International pledge to fund forest rights exceeds target, but direct funding remains low

Funders of the $1.7 billion pledge to support Indigenous peoples and local communities’ land rights, announced at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, say they have exceeded the target by 35%, delivering $2.35 billion between 2021 and 2025. According to the final report of the Forest Tenure Funders Group (FTFG), in 2025 alone, donors provided about $486 million. Sources say the five-year pledge was a major accomplishment, but problems around direct access, regional inequality, funding for women and youth and aid sustainability persist. In 2025, only 7.2% went directly to Indigenous and local community organizations, the latest report found, while the vast majority still flowed through intermediaries, such as NGOs, consultancies and development banks. According to recently updated data in the report, the share of direct funding has increased over the five-year period, from 2.9% of the $351 million provided by donors in 2021, decreasing to 2.1% of the $514 million in 2022. By 2023, this number had risen to 10.6% of the $533 million provided that year, and in 2024, 7.6% of the $467 million provided went directly to these groups. “The pledge was good news, but the figure of the result doesn’t tell us how much actually reached the territories,” Myrna Cunningham Kain, of the Indigenous Miskito community of Waspam and chair of the Guiding Committee at the Pawanka Fund, told Mongabay over email. The Pawanka Fund is a global organization led by Indigenous people that channels financial and technical resources directly to Indigenous peoples and other…This article was originally published on

Mongabay