2022 —
Annual Report

Participatory and decentralized grantmaking in support of grassroots environmental and social justice action.

Four black women standing outside are smiling and holding their left fist to their right shoulder, they are wearing traditional clothing and jewelry.

Image Credit: IMPACT Kenya

A Letter from Laura García and Dr. Nisha Owen

Dear Global Greengrants Fund community,

We stand at the cusp of great opportunity. The climate crisis is not just a problem to be solved, but an opportunity to build a new way of being in this world, one that honors the preciousness and interconnectedness of life. This year, we witnessed the collective power of grassroots-led environmental action, from holding corporations accountable for environmental harm in Peru, to advocating for Indigenous Maasai land rights in Kenya.

Our community of grantmaking advisors, staff, donors, and frontline groups are an essential part of this journey. Together, in 2022, we made our highest number of annual grants ever, 1,239 grants totaling nearly $16M. Our participatory grantmaking network of more than 215 advisors located around the world ensures that our grantmaking is grounded in the leadership and needs of grassroots environmental justice movements.

As we strengthen our partnerships with environmental movements, we are also reflecting on our role in relation to movements, money, and power. This year we embarked on a Transformational Journey to more deeply align our organizational structures and culture with our grassroots feminist values and mission. We launched a network-wide Strategic Journey and global learning initiative to become more responsive to emerging opportunities and create a more effective and resilient field of grassroots environmental justice funding. Our ecosystem vision influences the philanthropic community by fostering a community of allied organizations that share resources and advocate for sustainable support of grassroots movements.

This year, we acknowledge our gratitude for the incredible work of Eva Rehse, Global Greengrants Fund UK's first Executive Director, who played a pivotal role in setting up the UK charity. Eva has moved to a new role as Director of Strategy and Global Integration at Global Greengrants, where her vision continues to be instrumental in building a strong foundation for our success. We are also grateful to Greg Hilditch, who steered Global Greengrants UK as the interim Executive Director, and whose commitment and efforts in building partnerships have been instrumental in driving our mission forward. We appreciate all our staff here at Global Greengrants, who embody our values, vision, and mission. Their dedication, expertise, and collective efforts enable us to make a meaningful impact in the world.

Transformation through collective action is healing. The vitality of our planet hinges on the well-being of local ecosystems everywhere. Together, we can shift power to the global grassroots and build a future that honors all life. Thank you to all in our community for your continued support in making this vision a reality.

In solidarity,

Laura García
President and CEO,
Global Greengrants Fund

Dr. Nisha Owen
Executive Director,
Global Greengrants Fund UK

A man of colour is standing outside smiling with his right fist in the air. He is wearing a white hat that reads "NHF."

Image Credit: Carissa Marnce/GAIA

Connecting Resources and Movements

2022 Total Grantmaking*

Overall Numbers UK Numbers**

Overall Numbers

1,239

Grants

105

Countries

$15.8M

Total granted

UK Numbers**

2022 Grantmaking by Issue Area***

$.8M

in climate justice grants awarded to 692 recipients

$.8M

in healthy communities and ecosystems grants awarded to 961 recipients

$.9M

in local livelihoods and agroecology grants awarded to 648 recipients

$.1M

in right to defend the environment grants awarded to 271 recipients

$.3M

in right to land, water, and resources grants awarded to 510 recipients

$.3M

in women’s environmental action grants awarded to 395 recipients

in just transition grants awarded to 106 recipients

$.2M

in resilience/pandemic recovery grants awarded to 156 recipients

in disability-inclusive climate justice grants awarded to 105 recipients

*Unless specified as UK-specific statistics, all grantmaking numbers include Global Greengrants Fund UK, donor-advised funds (DAFs), regional partner funds, and our fiscal sponsorships, in addition to our general grantmaking.

**Global Greengrants Fund is made up of two organizations based in the US and the UK. The two organizations share a grantmaking program and collaborate strategically at the senior leadership level, while reaching a broader donor audience. This inspiring partnership speaks to the power of collaboration and more decentralized decision-making. All UK numbers are also included in the overall numbers.

***There is overlap between issue areas, as some groups’ activities fall into multiple categories.

A collage displaying various images. On the left there is a young indigenous woman holding a sign that reads in Spanish "Tenemos que proteger nuestros andes y decir no a la mineria." On the right there is a group of women of colour wearing headscarves and a young boy holding signs that read, "Climate Action Now," "Strike for Climate Justice," and "Save our Sundarbans."

