COP29: Rockefeller Foundation Announces HIH Grant
The Rockefeller Foundation has announced a major new $500,000 grant to Health In Harmony to catalyze private sector investments toward climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience.
Health In Harmony is delighted to share that the grant, announced during COP29 – the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan – will strengthen our work linking environmental conservation and human health by partnering with rainforest communities in the Brazilian Amazon and investing directly in their solutions.
Currently, 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 is a missed opportunity to develop new financing models that amplify community-driven solutions—supporting planetary health, Indigenous self-determination, and nature-positive outcomes,” said Ashley Emerson, co-CEO of Business & Scale at Health In Harmony. “We must actively listen and invest in their solutions.”
At COP29, Indigenous delegates voiced concerns over how carbon trading – allowing countries and corporations to offset their emissions by investing in carbon-reducing projects elsewhere – could threaten Indigenous sovereignty over traditional territories, and lead to displacement.
With this in mind, HIH collaborates with local partners and Indigenous-led organizations throughout the tropics to reverse deforestation, aiming to combat the global climate and nature crises. Reciprocity-based investments in Indigenous Peoples, Afrodescendant, 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.
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. It is part of an overall $1 million grant split between Health In Harmony and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).
To learn more, please read the full press release here.