Financing Community-Led Conservation: Putting Resources in the Right Hands
About the Session
Some of the world's most important ecosystems are protected by Indigenous peoples, local communities, grassroots conservation organizations, and faith leaders who have stewarded land and forests for generations. Yet remarkably little climate and conservation finance reaches them directly.
The problem is not simply a shortage of nature finance. It is how that finance moves. Much of the current conversation focuses on carbon markets, biodiversity credits, agricultural supply chains, and other global mechanisms. Far less attention is paid to what happens between capital being committed and resources reaching the organizations doing conservation work on the ground.
For community-led conservation, that gap raises difficult questions about power as well as finance. Who decides what is worth funding? What evidence are local organizations expected to produce? Which organizations are considered capable of receiving investment? And what does genuine local ownership look like when donors, investors, governments, and communities enter the same partnership?
This session will explore the financing structures that can help community-led conservation move beyond small grants and pilots, including blended finance, results-based payments, and philanthropic bridge funding. It will also examine what credible evidence of ecological, economic, and community impact looks like, and how expectations around measurement can support rather than exclude locally led organizations.
The aim is not simply to bring communities into existing conservation finance systems. It is to ask how those systems need to change so that local organizations can lead, access resources, build durable institutions, and scale approaches that are already protecting nature.
Discussion Group Leaders
Doug Satre is Director of Environment and Livelihoods at Plant With Purpose, advancing environmental restoration and resilient livelihoods in partnership with smallholder farmers globally.
Tommy Sheridan is Senior Manager, Partner Network at Wildlife Conservation Network, strengthening partnerships that advance solutions for wildlife and communities to coexist and thrive.
Dan Peniston is Development Officer at Akashinga, mobilizing partnerships and funding for climate resilience, nature-based solutions, forest governance, and Indigenous Peoples’ rights.
What to Expect
A practical conversation grounded in the realities of community-led conservation, particularly in Africa and other places where local organizations protect significant ecosystems while receiving a small share of available climate and conservation funding.
Participants will explore financing, evidence, power, and ownership together, connecting community leaders and conservation practitioners with philanthropists, investors, governments, and others who influence how nature finance is designed and deployed.
Who This Is For
This session is for community-based conservation organizations, Indigenous and local leaders, faith leaders, philanthropists, climate and nature investors, governments, conservation practitioners, researchers, and organizations designing or deploying finance for nature.
What You Will Get Out of It
A clearer understanding of why conservation finance struggles to reach community-led organizations
Financing structures that can help proven local models move beyond pilot stage
Approaches to demonstrating ecological, economic, and community impact
Practical considerations for shifting power and ownership toward local organizations
Ideas for building stronger pathways between nature finance and the communities protecting ecosystems