What’s Working
Insights About Climate Action
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Indigenous communities are vital to climate solutions — not just as voices at the table, but as leaders on their own terms.
While many organizations acknowledge the importance of Indigenous input, real support, especially from governments, remains scarce.
Organizations like Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) help bridge this gap by connecting communities with coalitions and funders. But support must go beyond visibility, because representation without resources won’t get indigenous communities where they want and ultimately need to go. Without investment in governance, education, and infrastructure, shaped by community priorities, indigenous groups cannot fully influence policy.
Additionally, governments need to have more faith in indigenous communities and see them as allies, not adversaries. Tenure Facility finds that more indigenous communities are ready to receive funding, but governments fail to include them in budgets.
Trust is essential, and building it takes time. As organizations like Conexus have noted, each community is different. Effective engagement requires approaches tailored to local languages, norms, and systems of governance.
Forests aren’t just carbon sinks. They’re dynamic bioeconomies that can generate sustainable income for indigenous communities, while supporting food systems, biodiversity, and cultural heritage.
Organizations like Belterra are urging funders and other organizations to recognize the full potential of forests in climate solutions.
Through a dual business and philanthropy model, Belterra partners with the Quilombolas and traditional people from the Amazon to implement agroforestry initiatives that boost food security, income, and climate resilience — yet this approach remains undervalued.
Their Marajó Resiliente Project, in collaboration with AVINA, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), and convener organizations like Conexus, will equip 800 local beneficiaries with 1-2 hectares of land to launch their own agroforestry systems.
Belterra also integrates climate resilience indicators into its conservation practices and is working with GCF to fund results-based payment systems, but scaling these agroforestry efforts remains a challenge.
Unlocking the forest’s full potential requires targeted investment in market access, local processing, and fair benefit-sharing systems, while ensuring renewable energy and land use efforts don’t displace traditional ecological practices.
Climate solutions must be tailored to regional contexts, with close attention to local entry points for impact.
While many organizations understand the needs and opportunities in their local context, they often lack the support necessary for scale.
Climate funders should act opportunistically by recognizing and backing region-specific solutions.
In India, for example, Global Methane Hub (GMH) identifies waste management and landfill fire mitigation as powerful entryways to reduce methane — an area receiving just 1% of climate finance despite its outsized impact.
Organizations like Living Landscapes are filling critical gaps in underfunded regions outside of traditional donor priorities like Brazil, Indonesia, and Congo. Their Common Ground initiative supports local action in India, but they lack the funding they need to effectively collaborate with other climate organizations doing related work.
Land governance is a major barrier to environmental enforcement in the Amazon — and prosecutors need more support.
The Amazon’s vast and often inaccessible terrain makes it difficult for public facing actors that seek to serve local populations. While technology partners like MapBiomas and Conexão Povos da Floresta have connected some communities across these territories, logistical challenges persist. High speed technology in these territories needs to be available and scalable to meet the current demands. Currently, Conexão has digitally connected close to 2,000 people on WhatsApp. Digital connectivity in the forest not only connects territories, but it builds leadership and capacity while ensuring communities stay in the territories where they’re needed most.
Land rights are another obstacle. Institutions like Brazil’s Ministério Público do Estado do Pará (MPPA) regularly encounter conflicting claims and corruption in land ownership records. These foundational governance issues must be resolved so that climate solutions can take root. As the Padraka Foundation points out, ownership must also include what grows under and above the land.
Corruption also undermines the enforcement of environmental protection laws. Organizations like the Brazilian Association of Members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the Environment say they have good relationships with NGOs that help with capacity, but since they are not funded by the government, their work stops when their sponsorships end.
Funders like AVINA provide critical resources, but more sustained investment is needed to support prosecutors as essential actors in addressing climate change.
Media agencies do more than raise awareness. They shape public policy and fuel climate movements.
There is a lot of false information about the environment.
But besides combatting misinformation and raising awareness, media agencies like Uma Gota No Oceano use storytelling to influence public policy.
They collaborate with indigenous communities to give their demands a platform. Their campaigns not only introduce these issues to the public, but also mobilize them to put pressure on politicians to sign important bills into law.
These stories deepen public engagement with climate issues beyond the apocalyptic and utopian binary. Narratives like those created by Mundo Común help strengthen connections to climate, leading to more buy-in. These stories must broaden in scope to address urgent climate issues beyond the conservation of well-known species like tigers and butterflies.
Their work shows that the media is not just a messenger. It’s a catalyst for movement-building. Building trust with indigenous and local communities is essential to ensure these narratives lead to lasting change.
