Around the world, Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IP and LCs) have gained significant recognition of their land rights. They legally own about 11% of the world’s land, after decades of sustained mobilization, research, and advocacy by communities and their allies. 

While enforcement of these legal gains remains inconsistent across nations, climate scientists, funders, and world leaders have increasingly recognized that when IP and LCs have strong tenure rights, they are able to continue traditional practices that have proven invaluable in addressing climate change. With secure rights to manage their lands, IP and LCs are often able to protect forests that are both crucial carbon sinks and vital sources of their livelihoods and cultural identities. For example, some communities reduce wildfires by practicing traditional burns or helping halt illegal activities on their lands—including logging, mining, and land-grabbing—that lead to widespread deforestation.

Today, more than a third of the world’s intact forests are located on Indigenous Peoples’ land. But despite the outsize role these communities play in conservation, a 2021 report revealed that less than 1% of global climate funding reaches IP and LCs directly. To help address this gap in funding, the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands partnered with 17 funders, including Ford, to commit $1.7 billion for IP and LC tenure rights and forest guardianship. 

IP and LC organizations have also started to change the funding landscape from the bottom up: In the past several years, a number of them have launched their own ambitious funds and grantmaking programs, harnessing their local expertise to channel financial resources directly to communities. 

These funds are redefining how frontline IP and LC communities are supported—not just in the critical work they do to strengthen collective tenure rights and protect forests, but also in advancing gender equity, food security, and economic opportunities in their communities. Though they vary in size, duration, and scope, their work demonstrates that securing collective land rights is essential to social justice, environmental sustainability, economic equality, and long-term community development.

Too often, climate change and biodiversity priorities are defined by global and national interests and their processes do not include land-connected communities. In contrast, these funds provide new opportunities for funders to invest directly in IP and LC organizations, shift power imbalances that have been historically embedded in philanthropy and international cooperation programs, and set a new model for how communities and funders can work together toward their shared goals.

From Latin America to Asia and Africa, IP and LC-led funds look and operate differently across cultural contexts, yet they share overarching goals: to strengthen community rights to land and natural resources and to enhance self-determined development in their territories. Doing so helps combat climate change and conserve biodiversity.

Despite being spread across the world, these community-led funds are not working in isolation. Many are connected through Shandia, a platform created by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities to support the creation, development, and sustainability of continental, national, and regional IP and LC-led funds. This platform provides space for newer funds to learn from more established ones and for community leaders to share knowledge and connect around common causes. It provides a platform for collective advocacy on the issue of direct funding and helps IP and LCs around the globe connect with funders and speak with them in a unified voice.

Now, learn more about four IP and LC-led funds that are leading the way for a greener, more equitable future.

Indigenous Peoples of Asia Solidarity Fund (IPAS)

A group of women in traditional attire, decorated with colorful beads and headdresses, are marching in formation holding sticks. The scene appears outdoors in a grassy area with a building and trees in the background.
The Sumi Naga Indigenous women in Northeast India gather to celebrate a traditional festival.
IPAS Fund
Six women in wheelchairs wearing matching red tops and floral skirts perform a synchronized dance pose outdoors, in front of a building. Their arms are raised, and they wear yellow necklaces, with greenery in the background.
Indigenous women with disabilities ready to perform in an event in Nepal.
NIDWAN

Working across 13 countries in Asia, the Indigenous Peoples of Asia Solidarity Fund (IPAS) is among the newest IP and LC-led funds. Launched in 2023, it is currently disbursing its first round of grants and establishing national steering committees to structure their work across the continent—no small task, considering Asia is home to over 300 million Indigenous Peoples, making up two-thirds of the world’s Indigenous population.

“Although we operate in different countries, we are actually connected, not racing against each other,” said Jenifer Lasimbang, executive director of IPAS. “We want to work in the spirit of cooperation rather than competition.”

IPAS aims to build solidarity and cooperation among Asia’s Indigenous Peoples, strengthen community organizations and institutions, and secure direct access to funding. “Communities cannot be burdened by looking for funds as well as protecting our ecosystems,” said Lasimbang.  

As IPAS delivers its first round of grants, Lasimbang said the fund is focused on being as inclusive as possible—getting opinions from women, youth organizers, and people with disabilities, among others—as well as surveying the needs and capacities of organizations in the countries where IPAS plans to make grants. Country steering committees will direct funding in a way that gives Indigenous-led organizations more decision-making power over the projects that come from their locally informed solutions. With this, they aim to add to current momentum: A progress report on the five-year, $1.7 billion pledge found that direct funding to IP and LC organizations increased to 10.6% in 2023, a significant jump from 2.1% in 2022, but urgent work is needed to ensure more resources reach communities directly.

