Path to Scale Funding Dashboard

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Charting the Path to Scale

New Insights and Emerging Lessons for Donors to Advance Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and Local Communities' Tenure Rights and Forest Guardianship

November 15, 2024

Author:

Rights and Resources Initiative & Rainforest Foundation Norway

Introduction

The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN) collaborated to develop the Path to Scale Funding Dashboard, the first public database profiling historical donor support for Indigenous Peoples’ (IP), Afro-descendant Peoples’ (ADP), and local communities’ (LC) tenure and forest guardianship. The Dashboard was launched alongside the State of Funding report in April 2024, and contributes to the goals of donor, civil society, and rightsholder participants in the Path to Scale Initiative to support the recognition of an additional 400 million hectares of tropical forests for communities, and to mobilize at least $10 billion by 2030 for the sector. This brief, building on the State of Funding report, provides updates on finance for IP, LC, and ADP tenure and forest guardianship and examples of how Pledge-linked or adjacent grants and funding are already driving important progress in tropical forests and other key ecosystems.

Updates to the Path to Scale Funding Dashboard

As part of our ongoing monitoring efforts, we conducted a mid-year update, revising our preliminary 2023 figures upward by 6 percent.1 With revisions in reporting by some donors, these adjustments establish a revised annual average of $565 million from 2020 to 2023.2 As of mid-2024, donors have reported relevant funding estimated at $379 million.3 While these numbers are preliminary due to donor reporting lags, key initiatives with first disbursements in 2024 include:
Disbursements to IP, LC, and ADP Tenure Rights and Forest Guardianship
Annual Reported Disbursements (2011–2024)
Note: Some donors publish disbursements retroactively with reporting lags; 2024 estimates are preliminary. Due to discrepancies in reported BMZ data, BMZ estimates are reported as a relative share based on reported budgets.
Assuming current trends continue through the remainder of 2024, we anticipate a similar geographic distribution of funding as in 2023, with an estimated 37 percent allocated to Africa, 34 percent to Latin America, and 28 percent to Asia.4
Disbursements to IP, LC, and ADP Tenure Rights and Forest Guardianship by Continent
Annual Reported Disbursements (2011–2024)
Note: Some donors publish disbursements retroactively with reporting lags; 2024 estimates are preliminary. Due to discrepancies in reported BMZ data, BMZ estimates are reported as a relative share based on reported budgets. Primary basin countries are Brazil, DRC, and Indonesia.
Although the overall increase in funding since the IPLC Forest Tenure Pledge from 2021 is a positive shift from historical levels, it remains well below the estimated resources needed for IPs, LCs, and ADPs to help secure 2030 climate and biodiversity goals. In 2020, the Path to Scale projected that at least $10 billion in new funding for the recognition of collective tenure rights and forest guardianship would be required by the end of the decade—approximately $5 billion more than current trends suggest will be committed and disbursed.

Results from the IPLC Forest Tenure Pledge funding

While more resources are essential, the funding mobilized since the IPLC Forest Tenure Pledge has already delivered notable results. The following section presents examples where Pledge-related funding has advanced the recognition of collective land rights and forest guardianship over millions of hectares of forests and critical ecosystems. We provide links to specific dashboard entries, where possible, to improve transparency on the projects that make up top-line figures and descriptions from funders.
Donor support for community tenure rights since CoP26 has, beyond advancing immediate outcomes like land area recognized for communities, strengthened the ecosystems and enabling conditions for the recognition of community tenure and local forest conservation. For example, by investing in the capacity of community-based organizations, catalyzing new coordination among community networks, improving financial systems to ensure local organizations can directly manage grant funding, and helping to establish other critical foundations for expanding funding pipelines and scaling up impactful programs. The following cases illustrate the broader positive structural impacts of such funding—often distilled to quantitative trends—and highlight pathways for achieving ambitious tenure and guardianship goals.
Although the cases below spotlight specific initiatives to which RRI and RFN contributed, we are far from the only organizations that have been involved in supporting IP, LC, and ADP rightsholders in these efforts. Many of these projects represent the collective work of numerous organizations at the international and local levels. Some cases summarize recent results that have been achieved through decades of work, and which underline the need for long-term, sustained efforts. While not exhaustive, we have attempted to highlight other key contributing actors and organizations.