Credits (L to R): Central de Rondas Campesinas de la Microcuenca Inkas Vivientes and Initiative for Coastal Development

Building Grassroots Power: Decentralized Grantmaking

Global Greengrants Fund makes grants to grassroots groups in the Global South working at the intersection of human rights and environmental justice. Our grantmaking decisions are made by a network of over 215 activists and expert advisors located in the countries where we grant. They deliver knowledge of context and first-hand expertise, connecting our resources to local solutions that promote environmental justice. This nimble, time-honored and trust-based decentralized grantmaking model has been the heart and soul of Global Greengrants since our founding in 1993. Through this model, we shift decision-making power to advisory board networks and partner funds, so that activists with deep knowledge of their regional environmental context have the final say in which groups we fund. This shift in power is pivotal to creating a more sustainable and just world.

Our Grantmaking Model

Our current decentralized grantmaking model includes a complex network of 27 advisory boards made up of more than 215 activists, including regional and thematic boards, partner funds, and partnerships with advocacy organizations. We also collaborate with several Global-South-based partner funds, supporting a shift in philanthropic power from Global-North-based foundations and donors, to these regional grassroots funds and networks. Global Greengrants advisors give out more than 1,000 grants per year to grassroots environmental justice groups all over the world.

Deepening and Expanding Our Grantmaking Network

As we strive to support and prioritize grassroots groups to best meet their evolving needs, we are committed to continuously learning and improving our approach.

In 2022, we increased the size of some of our grants, scoped and explored funding opportunities in additional regions of the world like the Arctic and the Caribbean, and expanded our network of advisors. Our Oilwatch and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) advisory boards celebrated their first anniversaries, and we also laid foundations for more strategic and intentional funding mechanisms in the areas of Disability-Inclusive Climate Justice, Indigenous Peoples Rights, and environmental justice in Central Asia. We will continue to build on this work in 2023 and beyond.

Oilwatch International Advisory Board

Through three regional Oilwatch Networks—Oilwatch Latin America, Oilwatch Africa, and Oilwatch Asia—advisors awarded $150,000 in grants throughout the world in the first year of partnership with Global Greengrants.

Oilwatch International is a member network of organizations and communities in over fifty countries around the world working to end the expansion of fossil fuel exploitation and usage. Historically, Global Greengrants has given at least 30 grants to national and regional members of Oilwatch.

In 2022, Global Greengrants and Oilwatch formed a new advisory board to support grassroots groups resisting the expansion of fossil fuels and working toward a just energy transition. This partnership increased funding to frontline activists, created stronger alliances between affected communities, and supported groups to demand accountability for the harms suffered from fossil fuel development. Grants supported Indigenous activists resisting oil exploration on their native lands, climate scientists educating communities about renewable energy sources, and groups creating awareness campaigns on the negative environmental and health impacts of unregulated extraction.

Middle East and North Africa Advisory Board

In its first year, the MENA board gave out more than $200k to 49 groups in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen.

In 2022, Global Greengrants celebrated the first year of grantmaking for our Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Advisory Board. “The region is plagued by worrying environmental issues,” says Global Greengrants MENA Coordinator Amy Ekdawi. “The impacts of climate change are manifested in scarcity of water resources, longer drier seasons, sea-level rise, hotter and longer heatwaves, and more frequent dust and sand storms. Mismanagement of natural resources adds insult to injury.” It’s vital to stave off the climate and biodiversity emergency in the MENA region, yet grassroots groups in the region are also deeply underfunded—making our support there a critical part of helping civil society strengthen connections.

Grantees are working on a diversity of solutions, including stopping illegal bird hunting in Lebanon, increasing local participation in national resource management in Jordan, and strengthening the efforts of waste-pickers in Morocco.

A group of black youth are marching outside and playing musical instruments.

Image Credit: Natalia Elisa Londono Ortiz

Building a Learning Organization

Throughout our history, our advisors have stressed the important role Global Greengrants can—and must—play in facilitating the exchange of information across our global network and with external allies. The relationships and connections Global Greengrants builds with movements through our grantmaking make us well-positioned to act as a bridge that shares learnings both within our advisory network and across funders and global changemakers. We see this as pivotal to contributing to movement and funder ecosystems, and to ensuring that we are continuously responsive to grassroots movements and their needs. This year, we deepened our commitment to learning as a key pillar of our programmatic and organizational work, and to our culture as a network. Our vision is to build an organization that is engaged in ongoing learning, as part of a decentralized ecosystem that is continually listening, sharing, and testing our assumptions.

