Deadline: 30-Jun-25
A new international funding opportunity has been launched to support community-led conservation, sustainable land use, and environmental stewardship.
The initiative focuses on boosting financial resources, building organizational strength, and elevating the global recognition of local and traditional governance of natural resources.
The program is structured around five major areas of support. These include direct, on-the-ground projects that generate environmental benefits; efforts to strengthen community institutions; actions to increase representation in decision-making spaces; sharing lessons from community experiences; and effective monitoring and evaluation of results.
Proposals can be submitted with budgets ranging from USD 1 million to 2 million. A total of USD 18 million is available under the first component, which aims to fund 10 to 15 organizations.
Projects must align with the broader goal of generating measurable global environmental outcomes.
Eligible applicants include representative institutions formed by local communities, networks or funding platforms created to support traditional governance and rights, and consortia composed of these types of organizations.
Applicants must be legally registered and operate in eligible countries, and will undergo a thorough screening process to ensure compliance with relevant standards and safeguards.
Organizations must also demonstrate strong institutional capacity, including solid financial management, project oversight, and risk mitigation systems. They should be able to manage and distribute funds responsibly to community-level partners or beneficiaries.
Applicants must show a track record of working directly on conservation or land stewardship projects led by the communities they serve. A clear and proven strategy to ensure the inclusion of women and youth is also a requirement.
All proposals will be evaluated on their clarity of objectives, feasibility, and potential to produce tangible environmental outcomes. Strong proposals will show how a substantial portion of the funding will be used to directly support community-led priorities.
They must also include strategies for meaningful participation of key rights holders and local stakeholders.
Successful projects will aim to increase the visibility and recognition of local and traditional contributions to global biodiversity protection. Applicants will be required to report on the number of direct beneficiaries, disaggregated by gender, and other measurable environmental indicators as part of the program’s accountability framework.
For more information, visit WWF.