Lasimbang said the best way to sustain IP and LCs’ shared work and solidarity across nations and regions is to make space for different lived experiences, processes, and perspectives. 

“I mentioned during our first board meeting that I want to try and visualize where funds are flowing by lighting up the areas and communities receiving them,” she said.  “We want to see the whole of Asia lit up, with no dark areas. Everybody has some form of light.”

Mesoamerican Territorial Fund

A resident walks through the center of Nueva Trinidad, Guatemala. The town has been declared uninhabitable due to its proximity to Volcán de Fuego.
César Arroyo Castro
The Agricultural Cooperative “Unión Huista” R.L. established a rural bank in Nueva Trinidad, Guatemala, increasing access to banking services.
César Arroyo Castro
Rosalba Aguilar, 31, was born in Mexico but returned to Guatemala at the age of 6 when the peace accords were signed.
César Arroyo Castro

The Mesoamerican Territorial Fund supports IP and LC-led conservation, environmental, economic, local governance, and social justice and rights work in Mexico and Central America. Launched by the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests in 2021, the fund has expanded in the last four years from supporting 10 organizations to 22 across the six countries that comprise the Mesoamerican region. 

The Mesoamerican Territorial Fund also connects communities across the region and offers opportunities for IP and LC organizations to learn how to engage with philanthropy and investors. As they work to unite different practices, though, organizers stress that each of its grantees function within their own cultural and geographic contexts. They say successful IP and LC-led funding must reflect the many different ways these organizations operate and recognize how these groups’ conservation work can overlap with other social justice issues, including economic justice and gender equality.

“Respecting the knowledge that communities have about conserving and managing their territories and natural resources requires respecting everything about their culture and traditional knowledge, not just assuming that they can squeeze themselves into a little box in a [grant] application,” said María Pía Hernandez, manager of the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund. “There is a degree of flexibility and cultural adaptation that is required to work within those communities.”


“What is needed on the ground is to invest in the forest and, importantly, in the people that live there and take care of it. It is in the interest of humanity to keep working directly with communities, directly with Indigenous Peoples.”

María Pía Hernandez, manager of the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund
Damián López, president and legal representative of the Agricultural Cooperative “Unión Huista” R.L., inspects his coffee plantation in Nueva Trinidad, Guatemala.
César Arroyo Castro

The  Community Forestry Association of Guatemala Utz Che’, an IP and LC-led national network that supports farming communities, sustainable agriculture practices, and the sustainable management of their natural resources—primarily forests, forest plantations, and water sources—in Guatemala, saw immediate benefits from their Mesoamerican Territorial Fund grant. With its $60,000 funding from the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund, Utz Che’ was able to further their reforestation and sustainable agriculture work and support Indigenous entrepreneurs in their region. Cooperativa Agrícola Integral Unión Huista R.L., an agricultural cooperative in southern Guatemala that is part of Utz Che’s network, used some of its funding to build a biofactory, which allows its members to grow coffee using fewer toxic chemicals, contribute to soil regeneration and environmental restoration, and employ members of their community. 

Cecilia Montejo, a member of Cooperativa Agrícola Integral Unión Huista R.L., said their grant from the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund has allowed the organization to concentrate their efforts where they are most valuable. “We’re not looking for a profit here. What we do want is to help our members,” she said. “In Utz Che’, we really care for our community and the development of all our members.”

Mesoamerican Territorial Fund’s grantmaking extends to a wide spectrum of community-based entrepreneurial and economic activities that create opportunities for IP and LC communities to thrive. It recently provided seed capital to a women-run restaurant on the coast of Guatemala, allowing the owners to provide for their families, as well as helped fund efforts to ensure tenure rights over forest land for Indigenous Peoples in the northern part of the country. The fund has also supported women and young people who started small businesses that sustainably export regional staples such as cocoa. 

“What is needed on the ground is to invest in the forest and, importantly, in the people that live there and take care of it,” says Hernandez. “It is in the interest of humanity to keep working directly with communities, directly with Indigenous Peoples.”

Network of Community Funds From the Brazilian Amazon

A moment of celebration during the launch of Podáali’s second call for proposals at the 20th annual Acampamento Terra Livre, one of Brazil’s largest Indigenous gatherings.

The Network of Community Funds From the Brazilian Amazon aligns nine territorial funds that support Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities. Established in 2023 at the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum in Belém of Pará, Brazil, a conference dedicated to the Amazon region and the many peoples who live in it, the Network is building solidarity among community funds in the Brazilian Amazon.

