How Can Funding Be Made Truly Equitable?

In the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, vast ancient forests stretch across the landscape, home to many Indigenous communities. Beneath these forests lie valuable natural resources such as coal and bauxite. As a result, numerous villages have already been relocated and residents displaced to make way for mining operations.

Since 2006, India’s Forest Rights Act has provided legal protections intended to prevent such displacement. Yet many people remain unaware of their rights, and advocating for them can be dangerous. In 2010, a leader of a local land rights movement was reportedly killed, allegedly at the instigation of large landowners. In response, a broad-based movement emerged. At its centre was the Multi Arts Association (MAA), which began educating local communities about their rights. Activists set up information kiosks in villages, connected residents with one another, and facilitated access to lawyers and government authorities.

The work of the MAA was supported in part through grants from the Global Greengrants Fund (GGF). Over the past seven years, the organisation has received several grants of around €5,000 each. According to Subrat, a GGF advisor responsible for identifying promising local initiatives in India, it has been a worthwhile investment. Since its founding, the MAA has helped individuals, groups, and communities secure legal ownership rights to their land in more than 2,000 cases. As a result, they are now able to manage and use their forests in traditional and sustainable ways.

It is a success story that demonstrates the importance of ensuring that local, innovative initiatives have access to the resources they need and the freedom to decide for themselves how those resources are used most effectively.

The headquarters of the Global Greengrants Fund (GGF), founded in 1993, is located in Boulder, Colorado. Yet the organisation’s location is almost irrelevant to the way it operates. What sets GGF apart is its distinctive structure: decisions on where funding goes are not made at headquarters, but by activists on the ground. “Much of international philanthropy is still paternalistic and colonial in the sense that institutions in the Global North decide what people in the Global South need,” says Ursula Miniszewski, Director of Gender and Equity at GGF. “We know that this racist and unjust model does not work. And we also know that when power is shared equitably and decision-making processes are fair, resources reach the right people, benefiting both communities and ecosystems.”

As a result, many foundations and development organisations are re-examining their practices. How can alternative approaches to funding and participation challenge historical power structures? The Robert Bosch Stiftung is asking the same question and is testing new funding models designed to ensure that resources reach the places where they are needed most and reflect local priorities. One key concept is participatory grantmaking. By involving funded organisations and community representatives in decision-making processes and increasing transparency, this approach aims to ensure that resources are allocated where they can have the greatest impact.

The Global Greengrants Fund is one of the pioneers of this movement, operating through a highly localised and flexible funding model. In the regions where the organisation is most active, including Africa, Asia, North and South America, and the Pacific Islands, volunteer advisors identify grassroots initiatives that need support and are well positioned to use funding effectively. Local advisory panels, made up of activists with in-depth knowledge of their communities, then make funding decisions through a streamlined process.

“These grants enable grassroots communities to develop their own solutions,” explains Naomi Lanoi, Program Coordinator for Global Indigenous Grantmaking at the Global Greengrants Fund. “The funding amounts are intentionally modest. It is difficult to deny that large sums can create incentives for misuse and corruption.”
In 2021, the approach supported 493 projects across 80 countries. More than USD 2.5 million in grants were distributed, funded through donations and contributions from supporters, including the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

For the past several years, the GGF has focused on groups that are disproportionately affected by climate change for multiple reasons, such as Indigenous peoples living in regions highly vulnerable to extreme weather events. Within these communities, women often face even greater risks because they tend to have less mobility and fewer resources at their disposal. As a result, the GGF primarily supports environmental protection and climate justice initiatives that are initiated and led by Indigenous communities and women.

“Less than one percent of traditional development aid reaches Indigenous peoples. The same is true for projects initiated by women,” says Juan Mateo Martinez Abarca, who works for the GGF from Quito, Ecuador, as a Learning Consultant responsible for sharing project-based insights across the organisation. “And within the conventional funding system, what we call intersectional discrimination comes into play: Indigenous women receive the smallest share of funding of all.”

For the Global Greengrants Fund, the issue is not only one of equity, ensuring that those facing the greatest discrimination receive the support they need most. The approach is also deeply pragmatic. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Indigenous peoples and women are among the most effective actors in addressing climate change.
An estimated 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity is found in tropical regions, many of which have traditionally been managed and stewarded by Indigenous communities. In this sense, these communities are true experts in sustainable living. Their traditional knowledge has helped ensure for thousands of years that the ecosystems they inhabit remain viable and resilient over the long term.
Within this context, women often play a particularly important role. In many communities, they are traditionally responsible for agriculture and land stewardship, making them key agents in preserving both livelihoods and natural resources.

Sometimes it is about providing water filters for remote villages in Uganda; at other times, it is about supporting Colombian women campaigning against a major hydroelectric dam project. What many of these initiatives have in common is that they draw on and promote Indigenous knowledge and practices.

One example comes from Indonesia. Over recent decades, large-scale marketing campaigns by multinational corporations have encouraged many farming communities to replace traditional crops with modern rice and maize varieties. These crops, however, are highly vulnerable and often depend on chemical fertilisers and pesticides to thrive, placing additional strain on the soil. At the same time, increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as droughts have contributed to local food shortages.

This is the challenge that Maria Loretha, a local activist, set out to address. She spent months travelling across the country, collecting seeds of traditional Indigenous sorghum varieties from remote regions and teaching communities how to cultivate them. The result has been a pesticide-free approach to agriculture that strengthens local food security and provides sustainable livelihoods for the people who depend on it.

In addition to funding grassroots initiatives directly, the Global Greengrants Fund also works to share the knowledge needed to address climate change and build thriving communities around the world. This is one of the key responsibilities of Juan Mateo Martinez Abarca. “Women are on the front line in the fight against environmental destruction,” he says. “But to sustain that fight, they need security in their private lives: protection from violence, a stable livelihood and, ideally, support with caring responsibilities for children and older family members. Feminist activist movements in Central America, such as Fondo Terra Viva, have decades of experience in this area.”

Through the Global Greengrants Fund’s network, this expertise is shared across regions, for example through online workshops and peer-learning exchanges. As a result, women’s groups in Sub-Saharan Africa that are only beginning to organise and advocate for change can benefit from the experiences and lessons learned by activists in Mexico and elsewhere in Central America.

Because the GGF is committed to making decisions as equitably as possible, it also regularly examines the less visible forms of discrimination that exist within societies, as Subrat explains. “In India, we work to address discrimination based on class, religion, and gender,” he says. One particularly entrenched form of discrimination that is often overlooked, even in progressive circles, is the traditional caste system.

According to Subrat, many activist organisations are dominated by members of higher castes. “Within our advisory committee, we had to ask ourselves whether projects led by Dalit communities were underrepresented,” he recalls. Dalits are a historically marginalised group that has traditionally been placed outside the caste system and subjected to severe social exclusion.

To address this imbalance, the GGF invited a Dalit representative to join its circle of advisors. “As a result, we are now supporting more Dalit-led projects, and our discussions about caste dynamics and inequality have become much richer and more informed,” says Subrat.

And that is perhaps the GGF’s most important guiding principle: its mission is not simply to distribute funding. It is about listening and acting accordingly. Or, as Juan Mateo Martinez Abarca puts it: “The communities on the ground know best how to respond to the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation. They do not need advice. They need support to put their knowledge into practice.”