Learn how the Fund invests in the wisdom and community-based power of grassroots activists and advocates in every geography where we work to enable cross-movement, cross-regional climate justice.
Inclusive Solutions for a Global Crisis
While the world grapples with the urgency of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating the impacts of climate change, environmental defenders—those best placed to develop solutions to the climate crisis—are frequently harassed, jailed, or worse. Meanwhile, current adaptation strategies fail to acknowledge and resource the critical role of local communities, particularly women and Indigenous people, in stemming the crisis.
Partners and allies of the Fund for Global Human Rights are transforming the climate landscape by creatively and sustainably addressing the root causes and human rights impacts of the climate crisis. While often portrayed as passive victims, these activists—for example, from coastal communities, Indigenous groups, and ethnic or caste minorities—are taking action to hold those in power to account and to lead the charge for change.
With more than 20 years of experience resourcing social movements, the Fund for Global Human Rights invests in the deep wisdom and community-based power of these groups to adapt to and reverse climate change. We support activists and movements whose work is geared at dismantling the intersecting forms of oppression that have generated the current climate crisis, and whose analysis is grounded in a lived experience of exclusion. Drawing on our experience in intersectional grantmaking and movement-building, the Fund is resourcing groups to build collective power and address the causes and impacts of the climate crisis through collaboration, learning, and sustained innovative activism.
Ultimately, our goal is to defend human rights and transform climate philanthropy through a three-pronged strategy:
1. We Invest in Power
We invest in the power of communities to govern the places they live and work in and to lead the transition to a sustainable economy. The Fund supports groups working to preserve access to water and forests, resisting fossil fuel extraction and exploitative extraction of transition minerals, and pushing for government action to meet their international commitments on carbon emissions. We also invest in the enhanced power of unions, collectives, and communities to push for land rights.
The Fund supports groups who provide the necessary scaffolding for successful community action: lawyers’ collectives working on strategic litigation in support of communities; groups providing core movement support in the form of trainings, health services, or legal empowerment; and coalitions working together, across borders, to hold governments and private companies accountable for their contributions to the climate crisis.
We know governments adopt increased security laws and use surveillance technologies and narratives that present climate activists as threats to economic growth, energy security, or sovereignty. The Fund invests in the power of groups and initiatives who address criminalization, unjust litigation, and other security risks facing climate activists as well as efforts to expose and challenge governments’ abuse of security laws and frameworks as a driver of closing civic space for climate activism.
2. We Bolster Resilience
The climate crisis can feel overwhelming and hopeless. There are powerful narratives at play that distract, defame, and deny the possibilities of a more just system and a safer world, which can generate feelings of overwhelm and division within movements. Drawing on extensive research on the relationship between narratives and change, the Fund supports work that shifts public narratives toward inclusion, joy, and care, countering messages of fear and division. Alongside grantee groups, we challenge the perception that climate activists are extremists, terrorists, and anti-development by promoting values-based narratives of environmental and human security and sharing success stories of communities advancing climate justice.
We understand the benefit of cross-movement and peer-learning spaces and celebrate the resilience-building power of community support. We invest in local knowledge production, in the space and time for cross-movement reflection, and in participatory research, all of which advance mutual understanding of impact and community support. We fund groups to enhance well-being, second-line leadership, cross-movement convenings, and dedicated respite and reflection space: in our experience, these elements are not just nice-to-haves, but essential to long-term resilience and success.
3. We Operationalize Inclusion
While the climate crisis affects everyone, it does not affect everyone equally. In recognition of this truth, the Fund invests in national, regional, and international coalitions, led by historically marginalized groups—including Black, Afro-descendent, feminist, gender-diverse, migrant, and Indigenous communities—to share effective strategies for climate justice, to join forces to address the root causes of climate change, and to call out when so-called solutions have negative impacts on local communities. We enable inclusion by sharing networking power, resourcing groups to join larger environmental networks.
The Fund is also acutely aware of the generational aspect of the climate crisis. We also invest in youth power as a vital force for climate justice, driven by the sobering reality that the youth will inherit the consequences of today’s decisions. By bridging generations and uniting diverse voices, intergenerational and intersectional movements are crafting a powerful, hopeful vision for a just and sustainable future.
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