Deadline: 1-Aug-22
The Global Forest Watch (GFW) Small Grants Fund is now open to build the capacity of civil society organizations to effectively use GFW tools and data to reduce illegal or unplanned deforestation.
GFW is a free forest monitoring system that provides timely and actionable information to support the sustainable management and conservation of forest landscapes.
Objectives
Examples of project approach and scope could include:
- Use deforestation early warning systems and high-resolution imagery to identify, verify, investigate, and act upon satellite-based alerts for improved forest management, law enforcement and advocacy. Examples:
- Build the capacity of indigenous or local communities and/or law enforcement agencies to utilize alert systems accessed through GFW tools to monitor, verify, and respond to forest threats within community lands or protected areas.
- Publish stories and data visualizations highlighting where illegal deforestation is occurring and how it impacts local livelihoods or ecosystems to raise public awareness and put pressure on authorities to respond
- Support deforestation-free supply chains by using GFW tools to monitor and manage the boundaries of commodity-producing areas. Examples:
- Train a collective of smallholder farmers or production companies to monitor and manage their areas.
- Utilize data on GFW to create a dashboard of forest, land use and carbon data to guide sustainable farm management land use decisions.
- Map and monitor high conservation value or high carbon stock forests within agricultural and forestry production landscapes using GFW Pro.
- Use GFW tools to inform sustainable land use planning and management. Examples:
- Use GFW to identify and establish areas or jurisdictions as nature-based solutions, REDD+ or other payment for ecosystem services projects, and monitor compliance.
- Create an open data platform with MapBuilder by compiling and publishing forest data from a country or region that previously was not accessible to the public, and train civil society organizations and journalists to use it to advocate for equitable and sustainable forest land use allocation and monitor illegal deforestation
Funding Information
Small Grants Fund at a glance:
- The Small Grants Fund awards organizations between $10,000 and $40,000 USD
- The number of projects selected can range from 8-15, with 12 being the average
- Projects for the 2023 grant cycle will run from February 1, 2023 – January 31, 2024
- Each grantee will be assigned a WRI staff member as an advisor, who will provide virtual technical support and other assistance
Eligible Countries
- Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Suriname.
- Africa: Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Madagascar, and Republic of the Congo.
- Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
Eligibility Criteria
In order to meet WRI’s requirements for subgrant eligibility, organizations must:
- Be legally constituted as non-profit and non-governmental;
- Have a total annual budget greater than $50,000 USD;
- Possess a computerized financial system for tracking and recording expenses (preferably a professional accounting software);
- Receive a rating of medium to low risk on WRI’s organizational assessment (containing questions regarding organization governance, financial and compliance structure), which will be carried out once finalists are provisionally selected.
- Be able to provide your organization’s most recent annual audit, or ALL three of the following documents:
- a Balance sheet for the previous two years;
- an Income Statement for the previous two years;
- a Cash Flow Statement for the previous two years
- At least one project point person with professional working proficiency in English (oral and written), in order to be able to submit the organizational assessment, narrative and financial progress reports in English, and communicate regularly via email and videoconference with WRI staff.
For more information, visit https://www.globalforestwatch.org/grants-and-fellowships/apply/