In early 2023, The Global Alliance pledged to fulfill Shandia by expanding national and regional mechanisms and adopting a bottom-up approach to data collection for well-informed policy decisions.
Download the 2023 report to understand our data collection and the steps we, along with key partners, will take to advance investments built on trust.
photo: Tinta
The vision of Shandia is that indigenous peoples and local communities have access to direct funding for actions that combat climate change, conserve biodiversity and sustain our rights and self-determined development in our territories, based on identity and traditional knowledge.
Shandia is our common platform to promote and facilitate direct, predictable, effective and sustainable funding to our peoples and communities through the establishment of direct regional and national funding mechanisms, capacity-building, exchange of experiences and enhanced dialogue with donors and partners.
photo: Tinta
The world grapples with interconnected crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, rights violations, and inequalities, threatening both the planet and humanity’s well-being. Within our territories, heightened pressure on our lands and resources, is resulting in environmental degradation, land grabbing, displacement and attack to our rights.
Yet, we remain resilient, serving as guardians of extensive traditional territories that house a significant portion of the world’s remaining forests and intact ecosystems. We are certain that empowering our peoples and communities is not only a matter of justice and equity but also a strategic imperative to face our world’s crises.
Despite our guardianship role, very little financing targets our rights and selfdetermined development, and only a fraction of these funds reach our territories and organizations. Often funds are indirect, short-term, unpredictable and misaligned with our self-determined priorities.
In recent years we have witnessed increased commitment to change this reality, but the pace of change remains frustratingly slow and does not match the urgency of the crises we are facing. To address these challenges effectively, in 2022 we launched the Shandia platform.
1%
1% of global climate finance reached our peoples and communities in the last ten years.¹
0.19%
Direct allocation to organizations of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities is as low as 0.19% of the overall support to environmental protection of some donors.²
6.2%
We represent 6.2% of the world’s population, but account for the 18.7% extreme poor.³
36%
36% of the world’s intact forests are within Indigenous Territories.⁴
24%
24% of the aboveground carbon in tropical forests is in our lands.⁵
As our common platform, Shandia serves a number of functions:*
*A full lisf of Shandia’s functions can be seen in the Shandia 2023 Outline available below.
photo: if not us then who?
In 2022, Shandia officially launched during New York Climate Week. Our leadership came together to share the message from the grassroots and propose a new way to think about investment in our peoples and communities to better protect Mother Earth.
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Rainforest Foundations US is our fiscal sponsor. For any letters and parcels, please direct to:
Rainforest Foundation US
P.O. Box 26908
Brooklyn, NY 11202