In 2022, we began to set up an infrastructure to better incorporate learning into our day-to-day work. We also completed analysis and reflection for two of our grantmaking programs, the Next Generation Climate Board and our Women and Environment grantmaking. Sharing knowledge and data across our advisory network–like the learnings from our 2022 grantmaking analyses–helps us build and contribute to the interconnected currents of knowledge within and across movements.

Implementing Our Learning Vision

This year, we have begun to put our learning vision into practice. We hired dedicated learning staff, advisory boards commissioned new research, and we launched a newsletter created by and for our network of advisors, called Weaving Together, which facilitates South-South movement-based learnings. We are also creating a digital hub where the advisory network can share learnings, launching a series of Learning Circles, and embarking on the next iteration of our global grantee survey.

Each of these activities together will help us to continually improve how we do our grantmaking and support movements. This will also help us to foster an organization and network that are engaged in ongoing learning, as part of a decentralized ecosystem that is continually listening, sharing, testing our assumptions, and embracing multiple forms and cultures of knowledge.

Next Generation Climate Board Review

The Next Generation Climate Board (NGCB), established in 2013, has been central to Global Greengrants’ support of youth climate movements around the world. In its nearly ten years of existence, the NGCB has awarded 178 grants totaling more than $850k to youth-led groups in 49 countries.

In 2022, the NGCB worked with Global Greengrants’ Director of Learning, Allison Davis, and youth consultant Alice Junqueira to analyze the Global Greengrants database of all youth and climate grants going back to 2013, and to put youth advisors in conversation with other advisors and grantees to surface learnings. The resulting report provides insights into the geographical and demographic reach of grants, the factors that help youth groups sustain themselves, and the many intersectional outcomes that stem from centering diverse youth in climate struggles and solutions. The NGCB will use the report’s learnings to deepen their grantmaking and support of youth activism. They will also hire a Learning Coordinator to support the board’s collective capacity to learn with youth grantees, networks, and environmental justice movements globally, as well as to nurture their own individual leadership and wellbeing in tumultuous times.

Image Credit: Lavetanalagi Seru, NGCB Advisor

Women and Environment Program Review

Global Greengrants supports over 300 women-led environmental projects per year, making us a leader in grantmaking at the intersection of women and the environment. Between 2015-2022, Global Greengrants made over 3,000 grants to gender-just climate initiatives, totaling more than $20 million.

This year, we conducted extensive interviews to understand how our commitment to gender justice has impacted our program since its founding in 2014. We found out that our network has improved substantially in placing gender justice at the center of our work and addressing the intersecting forms of oppression that grassroots environmental movements and frontline communities face. We learned that when we fund projects that focus on women and the environment, they often include more Indigenous and young people, and that organizations led by Indigenous women of all ages are the most likely to incorporate a gender justice analysis. These learnings suggest that approaching funding with a gender justice lens leads to more intersectional, inclusive, and holistic grantmaking. These and other learnings from the report will have enormous influence on both our grantmaking and our advocacy among funders.

“While initially we were focused on our grant craft and learning how to fund gender equity in environmental movements better, we recognized that sharpening our grant craft practice also meant attending to our own organizational and personal belief systems around equity and justice.”

- Artemisa Castro, Global Greengrants Global Board member and founding member of Fondo Acción Solidaria, AC

Catalyzing Movements: Stories from the Grassroots

A group of fourteen indigenous women are standing outside. They are wearing straw head dresses and holding a sign that reads "Luchamos por nuestro territorio."

Image Credit: Organización Indígena Siekopai Del Perú

Each year we fund more than 1,000 grassroots organizations across Africa, the Arctic, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Pacific Islands. Many of our grantees are advocating for their rights, for corporate accountability, and for changes to the unjust, unsustainable systems that govern our world. Many others are working to develop and implement solutions to environmental injustice at the local level. The following action areas define, in general terms, the types of environmental justice projects we fund: Climate Justice; Healthy Communities and Ecosystems; Local Livelihoods; Right to Land, Water, and Resources; Women’s Environmental Action; Right to Defend the Environment; Just Transition; Disability-Inclusive Climate Justice; and Resilience/Pandemic Recovery.

