This week, the Home Planet Fund launches. It is a new independent nonprofit that supports local and Indigenous communities who work in concert with nature to stop climate breakdown and was started with $20 million in seed funding from outdoor apparel company, Patagonia.
Home Planet Fund will operate as an independent public charity—a 501(c)(3)—that can receive contributions from other donors, large and small.
Thanks to the seed funding from Patagonia, every dollar received from outside donations will go directly to local and Indigenous groups working on regenerative agriculture, reforestation and other nature-based solutions to the climate and environmental crisis. Home Planet Fund will also let the communities it invests in make their own decisions.
“We trust Indigenous Peoples,” says Dilafruz Khonikboyeva, executive director of the Home Planet Fund. “Indigenous Peoples and tribal communities have been doing this work for centuries, but they’re not being supported well-enough. The Home Planet Fund will vet the communities we invest in and then we will get out of the way, so they can decide how to spend the investment best. No long grant applications. No need to gather data to relentlessly track progress. No strings attached. They already know what works, and they know their communities. We trust them.
Radical trust in its partners will be matched with a willingness to take risks. Home Planet Fund will work in fragile and rural places others can’t or won’t.
Why go this route? Because Indigenous Peoples manage more than 24% of the world’s land, representing 40% of the intact landscapes left on the planet—and a staggering 80% of the world’s biodiversity. These communities feel the impacts of the climate crisis firsthand, while contributing practically nothing to it—and they’re pursuing brilliantly simple solutions that can help mitigate it.
Home Planet Fund is collaborating with Indigenous-led NGOs on four continents, to support priorities determined by the communities themselves:
- Asia: Tajikistan
- Africa: Kenya + Tanzania + Uganda
- Oceania: Pacific Islands
- North America: Alaska, USA
Funds will be used to expand the traditional practices of Maasai pastoralists in Kenya and Tanzania, promote the wisdom of Pacific Islanders in Fiji and Vanuatu, support indigenous farming practices in Tajikistan, and so much more.
The goal is not only to support these critical efforts, but to spread the knowledge of Indigenous People all over the globe. Although many of their techniques are ancient, they are not unsophisticated: Indigenous practices reflect a deep understanding of the natural world, honed over generations.
Learn more at www.homeplanetfund.org
