Natural Resources and Climate Justice (Grant Program)

Natural Resources and Climate Justice is a grant program from the Ford Foundation that supports efforts to ensure historically disadvantaged communities, Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant peoples, and rural communities of the Global South are centered in climate justice solutions.

The program funds work to strengthen land tenure and resource rights, advocate for fair and inclusive energy transition processes, build capacity of social movements to influence policy, and engage government, civil society, and private sector actors. Ford Foundation awarded $768 million in total funding across all programs in 2024.

Eligible applicants are organizations working to fight inequality and advance climate and environmental justice, particularly those led by affected communities.

Natural Resources and Climate Justice - Ford Foundation Natural Resources and Climate Justice As the climate crisis escalates, the extraction of natural resources—such as oil, gas, minerals and forests— continues to dispossess and marginalize land-connected communities, driving inequality and injustice.

Today, the race to mitigate climate change with rapid shifts to renewable energy, transition mineral extraction, and market-based forest protection strategies, for example, risks reproducing and deepening these same injustices by further exploiting communities whose rights are not secure. There is clear global recognition that the decarbonization of energy systems and the protection of forests are essential in fighting climate change.

Evidence shows that under many scenarios, ensuring that local communities have the power and security to manage their lands is an affordable and effective approach for forest and biodiversity conservation that improves community livelihoods.

The transition away from fossil fuel-dependent energy systems and towards clean, sustainable models offers a unique chance to deliver justice for communities that have historically suffered harm rather than benefited from these systems. The viability of these transitions is also often enhanced when communities participate fully in their design and governance.

Our goal is to ensure that the priorities of historically disadvantaged communities and land-connected peoples from the Global South–including Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant peoples, and rural communities–are reflected in policies and practices to advance climate justice globally.

We work to put the people most affected by climate injustice at the center of solutions by supporting efforts to strengthen the land tenure and resource rights of land-connected communities, advocating for energy transition processes that are fair and inclusive, strengthening the capacity of social movements and community organizations to press for their rights and influence policies, and engaging with government, civil society, research-based and private sector actors committed to these same goals.

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