These are just a few of the many grantee partner efforts we supported in 2022:

Centering Indigenous Rights and Voices

In 2022, Global Greengrants gave $5.9 million to 524 Indigenous groups and projects in 65 countries.

30 by 30 is an initiative to protect 30% of Earth's land and ocean by 2030, adopted as a global target by the world's governments in 2022's COP15 meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Although Indigenous Peoples—guardians and protectors of 80% of the world's biodiversity—have been recognized for the first time in this international agreement, including the need to respect Indigenous and traditional territories, many Indigenous groups have expressed concerns about whether implementation will respect their rights in practice. Many fear that expanding protected areas may displace communities from land they have inhabited and protected for centuries, especially given the history of human rights abuses, violence, and land grabs suffered by Indigenous peoples worldwide.

In April 2022, alongside the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), Global Greengrants and Land is Life co-organized a webinar to uplift Indigenous perspectives on conservation-fueled Indigenous rights violations. In the webinar, Indigenous panelists from Canada, Argentina, Peru, Tanzania, and Indonesia discussed the implications of the 30 by 30 conservation framework for the rights and autonomy of Indigenous Peoples. “Research shows that when they [Indigenous Peoples] are engaged in their lands, their care is best,” stated panelist Jeanette Armstrong of Canada, summing up a clear message from the panel—Indigenous Peoples, voices, and priorities must be involved in all conservation efforts if we are truly going to shift the global scale of power and create a more sustainable and just world.

In addition to the webinar, Global Greengrants has given grants to many Indigenous groups around the world who are pushing for more inclusive and sustainable conservation efforts. Here are just a few recent examples:

Avant-garde Art Foundation uses art as a means to build a more equitable society in Thailand. The group used a grant to empower Karen Indigenous women and youth through art. They encouraged Indigenous women and youth to advocate for forest conservation and co-management and protect their rights after the Thai government recently forced the removal of the Karen people from their ancestral lands, believing them to be an obstacle for conservation.
Association Guinéenne d’Eveil au Développement Durable (AGEDD) in Guinea encouraged Indigenous people in the peripheries of Badiar National Park to contribute more significantly to rehabilitating chimpanzee populations, which are threatened by growing urbanization, deforestation, traditional farming, and desertification. The group used a grant to establish Indigenous tree nurseries, design an environmental education program based on Indigenous conservation practices, and train indigenous leaders to lead conservation actions.
Gaia Amazonas (GA) worked with the Indigenous peoples of the northwestern Amazon region of Colombia to achieve full recognition from national and international actors of their traditional governance systems as the most viable and worthy strategy for forest conservation. The group used funding to continue their work training local leaders to advocate for Indigenous land rights and conservation practices.

Image Credit: Laudato Si Club

Fostering Disability-Inclusive Climate Justice

In 2022, Global Greengrants gave $550,000 to grassroots organizations advancing the capacity and infrastructure for disability rights and leadership in environmental and climate justice—our largest dollar amount awarded to this intersection in one year so far.

This grantmaking at the intersection of disability rights and environmental justice builds on work we have been doing since 2018. Environmental justice and disability rights movements have largely not explored how disability and the environment interact, despite the potential for an intersectional approach to significantly advance the goals of both movements. Persons with disabilities are deeply impacted by environmental and climate issues and their perspectives must be included if solutions are to be effective, just, and inclusive.

As we grow in our capacity to fund at this intersection, increasingly our grants are reaching projects focused on increasing the access of persons with disabilities to environmental rights. Recent grants have included:

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Enable the Disable Action (EDA) advocated for the inclusion of persons with disabilities in North Kivu/East DRC climate actions. They built the capacity of peoples with disabilities and Indigenous peoples, established an environmental education club for young persons with disabilities, led reforestation and sanitation actions, public mobilizations, and ecological marches, and built public awareness about connections between disability rights and the environment through advocacy with state authorities at all levels.
Ibsar Association for Culture and Leisure of Persons with Visual Impairment in Tunisia raised awareness about environmental issues among three hundred students with visual disabilities. People with visual disabilities often do not have access to information about the environment because it is not written in a medium that is accessible to them, such as Braille. Ibsar Assocation printed leaflets in Braille and held interactive lessons on the dangers facing the environment and environmentally friendly behaviors.
A recent grant in El Salvador funded the persons-with-disabilities-led organization Association of Persons with Disabilities of Suchitoto Defending Our Rights and the Environment to advocate for and assist persons with disabilities in becoming involved in climate and natural disaster municipal planning. They held trainings for persons with disabilities about their rights, as well as about waste management, installing family gardens, and food kits. They also ran a campaign in their community to educate the public about disability rights.