Context: In 2022, after over a decade of advocacy led by Dynamique des Groupes des Peuples Autochtones (DGPA) with support from RFN and many others, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) enacted Law No. 22/030, which recognizes the rights of Indigenous Pygmy Peoples (PIPs). Grant funds from Norad were programmed by RFN with financial and advocacy support to DGPA to mobilize advocacy actions, awareness-raising, coordination efforts, and capacity strengthening. This landmark legislation legally recognizes and protects the rights of PIPs to their ancestral lands, resources, and cultural practices, marking the culmination of years of civil society efforts and collaboration across various stakeholder groups.
Kwango province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: Ley Uwera for The Tenure Facility.

Kwango province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Credit: Ley Uwera for The Tenure Facility.

Achievements and outcomes: Law No. 22/030 strengthens the DRC’s commitment to Indigenous rights and environmental stewardship, paving the way for enhanced conservation and sustainable management. The law showcases the potential of rights-based approaches in advancing social justice while simultaneously safeguarding biodiversity. As a result of Law No. 22/030, we are seeing positive change:
  • By protecting PIPs’ land tenure rights, the law is expected to help conserve over 14.5 million hectares of the DRC’s intact forests.
  • The law's adoption catalyzed the political recognition of Indigenous rights, including the first mentions of Indigenous Pygmy issues in official presidential addresses. It has also mobilized multiple government ministries to consider PIPs’ rights in development policies and sectoral initiatives, creating a collaborative framework for sustainable development in the DRC.

ENDNOTES

  1. 1.

    This review broadened the historical analysis by including activities with expenditure reporting and newly reported activities. With this update, the team’s manual review has now covered over 20,000 activity entries.

  2. 2.

    We report all data, unless otherwise noted, in $US 2020, matching “Falling Short.” Germany’s BMZ reports cumulative expenditures with ongoing revisions, which shift previously reported grants between years and slightly alter annual totals. To address these discrepancies, we now use reported budget schedules to allocate cumulative expenditures. For further details, refer to our methodology.

  3. 3.

    Donors vary in the time lag between actual funding and reported amounts. For example, the FTFG annual report is typically published with a 9- to 10-month delay.

  4. 4.

    We are providing estimates only for trends likely to remain consistent across different donor types. For instance, due to significant reporting lags among some donor types, we are not forecasting donor type composition for 2024.

  5. 5.

    AIDESEP, ORPIO, ORAU, and FENAMAD in Peru; and COIAB, CTI, UNIVAJA, CPI, APIWTXA, and OPIRJ in Brazil.

  6. 6.

    Bezos Earth Fund, Re:wild, Nia Tero, Wellspring Philanthropies, Packard Foundation, The Christensen Fund, SKOLL Foundation, and Synchronicity Earth.

  7. 7.

    REPALEAC and Rights and Resources Initiative. 2023. Declaration: The First Subregional Forum of Indigenous and Local Community Women in Central Africa and the Congo Basin. Rights and Resources Initiative, Washington, DC. doi:10.53892/NYNS2594.

  8. 8.

    Home Planet Fund does not publicly report disaggregated grant information.

  9. 9.

    Amwata, D.A., D.M. Nyariki, and N.R.K. Musimba. 2016. Factors Influencing Pastoral and Agropastoral Household Vulnerability to Food Insecurity in the Drylands of Kenya: A Case Study of Kajiado and Makueni Counties. Journal of International Development 28: 771–787. doi:10.1002/JID.3123.

  10. 10.

    ICPALD. 2020. Total Economic Valuation of Pastoralism in Uganda. IGAD Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development, Nairobi. Available at: https://icpald.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Total-Economic-Valuation-of-Pastoralism-in-Uganda.pdf; Government of Uganda. 2014. Draft Rangeland Management and Pastoralism Policy. Animal Industry and Fisheries Ministry of Agriculture, Kampala.

  11. 11.

    Mwilawa A.J., D.M. Komwihangilo, and M.L. Kusekwa. 2008. Conservation of Forage Resources for Increasing Livestock Production in Traditional Forage Reserves in Tanzania. African Journal of Ecology 46(1):85–89. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2028.2008.00934.x; Kalenzi, D. 2016. Improving the Implementation of Land Policy and Legislation in Pastoral Areas of Tanzania: Experiences of Joint Village Land Use Agreements and Planning. International Land Coalition, Rome. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/79796.