Environmental justice in land conservation requires practitioners to slow down and consider the foundations that exclude or enable relationships with and control over land. The following stories highlight three organizations using conservation finance strategies to advance environmental justice outcomes.

Each considers the history and context that has led to the land ownership, land use patterns, policy decisions and wealth accumulation in the places where these groups work. In each story, participants have asked: Why is this so? They have spent time listening to community groups and tribal nations to understand what these groups desire, and have worked creatively to identify solutions towards these aims. These organizations are working in the intersections between land and human justice, giving consideration to the intertwined rights of natural and human communities.

In these cases, justice means broadening the definition of conservation to ensure more people benefit, using conservation funds in new ways in order to ensure co-benefits and expanding the group of people with power to make decisions about land use.

  • The story of the Swinomish Forest Bank illustrates how ecosystem markets can be inaccessible to Indigenous peoples due to histories of land fractionation and presents a strategy that respects and acknowledges this history while also creating new legal structures to enable that access.
  • Greenprint Partners’ work with the city of Peoria illustrates how community organizing strategies can use public investments in green infrastructure to support community benefits.
  • The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is using its philanthropic funding to expand the diversity of people working in the conservation field, encouraging conservation organizations to better connect with justice efforts, and funding organizing capacity at a local, grassroots level in BIPOC communities.

Each effort broadens the definition of what is considered a conservation organization and what is imperative for conservation groups to consider.

Read the full article about environmental justice in conservation finance by Katie Michels at GreenBiz.