By recognizing disability rights as a climate justice issue, we work towards creating more inclusive and equitable responses to climate change, which prioritize the needs and experiences of persons with disabilities. Funding at this intersection helps to build the capacity of civil society globally to address the root causes of climate and environmental injustices, including those faced by persons with disabilities. We are also helping to foster environmental grantmaking that is increasingly intersectional in who it reaches.

This funding work has culminated in the formation of our Disability-Inclusive Climate Justice Advisory Board, which will complete its first year of grantmaking in 2023.

Championing a Just Energy Transition

In 2022, Global Greengrants gave $670,000 in just transition grants to 106 groups all over the world.

Since February 2022, the severe and global effects of the war in Ukraine have become more and more apparent. Costs of fuel, oil, fertilizer, and food have spiraled and caused disruptions to the supply chain. Governments have scrambled to find alternative supplies of energy, resulting in what The Guardian has dubbed “a dash for African gas,” with wealthier nations pushing for more fossil fuel projects in an attempt to keep prices down. This energy colonialism, as activists have called it, has placed many critical African regions at risk of oil and gas exploitation, including the Congo Basin rainforests, the Okavango Delta, and the coasts of South Africa and Mozambique. This energy colonialism in Africa has also been replicated in other regions of the world, such as Central Asia.

At the same time, the global demand for minerals and metals required to meet renewable energy needs is accelerating exponentially. The structure and incentives built into our current economic system mean that overwhelmingly, investing in energy transition has prioritized profit over community rights or environmental protection. As a result, many energy transition projects carry major social and environmental risks for host communities and workers, who are overwhelmingly based in the Global South.

By investing in locally-led resistance to unaccountable extractive industries, not only in one region, but globally, Global Greengrants’ advisors are supporting grassroots movements to send a clear, cross-regional message—the transition to clean energy cannot come at the cost of land rights, local livelihoods, and our global environmental sustainability.

Many of our advisory boards are supporting local initiatives focused on implementing community energy projects; defending the rights of local communities; fostering networks of resistance to confront the negative impacts of the oil and gas industry; promoting systemic solutions such as agroecology, and many more. To support this work, our advisory boards have funded groups such as:

Sowing Communities of Territories, Waters and Autonomies in Colombia worked with children, youth, and adults to educate them about a just energy transition. They implemented practical community energy solutions, developed signage and disseminated information on efficient stoves and biodigesters, and held two energy workshops with children and adolescents.
Tres Cinquenta Pilipinas Inc. in the Philippines invested in movement building centered around climate action on a university campus. The funds supported students to scope and network with key stakeholders, provide skill-based training, including a workshop about solar power systems and how they operate, conduct an energy consumption audit on campus, and draft an energy efficiency plan to send to campus administration.
Centre for Social Studies and Development (We the People) in Nigeria built the capacity of local communities experiencing abuses related to natural resource extraction. They built community resilience and skills to demand the respect and protection of their human and ecological rights, ultimately creating a training manual for community rights advocates.

Oil Spill Recovery in Peru

On January 15, 2022, a massive oil spill of nearly 10,000 barrels occurred off the coast of Peru after a volcanic eruption in Tonga sent large waves across the Pacific Ocean to unprepared oil operations on the Peruvian coast. The oil spread to eventually cover 40 square miles of ocean and shoreline, killing thousands of fish and marine animals.

