Rockefeller Foundation Invests in Nature to Support Indigenous Peoples and Rainforest Communities at COP29

• $500,000 grant to Health In Harmony to catalyze private sector investments toward climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience
• Represents latest funding from The Rockefeller Foundation to address climate change and biodiversity loss

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — As part of “Nature and Biodiversity / Indigenous People / Gender Equality / Oceans and Coastal Zones Day” at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan (COP29), The Rockefeller Foundation announced a $500,000 grant to Health In Harmony (HIH). HIH is a global climate nonprofit that collaborates with Indigenous Peoples and local communities to scale investments and implement their environmental solutions in Indonesia, Panama, Brazil, Madagascar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2025. With funding from The Rockefeller Foundation, the organization will strengthen the link between environmental conservation and human health by partnering with rainforest communities in the Brazilian Amazon and investing directly in their solutions.

Less than 1% of global climate finance annually goes directly to Indigenous peoples and local communities, despite Indigenous communities being a critical steward of the land globally and their solutions are central to avoiding rainforest deforestation. This grant is a part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s broader effort to mobilize private sector resources for people-centered climate solutions, including mainstreaming investment in nature, with a focus on nature dependencies and frontline communities.

“Indigenous solutions provide unparalleled benefits for carbon and biodiversity protection, yet current nature-based tools often disregard their rights and self-determination, offering little to no direct benefits to these communities. Despite their critical role, they are extremely underfunded,” said Ashley Emerson, co-CEO of Business & Scale at Health In Harmony. “This is a missed opportunity to develop new financing models that amplify community-driven solutions—supporting planetary health, Indigenous self-determination, and nature-positive outcomes. We must actively listen and invest in their solutions.”

HIH collaborates with local partners throughout the tropics to reverse deforestation, aiming to combat the global climate and nature crises. Reciprocity-based investments in Indigenous Peoples, Afro Descendent, and local communities’ self-designed systems and solutions can reverse the loss of tropical rainforests. The Rockefeller Foundation’s grant will support market infrastructure to drive adoption, accountability, and integrity of climate and nature solutions in the Brazilian Amazon. In addition, HIH is advancing carbon and biodiversity monitoring—critical areas that remain underfunded and hampered by a lack of robust tools, data, and community-led solutions, in collaboration with Woodwell Climate Research Center, Pawanka Fund, and WildMon.

“Nature’s health determines people’s health—and the quality of the food we eat, the jobs we have, the economies that shape our well-being, and so much more,” said Maria Kozloski, Senior Vice President of Innovative Finance at The Rockefeller Foundation. “The Rockefeller Foundation is investing in nature to help protect and preserve ecosystems while accelerating a green transition that centers people and communities. We are excited that Health In Harmony is helping drive the adoption of climate and nature solutions and increasing capital flows to underinvested areas.”

Nature-based solutions with safeguards are estimated to provide 37% of climate change mitigation until 2030 needed to meet the goal of keeping climate warming below 2°C, with likely co-benefits for biodiversity, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

This grant is the latest funding from The Rockefeller Foundation to address climate change and biodiversity loss, which includes, but is not limited to:

