To address the climate and ecological crisis, Patagonia sees great potential in supporting local and Indigenous communities who have stewarded natural systems for millennia. This approach has also been underfunded. That’s why Patagonia created the Indigenous-led Home Planet Fund and committed $20 million to its launch.

Home Planet Fund is an independent nonprofit that partners with communities in remote geographies to develop and scale nature-based solutions. These communities are chosen for their outsized impact on the climate and biodiversity crisis, and the programs build ecological resilience while boosting local economies. Home Planet Fund’s pastoralist partners across East Africa, for example, maintain critical carbon sinks with their grasslands; with Home Planet Fund’s support, they annually capture the carbon equivalent to the weight of every wild mammal on Earth.

Home Planet Fund also practices philanthropy differently. Thanks to Patagonia’s original funding, 100 percent of donations made by the public go directly to Home Planet Fund partners, and these investments in local knowledge can generate global impacts. The fund trusts its partners to make their own decisions; its partners are, after all, the original experts of their homelands and waters. Indigenous peoples represent only about 5 percent of the global population, yet steward at least 37 percent of Earth’s thriving, intact ecosystems. There’s a lot of opportunity.

In less than three years, Home Planet Fund has seen positive outcomes from partners in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the Bartang Valley of Tajikistan and the Badakhshan Province of Afghanistan. The same is true across several island nations, from Fiji to the Solomons to Papua New Guinea. Home Planet Fund’s partners around the globe now steward 1 percent of Earth’s lands and waters, and the fund aims for a tenfold increase by 2030.

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