Since the spill, fisherfolk communities throughout the coastline have worked together to hold corporate and state parties accountable for the tremendous impacts the spill has had on their health and livelihoods, as well as to organize clean up efforts to protect the marine ecosystems they depend on. Their response to the oil spill highlights the amplified impact grassroots movements can have when they work collectively towards shared goals. We are proud to have supported three such groups from different parts of the affected coastline:

Asociación de pescadores artesanales de Ancón (APESCAA), a group of artisanal fisherfolk, documented the impact of the oil spill, cleaned up areas where neither the state nor the oil company has reached, consulted with legal advisors, and created a media campaign to draw national and global attention to the spill.
Asociación Mujeres armadoras y emprendedoras de embarcaciones de carga menores artesanales del Puerto de Chancay, a group of women fisherfolk, recovered their livelihoods and restored their right to work in the local environment. The group officially registered their association of fisherwomen shipowners, attained legal advice for a lawsuit against those accountable for the spill, and began to clean up the contamination in their fishing zones.
Asociación de pescadores artesanales de ribera de Aucallama put forward a lawsuit seeking remediation for the loss of their livelihoods. To strengthen their case, they coordinated with other impacted fisherfolk organizations.

Four black elder women are standing outside and waving. They are wearing colourful traditional dresses and headscarves.

Image Credit: Elizabeth Weber

Collaborating for Change: Our Philanthropic Ecosystem

Collaboration has the power to strengthen social movements. No one person, organization, or movement alone can create the systemic change needed to shift our social and environmental context. Moving beyond a scarcity mindset and towards abundance is crucial to ensure that resources flow to grassroots groups in the Global South. As funders, we choose to co-create a community of allied organizations committed to sharing resources, advocating, and collaborating for the sustainable, long-term support of environmental justice movements, because the climate crisis requires each one of us.

Our philanthropic partnerships take many forms, from fiscal sponsorships with the Agroecology Fund, the Environmental Defenders Collaborative, and The Iris Project, to working with regional partner funds like Fondo Tierra Viva in Central America, to participation in funder collaboratives like CLIMA, the Global Action on Disability (GLAD) Network, and Human Rights Funders Network (HRFN), to mobilizing philanthropic action at environmental conferences like COP27. Our partnerships are always centered on building collective knowledge about how to best respond to the needs of grassroots movements and promote our shared mission for a future in which all people live with dignity and in harmony with the environment.

These are a few highlights from our many collaborations and partnerships in 2022.

Supporting Partner Funds: The Environmental Justice Fund of South Africa

For philanthropy to transform, so must the flows of capital. We believe in shifting philanthropic power from Global-North-based foundations to funds based in the Global South. In 2022, with support from Global Greengrants, our Southern Africa Advisory Board, and other critical philanthropic partners, the Environmental Justice Fund (EJF) emerged in South Africa, joining the list of Global-South-based partner funds in the Global Greengrants network. These partner funds are key to shifting philanthropic power and resources to funds based in the Global South. Global Greengrants has supported the growth of many of these funds in recent years, including Samdhana Institute in Southeast Asia and Fondo Tierra Viva in Central America.

“Building on Greengrants’ model of channeling resources directly to grassroots communities, EJF operates as a sister fund to Greengrants’ Southern African Advisory Board,” says the Fund’s Executive Director, Lisa Chamberlain. “The Environmental Justice Fund was set up by activists, for activists in South Africa.”

The new fund aims to strengthen the environmental justice movement in South Africa by providing funding, capacity-building and networking support to community-based organizations and community networks working to advance environmental justice in South Africa. It built on a history of collaboration across grassroots-led, participatory, feminist movements in the region, and it will provide learning for environmental justice funds around the world. Global Greengrants proudly supports this participatory grantmaking fund, which has been in the making for over a decade.

“Environmental harm and climate change are not neutral. Their impacts are felt first, and worst, by women, black communities and people living in the global South. Yet those most affected are extremely knowledgeable about how best to respond. With their health and livelihoods at stake, they are also highly motivated to act. It is at the local level that global commitments are turned into action. As the climate clock ticks, there has never been a more important time for a mobilised and properly resourced environmental justice movement.”

– Lisa Chamberlain, Executive Director of the Environmental Justice Fund

Image Credit: Environmental Justice Fund

The CLIMA Fund’s 5-Year Anniversary

In its first five years, the CLIMA Fund awarded $10 million via 300+ grants to groups in 71 countries since its founding in 2017.

In 2022, CLIMA celebrated five years of funding grassroots leadership by sharing the CLIMA Fund Impact Report: What We're Learning. The report shares lessons from CLIMA’s five years of grantmaking, and launches a new Food & Energy Initiative to support grassroots-driven energy and food transitions worldwide over ten years. CLIMA also released a communications campaign to help funders improve their grassroots environmental justice grantmaking, including a series of videos and infographics exploring power, international solidarity, and scale.

