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Collaborative processes must chip away at power imbalances and integrate traditional knowledge into modern projects.
Indigenous and local rural communities are not passive beneficiaries—they are key producers, innovators, and guardians of biodiversity. Their knowledge, traditional processes, and stewardship practices are forms of technology that can be used to create bioeconomies. Organizations need to guarantee that Indigenous and local communities have a seat at the table, and then actively facilitate conversations to address power imbalances.
In Indonesia, one of KEM’s members—Pratistara Bumi Foundation—is redefining what is considered technology in the bioeconomy context to include Local and Indigenous Technology (Lo-TEK), including the use of long-standing local wisdoms on hydration, distillation, extraction, fermentation, and other techniques that enhance fashion, food, and health commodities.
In Brazil, Fundación Avina supports the implementation of 800 hectares of diversified agroforestry systems as a climate adaptation strategy based on traditional practices of local communities, who co-lead the project and will sustain it after funding ends.
As primary stewards of biodiversity, Indigenous and local communities need direct access to climate financing.
Most current financing systems—public, philanthropic, or private—are not designed with these communities in mind. And without dedicated technical assistance, such as Conexsus’ credit activators or EcoNusa’s field based, hands-on facilitation, the barriers to access are too great.
In Brazil, Conexsus embeds technical support in the communities they serve to ensure access to public funds, which helped one cooperative on Marajó Island to receive more than 4 million Reais in rural credit and around 100 smallholder farmers to generate sustainable income while protecting the environment.
In Indonesia, EcoNusa offers a direct funding model that simplifies access and aligns financial support to local needs. Instead of requiring communities to write proposals, Econusa staff visits them in person, listens to their needs, and handles the administrative side to get the funding.
Indigenous and smallholder communities need access to reliable, value-aligned markets for their products to generate income.
Indigenous and local communities can generate income with traditional products made sustainably. But they need access to markets that have fair, transparent, and socially responsible supply chains, that recognize the value of Indigenous practices, that offer stable demand, and that share risks with producers.
EcoNusa created KOBUMI, an Indonesian trading company and logistics provider owned by ten indigenous community cooperatives, to address challenges in accessing stable markets. It purchases products directly from communities in cash, provides quality control and technical support, and handles transportation using its own ships and warehouses.
Fundación Avina and Conexsus are working together with Instituto Belterra in Brazil to implement diversified agroforestry systems across 800 hectares of land using traditional practices. Their support includes developing business skills, managing supply chains, and building fair trade relationships with responsible buyers in order to enhance local communities’ climate resilience.
Blended finance can fill gaps to scale responsible bioeconomy solutions that benefit the environment as well as Indigenous and local communities.
Traditional investors often consider them “high-risk,” because they typically work with long time horizons, irregular cash flows, and deep social-environmental commitments that don’t align with short-term profit models. Shared risk and responsibility among funders—public, philanthropic, private—is therefore particularly important to create a thriving bioeconomy led by Indigenous and local communities.
In Indonesia, KEM members believe that governments and the private sector should assume more risk and fill a funding gap that exists for small and medium enterprises that work with Indigenous producers. They are working to mobilize $200 million by 2028 through a mix of transaction financing, investment, and public-private partnerships.
In Brazil, Conexsus advocates for a combination of public money, philanthropic funds, and private investment to create systems of sustainable economic development. They advocate for models where private-sector buyers serve as co-investors in Indigenous and smallholder production.
Response, Limitations, Evidence
Conexsus
You will never get the scalability that you need by just adding more cooperatives. You need to change the rules. … We need to give the private sector a different responsibility in a different piece of this equation.
Response
Conexsus supports forest-based, rural, and Indigenous communities in Brazil by strengthening their businesses, connecting them to fair markets and finance, and building sustainable local economies rooted in the social bioeconomy. They provide on-the-ground technical assistance to communities and build connections among producers, buyers, and governments to develop a new economic development model.
