Climate Rights Funder Collaborative

Climate change undermines a broad range of internationally protected rights related to health, water, food, shelter, migration, and more. Often, the worst effects of climate change are felt by groups whose rights are already under threat. And, as the climate agenda gains momentum, some big greenhouse gas reduction projects are proving to be just as harmful to human rights as old dirty oil and gas projects.

The Climate Rights Funders Collaborative was inspired by the Peoples’ Summit on Climate Rights and Human Survival held in October 2019. Created by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, Oak Foundation, Open Society Foundations, True Costs Initiative, Wallace Global Fund, and one anonymous donor, it was designed to bring together the human rights and environment funder communities to co-create strategies, incubate and test ideas, align funding, and pool resources.

With the aim of strengthening national and trans-national climate movements through use of a human rights approach, members of the collaborative pooled $650,000 to create a Climate Rights sub-fund within the CJRF. In 2020, this sub-fund provided modest seed grants to eight innovative organizations working at the intersection of climate change and human rights. Collaborative members also aligned $500,000 in grants to support an Indigenous campaign called the Right Energy Partnership. 

The Collaborative made the following grants:

Gender Link

The SADC Gender Protocol Alliance, a network of 15 national women’s rights organisations and nine regional organisations will continue to advocate for a stand-alone article on climate justice in the SADC Gender Protocol. The action includes capacity building on gender and climate rights, specific country campaigns on climate justice and a research publication on gender and climate justice in the region

Forest Peoples Programme: Zero Tolerance Initiative

 The Zero Tolerance Initiative is a global coalition led by indigenous peoples, local community representatives and supportive NGOs working collectively to address the root causes of killings and violence against human rights defenders linked to global supply chains. The initiative works to support communities in enhancing their capacity to defend themselves and to hold companies and investors to account. It supports them to engage meaningfully with States, businesses and investors to seek verifiable and effective zero tolerance commitments against the reprisals of environmental human rights defenders, and the implementation of policies which realise those commitments.

Engajamundo

The project "Supporting Indigenous Youth Climate Activists" will build the capacity of young indigenous people in Brazil on advocacy tools and digital democracy tools, by a joint curriculum of Engajamundo and Digital Democracy, aiming at the protection of territories and implementation of socioenvironmental agendas, as well as empowering indigenous youth as territory leaders and changemakers. The project will build a new curriculum combining Engajamundo’s experience in training indigenous youth leaders on advocacy tools (including mobilizations, activism and communications), with Digital Democracy’s tools which work offline, are easy-to-use, and were built in partnership with indigenous communities in Latin America.

Action for Sustainable Development: Zovu- Frontline stories of climate and social justice

Zovu is a new initiative of Action for Sustainable Development to share grassroots stories of transformation. Action for Sustainable Development connects over 3,300 community groups and activists on questions of sustainability, climate, rights and social justice around the world (80% based in the Global South). Through ‘Zovu’ we will work directly with up to 20 movements, activists and organisations in most affected communities to co-produce and amplify their stories of transformative change. Activists will be mentored and assisted to capture audiovisual material about their initiatives and communities as well as to craft stories that speak to the relevance of local solutions to global challenges. We will identify opportunities to share these stories with key decision-makers and ensure the voices of local communities can be heard at major international forums. Here's the link to the project page: https://action4sd.org/zovu/

FIMA

Transición Justa en Latinoamérica (TJLA) is a Project held by chilean organizations, part of the Civil Society for Climate Action (SCAC). The project aims to create collective framing of the concept of a "Just Transition" with a Latinamerican perspective, with specific emphasis of those most affected by energy and economic transitions taking place in the region. To achieve this, the TJLA team will organize a set of digital assemblies for Chile, Argentina, Perú and Bolivia, that aim to construct through dialogue shared meaning to the concept. In addition to this, the project will culminate with the creation of a digital toolkit that will include the systematization of the dialogues, a collaboratively created map of transitions and its added conflicts, and other useful tools for organizations interested in joining the movement.

Environmental Justice Foundation

The coalition is working to show the human face of the climate emergency, raising awareness of climate refugees among Taiwanese citizens and decision-makers. In addition, in order to mitigate climate change, the coalition is campaigning in Taiwan for divestment from fossil fuels, highlighting the accountability of investors. Throughout this, the coalition will share its activities and learnings with partners across Asia to support similar movements across the region.

PICAN

The Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) is campaigning for the UN General Assembly to adopt a resolution requesting the International Court of Justice to provide an Advisory Opinion on the obligations of states under international law to protect the human rights of present and future generations against the adverse effects of climate change. PICAN is working collaboratively with government and non-government actors in the Pacific to ask the highest court on the planet to provide legal precedents and advice on how states may be held responsible for the loss and damage they have caused due to unabated greenhouse gas emissions and subsequent human-induced global heating. The action is enabling outcome-oriented policy dialogues among leading legal and climate science experts and allowing PICAN to serve as an effective platform for collaboration, policy influencing and cross-learning on climate and human rights action.

Success Capital

Countering the Backlash is centered on grassroots movement building on climate and reproductive rights issues across different contexts and influencing policy through advocacy campaigns to counter challenges to climate and reproductive rights denialism, misinformation and backlash.