The CLIMA Fund is a collaboration between Global Greengrants Fund, Grassroots International, Thousand Currents, and Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights—a like-minded community funding grassroots movements to cool the planet and build resilience around the globe. This collaboration is a pathway for philanthropic funders to directly support Indigenous, women, and youth-led work building climate resilience and mitigating climate chaos. The CLIMA Fund mobilizes philanthropy to invest in on-the-ground activism leading the most sustainable and effective solutions to our global climate crisis.

Supporting Women Environmental Defenders

Since 2020, Global Greengrants and Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA) have been close allies and partners. Together, we have collaborated on a $100 million UN Women campaign for feminist climate action, and through the support of GAGGA, Global Greengrants has been making annual grants supporting gender-just environmental initiatives in 11 African countries. By working together, our efforts have strengthened the field of feminist climate justice and the impact of our work.

In 2021-2022, GAGGA and Strengthening Accountability in the Global Economy Fund (SAGE), with support from Ford Foundation, conducted research exposing how natural resource extraction both fuels and reinforces structural violence, with particular attention to the impacts on women and girls. The research findings are a tool for building shared understanding of these systemic crises, including the critical needs of women in grassroots groups. The findings also highlight opportunities for civil society and funders across a range of fields to enter into supporting women environmental defenders.

In 2022, GAGGA and SAGE published their findings on how women environmental defenders define and respond to structural violence and what women environmental defenders need from funders and civil society, respectively. Global Greengrants Fund’s own research centers on how funders are supporting women’s environmental defense and addressing the violence women defenders face. It is the first ever landscape analysis of funding at the intersection of gender-based violence and the environment. Keep an eye out for the published research in 2023.

“Through GAGGA I began to understand the gendered impacts of the mining sector or the extractive sector, or even the wildlife sector. You begin to ask yourself if there is water pollution…what does this mean for women and girls, specifically? It means that they are going to be traveling longer in terms of distances to get water. If there's deforestation in their area, it means that firewood, or fuel wood is now scarce and what does that mean? This increases the labor for women and girls, and then you can also begin to understand how [it impacts women] differently.”

– Mutoso, Global Greengrants Southern Africa advisor

Supporting the Power of Youth Activism

In its inaugural year, The Iris Project gave out $30,000 in grants to three youth-led environmental projects.

In 2022, Global Greengrants Fund UK became the fiscal home of The Iris Project, a global environmental initiative that provides grants, capacity-building, and mentorship to young people around the world who are working to protect and restore nature. Youth are a leading force in climate activism yet rarely have equal access to decision-making spaces, funding, or other resources. We are proud to host The Iris Project as part of our work to shift resources to youth-led climate activism globally.

In 2022, in the form of a global annual award, The Iris Project launched The Iris Prize. Led by a global youth advisory panel, three prizes were awarded to three outstanding young people who champion the protection and restoration of nature, and the rights of those who defend it. The three awardees from Indonesia, Kenya, and Malawi are cleaning plastic waste from the ocean, restoring mangroves, countering deforestation, and improving community health. Their work is a testament to the power of youth-led climate activism—especially when youth have the resources to make decisions and actualize their ideas.

Image Credit: Steve Misati

Collective Organizing at COP27

As part of our commitment to shift more and better resources to grassroots movements, Global Greengrants staff members and advisors traveled to Egypt to attend COP27 in November 2022, which convened governments, businesses, and activists in Sharm el-Sheikh to combat the climate crisis. We made grants around the world in preparation for COP27 to ensure the participation of more diverse grassroots leadership at the conference. Given Egypt's widespread repression of civil society and imprisonment of political dissidents, the presence of activists at COP27 was particularly crucial, especially considering many around the world refused participation in COP27 in solidarity with Egyptian activists.

Many of our advisors and partners were present at the conference. Highlights from their events included:

The Oilwatch International Advisory board used funding to analyze Ghana's energy transition policy process, and shared the framework with a wider audience during COP27.
The Agroecology Fund gave a grant to the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) to strengthen the engagement of Indigenous Youth in climate action and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. They also made a grant to support Organisation Béninoise pour la Promotion de l’Agriculture biologique (OBEPAB) in Benin to send representation to the conference.
A member of our Next Generation Advisory Board participated in talks to develop an international financial commitment towards loss and damage. This commitment, eventually announced at COP27, was a major step towards ensuring that countries like the United States who have contributed most to carbon emissions and to creating the climate crisis help pay for the losses and damages suffered by countries facing the deepest climate impacts, who often have contributed the least to creating the crisis.
Our advisors at Rainforest Action Network used funding to support their longtime partner Hakhu Fundacion Amazonia, to help La Negreta Cultural Association in convening the “Citizen Assembly for Climate Justice: Voices from the Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean" in the lead up to COP27. The citizen assembly, which involved over 100 participants, was a starting point to launch proposals that were shaped and presented at COP27.