• Investing in native species reforestation through The Amazon Reforestation Fund. The Rockefeller Foundation committed catalytic capital to support Mombak, a Brazilian carbon removal startup, in its $100 million Amazon reforestation strategy. Mombak is supporting local communities seeking to become one of the largest biodiverse reforestation efforts for carbon removal in the region. Microsoft Corp has also agreed to purchase as many as 1.5 million carbon removal credits generated through its reforestation of degraded Brazilian pastureland using native and biodiverse tree species. In the summer of 2024, The World Bank issued its largest outcome bond, $255 million, for reforestation efforts, including Mombak’s. This bond is the first of its kind to link investors’ returns to carbon removal from the atmosphere through reforestation in the Amazon.
• Mobilizing private capital for investments in forest restoration and fire risk mitigation. The Zero Gap Fund (ZGF), a $30 million partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to promote investment in scalable and innovative impact-driven investment solutions, invested in Blue Forest’s Forest Resilience Bond I (FRB I), which uses a public private partnership structure to mobilize private capital for investments in forest restoration and fire risk mitigation to protect communities and ecosystems on public lands. The FRB I, which reached maturation in December 2023, has helped avoid 27,280 metric tons of CO2e emissions, restore 2,675 acres of terrestrial ecosystems, and protect 27,601 acre-feet of water supply.
• Pooling and accelerating financing into ecological restoration projects. In 2023, The ZGF invested in Blue Forest’s FRB Catalyst Facility, which leverages the public private partnership structure of the Forest Resilience Bond to create a pooled, revolving investment facility to accelerate the financing of critical ecological restoration projects. As of the end of 2023, their efforts have helped avoid more than 26,300 metric tons of CO2e emissions.
• Catalyzing regenerative agriculture practices. In 2023, the ZGF invested in Trailhead Capital’s Regeneration Fund I, which supports businesses that develop sustainable and regenerative practices in agriculture and food systems, via carbon sequestration, biodiversity, land preservation, water conservation, food waste, and quality. The Regeneration Fund I has conserved 411 million gallons of water, avoided more than 11,000 tons of CO2e emissions, and impacted 3.4 million acres of land across their portfolio companies.
• Building a diversified portfolio of high-quality nature-based solutions. The Rockefeller Foundation has grant-funded, alongside other partners, The Nature Conservancy’s Natural Climate Solutions Accelerator, which stewards projects from first concept to investability with technical and financial support through its global portfolio, including approximately 25% Latin America exposure.
• Strengthening food security and regenerative agricultural solutions. The Rockefeller Foundation provided grant funding to Fundación para la Aplicación y Enseñanza de la Ciencia (FUNDAEC) to promote locally-centered agroecology to address food insecurity for impoverished communities in Colombia and to CIMMYT, a non-profit international organization, dedicated to improving production systems and basic cereals for the future. The Rockefeller Foundation’s grant to CIMMYT is in support of research on regenerative agricultural practices on farms in Mexico.
• Scaling access to environmental monitoring technologies. The Rockefeller Foundation’s grant to Earth Genome is expanding access to environmental monitoring technologies for indigenous communities across the world so they can more effectively protect their local environments and manage their natural heritage.
• Identifying regenerative agriculture financing instruments. Pollination and Transformational Investing in Food Systems (TIFS), with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, canvassed the market of available resources for financing regenerative agriculture solutions. Released in June, Financing Regenerative Agriculture offers insights from key market participants and provides interested stakeholders with a broad catalogue of the innovative regenerative financing instruments currently being deployed globally.
• Supporting solutions to scale U.S. regenerative organic agriculture. The Rockefeller Foundation invested in Mad Capital‘s Perennial Fund II, which launched in March to provide farmers in the United States with tailored loans that help them transition to regenerative organic farmland while also increasing farmer profits.

About Health In Harmony
Health In Harmony (HIH) works alongside Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples to realize community-led climate and nature crisis solutions. Currently, HIH supports 135,000 community members to have a significant impact on protecting half of the world’s tropical rainforests. HIH is expanding globally to work alongside tropical rainforest communities through an ecosystem of partners including Earth Finance, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Indonesia Ministry of Health, Savimbo, If Not Us Then Who, Silverback Earth, and FSC Indigenous Foundation To learn more, please visit www.healthinharmony.org and follow us on Instagram @healthinharmonyngo.

About The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a pioneering philanthropy built on collaborative partnerships at the frontiers of science, technology, and innovation that enable individuals, families, and communities to flourish. We make big bets to promote the well-being of humanity and make opportunity universal and sustainable. Our focus is on scaling renewable energy for all, stimulating economic mobility, and ensuring equitable access to health care and nutritious food. For more information, sign up for our newsletter at www.rockefellerfoundation.org and follow us on Twitter @RockefellerFdn.

SOURCE The Rockefeller Foundation

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