New York City is often touted as the world’s finance capital – home to hedge funds, the New York Stock Exchange, and its corresponding finance giants. However, for one week in late September, leading voices from local government, NGOs, and the private sector gathered north of the financial district, turning their attention to a different type of finance: large-scale funding for landscapes and climate.
In a room filled with over 200 participants, leaders in the field of finance, restoration, philanthropy and climate took to the stage to explore the challenges and opportunities around funding and implementing large-scale, transformative climate solutions for people and nature. The event, Scaling Climate Solutions Through Landscape And Bioregional Regeneration, was hosted by The Systemic Climate Action Collaborative and 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People during this year’s Climate Week NYC, which has grown to become one of the premier global convenings on climate change.
The challenges of climate change intersect with many if not all, of our world’s most pressing issues – from land degradation to rural poverty to food insecurity and biodiversity loss. Historically, resources and financing allocated to tackling these problems are directed towards singular, project-based solutions that rarely account for impacts felt outside a specific context. Increasingly, we have seen the results of this funding model fall short of what needs to be achieved to safeguard our planet against the threats of a warming planet and dwindling resources. The Systemic Climate Action Collaborative seeks to overcome siloed action for climate solutions with 15 partner organizations. 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People is a collaborative platform with over 40 partners, connected to several hundred landscape partnerships. 1000L aims to reimagine solutions that address each of these challenges in a holistic, long-term context.
Orchestrating Elements for Landscape Level Change
With Climate-KIC’s CEO and event moderator Kirsten Dunlop at the helm, panelists in the first session dove into the many issues at stake for communities in landscapes worldwide and what it will take to mobilize large-scale change. Sam Tabory, Research leader at Collaborating for Resilience (CoRe), spoke to the work of the Common Ground initiative in guiding the development of landscape approaches across India. Tabory highlighted the value of landscape partnerships in facilitating collaborative and integrated efforts across sectors, as well as the many components needed for these partnerships to be effective, including coordinated and cohesive governance, strong links to market, access to training and resources, and the capacity to engage in effective multi-stakeholder dialogue. Tabory stressed that these ingredients are all critical elements in creating an effective enabling environment for landscape partnerships to thrive.
Ultimately, the goal in creating these enabling environments is to facilitate bringing these solutions to scale. Murray Gray, director of strategic initiatives for Metabolic, similarly emphasized the need for integrated action in developing landscape approaches.
“If you don’t look at the wider context embedded within the other orchestrating organizations, the policy environment, the financial environment, local markets, and production, you’re not going to achieve that ambition,” Gray noted.
A particularly essential factor to determining the success in scaling large scale change, Gray offered, was financing.
“Finance is both a huge barrier and a key lever for scaling solutions like regenerative agriculture in a way that addresses not just carbon, but other essential planetary boundaries such as social, economic, livelihoods and health.”
Seth Shames, managing director at EcoAgriculture Partners and lead of 1000L’s finance solutions team, stressed that to truly reimagine how these initiatives are funded, landscape partnerships need to be able to answer fundamental questions about where different sources of funding come from and are directed to, including what kind of financing can be done locally versus nationally and internationally. Often, Shames said, funding exists, but it takes many different forms and has no mechanism for direction. This is a key challenge that the 1000L finance solutions team is working to tackle.
“Our goal with the finance accelerator work is to design a framework and tools for this kind of intermediary space, to help guide the money to where it can potentially go,” Shames noted. “It is essential for a landscape to build a portfolio as a coherent set of activities. It’s designed spatially, sequentially, and for each of them, and ultimately includes analysis of the appropriate source of finance for the particular activity within a landscape.”
Equipping Leaders and Igniting Change through 1000L
Among many themes that surfaced during the afternoon’s session, one, in particular, stood out: true systems change requires collaborative, integrated action, and that action requires a clear yet flexible framework within which to operate. Dr. Sara Scherr, CEO of EcoAgriculture Partners and co-lead of the 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People initiative (1000L), reflected on how Integrated Landscape Management can achieve holistic four returns–social, economic, ecological and inspiration. This approach can offer landscape leaders an adaptive roadmap for implementing landscape solutions to achieve climate goals, highlighting the role of 1000L in proliferating that work across landscapes worldwide since 2019.
“Landscape partnerships face obstacles including the lack of national institutional frameworks for sustained capacity-building, inconsistent funding, and limited coordination between landscape projects and national programs,” Dr. Scherr noted. “1000L aims to ignite change at both local and global levels to support bottom-up, integrated landscape management.”
1000L’s portfolio of work since 2019 has included developing ILM-focused learning modules, designing and testing a finance accelerator to support funding flows toward landscape initiatives, and mobilizing policy shifts that support locally-led movements.
“Local leaders must not only react to immediate challenges but proactively create the frameworks necessary for coordinated, landscape-level interventions,” Scherr said. “By doing so, they can ensure that their territories and regions are prepared to meet the complex challenges of today and tomorrow.”
With five years already under their belts, Dr. Scherr noted that 1000L has made significant progress toward this goal. During the panel session, Rainforest Alliance’s Virginia Foster reflected on the impact of collaboration with 1000L and Rainforest Alliance’s Living Landscapes program in Kenya.
“Mount Kenya has used the 1000 landscape modules throughout 2023 to form the landscape management boards. And the shift we’re seeing in this community is incredibly profound. The community there went from very siloed thinking, and once they had the landscape management boards in place, we saw more of a shared, collaborative vision happening.”
The Mount Kenya team is also now utilizing the 1000 Landscapes finance accelerator and is about to develop a loan grant financing tool to support tea and coffee producers and small and medium enterprises.
Founder of Commonland Willem Ferwerda noted that the collaboration with 1000L brought about an essential narrative and framework that supports the emerging holistic landscape restoration industry—an “industry with a heart”—and inspires people to work together to achieve environmental, social, and economic goals.
Scherr closed out the session with a glimpse into 1000L’s bright future, which will focus on empowering partnerships, mobilizing finance, and building a global movement. While there is a lot of work ahead, the mandate is clear: continue forging a path for scalable, locally-led change.
High Risk, Higher Reward: The Power of Trust in Funding Systems Change
The event closed with an insightful panel discussion that included speakers from a wide range of philanthropic institutions committed to ushering in a new approach to funding—one that champions locally led solutions that endure long-term.
Mariam Kenza-Ali of the Oak Foundation and Betty Kibaara of the Rockefeller Foundation delivered a compelling call for philanthropies to overhaul their funding models—advocating for direct investment in local leaders in a way that demonstrates a deeper and more holistic understanding of their resource needs.
Both also emphasized the need for funders to lean into the growing movement of trust-based philanthropy and entrust local organizations to effectively design and implement impactful programs. Kenza-Ali noted that this would require a significant shift in funding flows.
“In Africa, only about 5% of private foundation funding goes to locally led organizations, including for living landscapes and landscape restoration work. Hundreds of local organizations are on the ground ready to be a conduit for systems change. It just requires the investment.”
Progress is already within sight. Philanthropies are shifting from a focus on individual projects to supporting entire organizations and ecosystems, with a focus on long-term commitments and building trust. Intermediary organizations are working to elevate decision-making power to local, grassroots organizations who more intimately understand the funding needs of those on the ground. One thing is clear: if we’re going to effectively tackle climate challenges, collaborative, locally led solutions must lead the way.