These were just a few of the many ways that the Greengrants network showed up and worked collectively to advocate for grassroots groups and perspectives.

A collage displaying various images. On the left two women are holding small nursery pots with growing saplings. On the right two black women are smiling and side hugging while standing in front of a body of water.

Image Credits (L to R): Colectivo Cívico Centro Poblado La Tortuga and Yow Ampoto of Friends of the Nation

Our Transformational Journey

The value of a journey lies in the learning, discovery, responsiveness, and ever-evolving opportunities that unfold along the way. Our transformational journey began in 2020, shortly after Laura García became CEO. It was spurred by a number of external and internal factors, including the urgency to redirect resources to the Global South amidst climate funding bottlenecks. This journey of transformation leads us towards our vision: In five years, Global Greengrants will have transformed our culture, structure and processes to better embrace our values. We will be a decentralized network that is strategic and learning. We will achieve greater impact by sharing resources, shifting philanthropy, and deepening collaboration in an intersectional ecosystem for the sustainable, long-term support of environmental justice movements. To achieve this vision we have put in place several processes, including:

Our feminist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practice, launched in 2018, is working to eliminate discrimination and create equal opportunities for all staff, enabling us to uphold justice and build an organization where all can thrive. To this end, we embarked on an ongoing journey of learning and unlearning via workshops, training, and staff sessions.

The Organizational Care Initiative (OCI), launched in 2020, is a staff-led process designed to strengthen individual and holistic care in alignment with working policies, practices, and organizational culture.

In early 2022, we embarked on our Strategic Journey. This ongoing learning and transformation process, as opposed to a static strategic plan, enables us to be more responsive, reflective, and strategic in shifting power and resources to grassroots organizations in the Global South.

Our Self-Organization process began in March 2022 to encourage collaboration and distributed decision-making power. By concentrating on our individual and collective ways of working, we can better facilitate and practice new collaborative competencies in preparation for a new organizational structure.

The People and Culture team and strategy has been designed to support us in building a feminist working culture that is more equitable, globally integrated, and centered on the collective care of our people. In September 2022, we hired a Director of People and Culture, Nuwan Rezel, to help us transform and grow into the organization we want to be in the world.

The Learning Agenda is our process that aims to build an organization and network that is engaged in ongoing learning, continually listening, sharing, and testing our assumptions. To read more, see our section on learning.

Our Ecosystem of Global Integration & Collaboration brings together like-minded organizations to share resources, advocate for change, and collaborate on long-term, sustainable, grassroots solutions. This year we began our US/UK office integration to better align resources, strategy and capacity, while also actively participating in funding collaboratives to influence the philanthropic ecosystem. Read more.

A large group of people are sitting at desks in an indoor classroom.

Image Credit: Enable the Disable Action

2022 Financial Overview

Overall Statistics UK Statistics

Overall Statistics

$15.8M

Total Grants Allocated in 2022

$41.1M

Total Assets

$21.7M

Total Expenses in 2022

UK Statistics

Expenses

Numbers labeled “overall” include Global Greengrants Fund UK, donor-advised funds (DAFs), regional partner funds, and our fiscal sponsorships, in addition to our general operations and grantmaking. UK data highlight the numbers within that overall umbrella that are specific to Global Greengrants UK.

Overall Expenses UK Expenses

Overall Expenses

A pie graph displaying Global Greengrants Fund overall expenses for 2022. 71% ($15,814,209) of expenses went towards grants, 14% ($3,143,084) of expenses went towards program support and 13% ($2,757,774) of expenses went towards fundraising and administration.

UK Expenses

Financials

For U.S. and European-based operations in fiscal year ended June 30, 2022.

For financials from
prior years, visit greengrants.org/financials.

Overall Details UK Details

Overall Details

UK Details

2022 — Annual Report