Much of the world does not know how close the Buryat cow has come to extinction. For decades, misguided Soviet policies favoured allegedly higher-yielding Western breeds over its shaggy cousin. Less hardy, the newly introduced species required expensive heating, fodder, and medicines, literally gnawing away the Buryats’ livelihoods and landscape. Now, Buryat communities are joining forces with local researchers and grassroots organizations to revive the native cow, restoring their food system and depleted ecosystems, and reclaiming their rights, livelihoods, and identity.

This recovery was made possible in part thanks to philanthropic organizations like the Agroecology Fund and Global Greengrants Fund which fund community-led change processes and rights-based environmental justice.

In 2021, these two funders partnered up, recognizing how critical it is to support agroecology-based food systems as a key climate solution which opens up enormous opportunities for movement-building. The funds also provide models for how to fund grassroots climate solutions, and how to fund them well.

Together, the Agroecology Fund and Global Greengrants Fund have reaffirmed their commitment to uphold people’s rights to land, water, and natural resources, as well as the sustainable management of those resources. Sharing a common approach and commitment to agroecology; farming with nature, rather than using nature – they aim to further grassroots solutions to climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity.

Increasing the flow of funds to critical Indigenous and grassroots stewards of ecosystems and natural resources – like the Buryat people – is a long overdue shift in philanthropy. 

The dangers of relying on fossil fuel-based pesticides, imported fertilizers and other inputs in this time of climate instability and political conflict have never been clearer. From the steppes of Central Asia to rainforests in the Amazon, the Philippines, and West Africa, unchecked extraction is threatening once abundant ecosystems. Oil, logging, and agri-business companies continue to degrade soils, water, and biodiversity by practicing deforestation, mono-cultivation, and pesticide poisoning. Lax or biased policies encourage land grabbing and violence against local communities and Indigenous peoples. All these industrial agriculture activities are responsible for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Read the full article about agroecology by Daniel Moss and Laura García at Alliance Magazine.