A new report, published ahead of the International Day of Indigenous Women on Sept. 5, analyzed structural barriers faced by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and other local community women’s organizations in accessing funding for conservation, land rights and gender equality projects — and it offers several recommendations to address these challenges.

“When women have secure land and resource rights, deforestation rates fall, food security improves, and communities are more resilient,” Omaira Bolaños, Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) program director and author of the report, told Mongabay via email. “Yet despite this central role, women remain underrepresented in decision-making and severely underfunded.”

The latest report by global coalitions RRI and the Women in Global South Alliance (WiGSA) found that most of the grants that organizations in the WiGSA network receive are short-term, lasting two years or less, and very little funding reaches women directly, instead going through intermediaries such as international NGOs.

“It is necessary for philanthropists, donors and cooperation agencies to understand that it is important, and the moment has come, to provide direct access to financing for communities,” said Sara Omi Casamá, an Emberá Indigenous woman from Panamá and president of the Coordination of Territorial Women Leaders of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, who was not involved in the report. “This is crucial as a form of justice, as reparation for the constant violations of rights that communities face, particularly affecting children and women.”

In 2024, after finding little data on how women have benefited from the $1.7 billion pledge to support Indigenous peoples and local communities’ land rights announced at the 2021 U.N. climate conference, RRI and WiGSA analyzed funding provided to WiGSA network members, which consist of women’s organizations across Africa, Asia and Latin America. In October 2024, they published a preliminary analysis that found women-led groups were severely underfunded due to structural barriers and stereotypes.

The median annual budget of WiGSA network organizations in 2023 was approximately $273,000, and this increased slightly to $338,000 in 2024, according to the new report. Afro-descendant women’s organizations had the lowest annual budgets, dipping to less than half of those of other women’s groups.

“It’s important to break down some barriers so that women can better access funding and resources,” Clemencia Carabalí, the president of the Association of Afro-descendant Women of Northern Cauca in Colombia, told Mongabay via WhatsApp. “The requirements for accessing these funds are quite limited, and women and our organizational dynamics typically don’t meet the requirements.”

According to the report, women’s organizations often lack personnel and must rely heavily on volunteer labor due to limited financial resources. More than 50% have no core funding, and at least 90 cannot operate beyond one year due to a lack of savings or reserves.

To address these challenges, the report’s authors called for a shift away from the current funding model, which they said is too rigid and focused on short-term grants, to more flexible, institutional and long-term mechanisms that support women’s activities. Partnerships should be based on trust, mutual learning and the co-creation of solutions so women can decide what they need, the report said, while more funding should go to Afro-descendant women.

The report also called for a change in the monitoring and evaluation process, urging donors to work with partners to co-design reporting systems that capture the changes that are important to women’s organizations.

Deborah Sanchez, an Indigenous leader from the Honduran Moskitia and director of the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative (CLARIFI) by the RRI, who was not directly involved in the report, said that in addition to simplified, flexible and responsive reporting systems, donors also need to provide more core and unrestricted funding for women-led initiatives. Most critically, “we need a broad shift from control to trust in the donor-recipient relationship,” she added.

Banner image: Gurung women harvesting foxtail millet. Image by Sonam Lama Hyolmo/Mongabay.

New online tool is first to track funding to Indigenous, local and Afro-descendant communities

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