universities to do work—much of which is excellent, she noted—but do not ensure they practice free, prior and informed consent or protect Indigenous intellectual property.
More broadly, foundations also typically lack Indigenous representation, both in their ranks, from program officers to board members, and in their strategy. “There seems to be a blind spot, and in some ways, foundations feel comfortable with that blind spot,” she said. “Indigenous peoples should be represented across all the different programs: health, education, rights.”
She would like to see funders in pledges like these collaborate with networks like theirs, whether to publicize calls for proposals, inform groups about the different streams of funding that are available or ensure funding reaches Indigenous-led organizations. She’d also encourage foundations to look at their own practices and cultures.
“We should question the extent ongoing discrimination and racism plays on seeing an absence of funding going to Indigenous peoples,” she said. “There is a bit of self-reflection that needs to happen across the philanthropic sector as to why it is that Indigenous peoples are not funded at the level that they should be funded.”
