- The Path to Scale dashboard is the first online tool developed to track all funding for Indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant peoples’ forest stewardship and land tenure.
- It’s already highlighted several trends, including that disbursements globally have averaged $517 million per year between 2020 and 2023, up 36% from the preceding four years, but with no evidence of increased direct funding to community-led organizations.
- Although information gaps exist based on what’s publicly available, Indigenous leaders say the tool will be useful to track progress and setbacks on funding pledges, as well as hold donors and organizations accountable.
- According to developers, there’s an increased diversity of funding, but it’s still insufficient to meet the needs of communities.
Developers have rolled out the first ever interactive online tool to track all funding for Indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendant peoples’ forest stewardship and land tenure.
The Path to Scale dashboard, developed in a partnership between the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and the Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN), provides information on funding from 133 donors since 2011 based on publicly available information. According to the developers, this publicly accessible dashboard will help donors, NGOs and rights holders identify critical funding gaps and opportunities in global efforts to secure communities’ rights.
“I believe it’s difficult, especially for the more locally rooted organizations, to understand who the acting donors are and what kind of funding they are providing to which actors,” said Torbjørn Gjefsen, RFN’s senior forest finance adviser. “So, this tool can help fill that information gap.”
For donors, the dashboard will help them learn how their peers are fulfilling their commitments, whether they’re increasing direct funding, and reduce duplication of funding.
Launching the dashboard was timely, say the developers, to keep track of the progress and setbacks around funding global environmental initiatives investing in community conservation and land rights. At the COP26 U.N. climate conference in 2021, the Forest Tenure Funders Group (FTFG) announced a $1.7 billion commitment to support tenure rights and guardianship of Indigenous peoples and local communities by 2025. At the U.N. biodiversity conference a year later, targets included funding pledges and a goal to protect 30% of Earth’s land and waters while respecting Indigenous rights and territories.