PART FOUR: REACHING THE CANOPY

Outlook for
2025

These are not easy times for traditional communities. As global demand for commodities continues to put pressure on the world’s lands and forests, their territories, and the biodiversity on which they rely, are increasingly at risk.

Sustained funding is vital to continue enabling partners to defend and steward their lands, and highlight the importance of tenure rights through results, storytelling, and advocacy.

Tenure Facility is committed to working with our partners to help position them to receive finance from donors directly. In the meantime, we will continue to meet demand for our role from Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities’ organisations, as well as from major donors that find it difficult to channel finance directly to grassroots organisations.

Over the year ahead, we will:

Deepen work in the Amazon Basin

With new UK Government funding, we’ll launch a regional programme within our Latin America team — expanding our team and supporting regional platforms, policies, narratives, and access to funding.

Promote a new funding pledge at COP30

While working alongside our partners to ensure a high profile for Indigenous and community issues in the lead-up to and during COP30 in Brazil, we are prioritising efforts to promote a new global funding pledge for Indigenous and community tenure, following the expiring US$1.7 billion Glasgow pledge (a 22 donor commitment of US$1.7 billion to support forest tenure), which expires this year.

Grow our footprint in Asia

We’re preparing to expand into the Mekong region, including launching a project in Cambodia and exploring opportunities in Burma.

Roll out new carbon and biodiversity financing

Our Carbon and Biodiversity Finance Initiative (CBFin) will help partners navigate the opportunities and risks presented by carbon and biodiversity markets, and other environmental service payments.

Strengthen marine tenure rights

Through our fiscal sponsorship of Turning Tides, we are actively exploring how to strengthen the legal recognition of marine tenure, unlock funding for shoreline and marine rights, and facilitate knowledge exchanges between land and marine-tenure-focused partners to develop scalable, community-driven solutions.

Expand support beyond forests

Our partners also protect savannas, arid lands, and pastoral systems. We are seeking donors ready to support these overlooked but vital ecosystems through secure tenure and governance.

2024 was a year of growth for Tenure Facility and our partners. With their leadership and our support, we reached new heights together, with more land secured, defended, and managed according to traditional principles of harmony with nature than ever before.

It was a year that established our partners’ influential presence in international negotiations, and a year which pushed us to learn together as we navigated challenges old and new. But it was also a year to look back and celebrate how far we have come.

All the way back to an Advisory Group formed by the Rights and Resources Initiative ten years ago to incubate Tenure Facility and oversee our first pilots. To all of you who have walked this path with us — to our donors, for your trust, ambition and support; and to our partners, for your wisdom, your determination, and your resourcefulness in the face of challenges that often seem insurmountable.

You are what make our work possible — thank you.

“As we look towards 2030 and beyond, we stand with communities facing threats like mining, cattle ranching, logging, and other illegal exploitation growing at a rapid pace. We need to not only help expand Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community land rights but also to understand what it takes to maintain those rights for the long-term. We remind ourselves that traditional peoples have been performing their resilient and regenerative practices for many years and that, with secure tenure and strong governance, they will not only protect their land and forests; they will also help us achieve global climate targets.

For that reason, and so many more, tenure is not a gift for governments to bestow; it is a fundamental right, and one that benefits us all.”

Nonette Royo, Executive Director, Tenure Facility

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Outlook for 2025