Limitations
Public policies that support access to credits for rural communities do not always reflect on-the-ground realities of rural, Indigenous, and family smallholder farmers. Each community has unique legal, cultural, and development needs and requires resource-intensive, tailored support.
Evidence
Conexsus provided financial and technical assistance to a cooperative on Marajó Island for accessing R$4 million in rural credit, benefiting over 100 smallholder farmers, most of whom had never accessed rural public financing. They have placed 77 credit activators in local communities and are piloting local environmental monitoring tools that help cooperatives track environmental impact, enabling them to build viable, locally led businesses that use natural resources sustainably.
Fundación Avina
How do we ensure that policies and funds recognize how crucial it is to reach the local level when we talk about climate? Not all responses will fit the same everywhere.
Response
Fundación Avina is a systems orchestrator. They convene diverse stakeholders—governments, communities, private sector, and funders—to identify and close “collaboration gaps” that hinder progress on climate, democracy, and the regenerative economy. They localize climate solutions by centering traditional knowledge, strengthening local governance, and prioritizing funding and decision-making on the community level.
Limitations
Many donors have restrictions that end up excluding the very communities most impacted by climate change. Political polarization in countries like Brazil makes collaboration on climate action more difficult. Historic power imbalances persist between Indigenous communities and corporations or governments.
Evidence
The collaboration that Fundación Avina orchestrated has resulted in 800 hectares of agroforestry systems in the Marajó Resiliente project, based on traditional practices of local communities. Avina has also supported capacity for georeferencing and monitoring land use in Latin America. They worked with MapBiomas to scale their open-source platform for tracking deforestation and land-use change outside of Brazil.
EcoNusa Foundation
This is how to unlock potential bioeconomy for the Indigenous community: offtake their product and provide logistics and assistance.
Response
EcoNusa helps Indigenous communities across Indonesia generate income from their forests and coastal ecosystems without resorting to extractive industries like palm oil or logging. They’ve created KOBUMI, a trading company owned by Indigenous cooperatives that provides logistical support—transportation, warehousing, cold chain for perishable products, and quality control—and market access for communities to sell things like spices, shrimp, cacao, and coconut. They also convene organizations to support land rights, policy advocacy, and technical assistance.
Limitations
Barriers to international markets limit potential income generation for Indigenous communities. Many investors want fast returns and low risk, which doesn't align with the realities of Indigenous-led enterprises that need time to grow. Lack of coordination between NGOs and donors slows down progress.
Evidence
KOBUMI reached nearly $2 million in trading value in 2024 selling Indigenous products. EcoNusa worked with the government in West Papua province to revoke 17 palm oil concessions across 360,000 hectares, and has helped map over 500,000 hectares of Indigenous territories in Papua, some of which have already received formal recognition from the government.
Koalisi Ekonomi Membumi | Earth-Centered Economy Coalition (KEM)
An effective coalition has a dedicated team that is just there to make sure that the vision and mission of the coalition come true. It’s a neutral party. It’s important to mobilize resources to have this backbone team as an orchestrator.
Response
KEM is a coalition of over 30 organizations supporting Indonesia’s transition away from extractive industries and large scale monoculture and toward a bioeconomy. They provide technical input for government planning, ensuring that value chains from production to market are environmentally responsible and locally beneficial, and discourage investment in extractive industries. They also help smallholder, local, and Indigenous businesses access partner companies, markets, and funding.
Limitations
The perception of risk has created a funding gap for small and medium organizations aligned with the bioeconomy. Indigenous and local communities in particular have limited access to resources. Internally, diverse coalitions with varying agendas and capacities are difficult to coordinate, requiring clear governance structures, shared performance indicators, and shared targets.
Evidence
Several of KEM’s founding members created the Sustainable Investment Guidelines, which was integrated into government policy. KEM partnered with Indonesia’s national planning agency to integrate bioeconomy principles and indicators into the country’s 20-year development plan. Through its membership in the Indonesia Bioeconomy Initiatives consortium, KEM has elevated the voices of civil society and Indigenous communities in the national bioeconomy strategy.
