Preparing for the money

The climate and biodiversity crises have forced the world to pledge billions of dollars to mitigate the impact of environmental degradation, a significant portion of which should be heading for Indigenous Peoples, Afrodescedant and local communities as they have sustained their own communities and forests for generations.  

As long-term partners with Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant and local community organisations’ Tenure Facility has listened deeply to their needs. Overtime, they have shown us their keen interest to learn ‘conventional’ ways of handling finances to better protect their space, as securing their land and forest rights requires substantial financial resources and stable financial systems. 

In 2024, Tenure Facility, with the support of Spring Strategies, kickstarted the Financial Training Programme to provide partners in Latin America with effective finance and administrative tools, strengthened financial capacities to enable them to acquire more funds, and guidance in the implementation of their plans.  

“The financial capacity and the financial action of an organisation are like the heart, they are part of the heart of an organisation so that it can grow and be solid,” said Teresita Chinchilla, technical director of ACOFOP, the Association of Forest Communities in Petén (Guatemala).  

Tenure Facility and Spring Strategies conducted one-on-one consultations with partners in the region to understand their financial needs, an important to-and-for to ensure no top-down assumptions about what was needed.  

A key result was a training event in Bogota on November 22 with Tenure Facility partners that included leaders as well as financial and administrative staff. *  

The training involved both technical guidance and a sharing of experiences and best practices – all focused on the need for local control of funds and the advancement of tenure rights.  

“Financial autonomy is an important component for the exercise of Indigenous Peoples’ collective rights,” said Elena Lopez, project coordinator for CONAIE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.  

“Less than 1 percent of funding and cooperation processes go to Indigenous Peoples. So, strengthening our organisational and institutional capacity is an attempt to provide a response to this historical inequality gap that Indigenous Peoples have had,” she said.  

The sharing of experiences, meanwhile, built confidence among the participants.  

“Listening to the experiences of other organisations has been very enriching. What we have learned has been an investment.” Rudy Régil, general accountant at ACOFOP said following the event.  

The Bogotá training is just one part of an ongoing process to support Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and community groups.  

As part of the Financial Training Programme, partners will continue to receive tailored support until July 2025, as they put their action plans, mapped during the Bogota training, into practice.   

*Partners included ACOFOP, CEJIS, CICOL, CNAMIB, CONAIE, CONFENIAE, COONAPIP, FENAMAD, OPIAC, PCN, PRODESO, and TIMI