To help community-led funds achieve their shared conservation and tenure rights goals, the network offers a space of collective learning and reflection about fundraising. They discuss ways to improve their leverage with the donor community and promote true solidarity and partnership as essential philanthropic values, while developing strategies to offer rapid-response support to communities during moments of environmental crisis like floods or wildfires. 

Its members include Podáali, the first Indigenous-led fund to serve the country’s entire Amazonian region. Podáali’s mission is to strengthen Indigenous communities’ rights, autonomy, and territorial and environmental management in the Brazilian Amazon, with an emphasis on redistributing resources to them. Another member is Mizizi Dudu, the first Quilombola-led fund based in the state of Pará, which supports Quilombola communities’ land rights, economic participation, and capacity-building efforts. The Interstate Movement of Babassu Coconut Breakers (MIQCB) is a women-led fund that promotes economic opportunities for babassu coconut breakers and protections for their collective territories.

As a whole, the network supports the collective advocacy of its members, encouraging the donor community to improve its grantmaking by responding to realities on the ground and adapting to the communities’ terms. 

“The network is here to strengthen our voices as the Amazon,” said Claudia Soares Baré, secretary director of Podáali. “Many territories don’t have access to telephones or the internet. We are not going to force communities to have complex bureaucracies.”


“As a network, we don’t want to just discuss funding. We want to be protagonists. We want to have collective power and self-determination.”

Graça Costa, president of the Dema Fund
Podáali, Dema Fund, and the Brazilian Community Funds Network at the XI Pan-Amazonian Social Forum in San Buenaventura, Bolivia.
Arquivo Podáali

The Dema Fund, another member of the Network of Community Funds, supports Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian communities, especially women-led groups, as well as small agricultural producers working on sustainable development, environmental conservation efforts, and economic growth. It was created in 2004 through a settlement with the Brazilian government over illegal logging on Indigenous land. Since then, it has developed innovative ways to ensure accountability while remaining friendly and respectful to communities’ processes. 

Graça Costa, president of the Dema Fund, said their work supports emerging leaders within their own communities. “We want to make sure these organizations are leaders of their own processes so they can advocate for issues such as climate change,” said Costa. “We cannot give up who we are as we defend our territories, develop economic and educational initiatives, and create opportunities for women and young people. We want to find our common ground so we can be a strong voice in the global conversation.”

Costa noted that support for IP and LC-led funds must be long-term, renewable, and sustainable, just like the solutions they enable. “We don’t want these funds to become just a trend,” Costa said. “As a network, we don’t want to just discuss funding. We want to be protagonists. We want to have collective power and self-determination.”

Nusantara Fund

To support their families, women in West Sumatra, Indonesia learn traditional weaving techniques at the Maju Bersama Women’s Weaving Group.
Fatiha Yendreni, Institute for Community Studies and Empowerment (LP2M)
In the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia, the Uma Saraejen Indigenous Community carries out participatory mapping of their territories.
Citra Mandiri Mentawai Foundation Documentation
Tarum tree nursery area at the Uwairatu Goat Farm in West Sulawesi, Indonesia. Tarum seedlings will be planted in the Pamboang Indigenous territory to help reforest it.

The Nusantara Fund is a joint initiative launched in Indonesia between the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA), and Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI). These national organizations represent three distinct yet connected movements in the country: the Indigenous Peoples movement, the agrarian reform movement, and the environmentalist movement. Together, their work aims to directly support at least 30 million people and protect 30 million hectares of land. They are currently working to establish an endowment of at least $100 million that would ensure a baseline of support for IP and LCs across Indonesia for the next decade.

Since launching in 2023, Nusantara has already catalyzed progress for over three million people. Its grants have enabled communities at the grassroots level, such as farmers, fisherfolks, women, and youth to create more sustainable and accessible practices, developed trainings and projects that help community members understand their rights, and established schools dedicated to preserving and passing on traditional knowledge to future generations. Thanks to Nusantara’s direct funding, nearly 300,000 hectares of IP and LC lands have been successfully mapped, and a portion of them has already been proposed for collective ownership and community management recognition. Nusantara also helped fund the creation of IPAS.

Nusantara was the first direct funding mechanism for IP and LCs in Indonesia, and it sought collaboration early. When Nusantara launched in May 2023, it hosted a global exchange with the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund, Podáali, IPAS, and other funds to build solidarity, share knowledge, and discuss collaborative plans across borders for IP and LC funds.

“Indigenous Peoples and local communities can be directly supported. I think that support will help make real progress in conservation and climate justice, and it is more effective than the current system. This will save lives and protect important cultural knowledge for future generations,” said Ode Rakhman, executive director of Nusantara Fund. “Many donors share this vision. They want to save the earth; they want to realize climate justice. We need to support local and Indigenous communities as they do this work.”