Vision

Our North Star

We start where trust already exists. Where we are heading is larger.

The Pilot is where we begin — intentionally small, in places where relationships already exist, needs are real, and capital can move with proximity, consent, and care.

The North Star is the system we are working toward: climate and philanthropic capital shaped around what communities actually need — rather than around generic project categories.

Explore our communities See how we work

A Waorani elder in the Amazon rainforest, reading the forest with a hunting spear. — A Waorani elder in Ecuador's Amazon, holding a traditional palm-wood hunting spear and reading the canopy for game trails, fruiting trees, and animal movement — an everyday act of territorial knowledge passed down across generations. The kind of long-standing stewardship our North Star is built to strengthen, by shaping capital around what communities actually need.A Waorani elder reads the canopy for game trails, fruiting trees, and animal movement — an everyday act of territorial knowledge passed down generations. The kind of long-standing stewardship our North Star is built to strengthen.Meet our partnering communities

Vision

Our North Star

We start where trust already exists. Where we are heading is larger.

The Pilot is where we begin — intentionally small, in places where relationships already exist, needs are real, and capital can move with proximity, consent, and care.

The North Star is the system we are working toward: climate and philanthropic capital shaped around what communities actually need — rather than around generic project categories.

Explore our communities See how we work

The larger shift

Climate finance sees projects. Territories are interconnected systems.

The question is not only what project should be funded, it is: which conditions most need strengthening in this context.

Most climate and nature finance still flows to what is easiest to fund or looks good on paper: visible projects, short timelines, clear outputs, institutional readiness.

Durable protection rests on a wider set of conditions than any single project captures — rights recognized, governance strengthened, threats monitored, legal defense resourced, restoration supported, livelihoods made viable.

Without these foundations, protection can backfire. When communities lack the authority to exclude outsiders, restored ecosystems become more attractive to loggers, miners, illegal fishers, and land grabbers — and each ecological gain invites a new wave of pressure.

These dimensions reinforce one another. Rights recognition, governance capacity and territorial protection can facilitate other stewardship activities, but they do not form a universal sequence that every community must follow. In practice, they often interact with every other dimension in parallel.

Most climate and nature finance still flows to what looks good on paper: visible projects, short timelines, clear outputs. But territories are not projects.

Durable protection rests on a wider set of conditions — rights recognized, governance strengthened, threats monitored, legal defense resourced, restoration supported, livelihoods made viable.

These dimensions reinforce one another. Their relevance and emphasis depend on each community's context; they are not a mandatory sequence or a maturity test.

Five interconnected dimensions

A contextual lens for durable protection.

Conventional funding can flatten a territory into a linear project cycle. The five dimensions shown below offer a different lens. They overlap, reinforce one another and may matter differently depending on local priorities and context.

This is part of 's aspirational North Star: help capital recognize the relationships among these dimensions and shape support around what the community identifies as relevant. It does not imply that TAF currently offers a single administered capital pathway across all five dimensions.

Our aspirational North Star is to help capital recognize the relationships among these dimensions and respond to locally defined priorities. They are not stages or a maturity ranking.

The community, as conventional capital sees it

Beneficiary identified
Proposal accepted
Activities delivered
Outputs reported
Grant closed

The same territory, seen differently — with relevance and emphasis set by context and community-defined priorities.

THE SAME TERRITORY, THROUGH FIVE INTERCONNECTED DIMENSIONS

Community-defined priorities · territorial context

Interconnected dimension

Rights & Recognition

Securing the legal and political ground for territorial protection.

Connected to every other dimension — no first, no last.

Specialist partners, local leadership, legal support, and monitoring tools may be needed in different combinations, depending on context — built on institutional partnerships that reinforce each other. This is something we aim to proactively work towards as well.Think you could be our partner for these long-term ambitions? Reach out to hello@territoryallies.org or fill our contact form.

Community-defined priorities · territorial context

Interconnected dimension

Rights & Recognition

Securing the legal and political ground for territorial protection.

Connected to every other dimension — no first, no last.

IMPORTANT NOTESpecialist partners, local leadership, legal support, and monitoring tools may be needed depending on context. Think you can provide the support we're looking for and curious about exploring a partnership? Contact us.

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The North Star

Toward governance-sensitive capital.

In this vision, capital is guided not only by ecological importance or project availability, but by community legitimacy, rights, locally defined priorities, context and the real constraints that matter most in that context.

Our long-term goal

Governance-sensitive capital.

The name gives to a practice we hope, over time, to see adopted more widely across conservation finance.

It does not rank communities by how closely they fit conventional institutional expectations. It asks how capital can help build the conditions that make durable stewardship possible.

Over the long term, we hope to help make this an expectation among funders and partners: capital that strengthens community autonomy rather than bypassing it, and supports the wider conditions for stewardship, not only the visible project.

What changes

From isolated funding to context-responsive support.

Legacy model

From project funding

The shift

To territorial strengthening

Funding should not only deliver activities. It should strengthen the conditions that allow communities to protect ecosystems over time.

Legacy model

From offset logic

The shift

To stewardship logic

The goal is not to compensate elsewhere. It is to support the people already defending critical ecosystems where they stand.

Legacy model

From funder-driven agendas

The shift

To community-defined priorities

Capital should respond to what communities identify as necessary, not force local realities into pre-written templates.

Legacy model

From eligibility filters

The shift

To governance-building support

Communities should not be excluded because they are not yet institutionally legible. In many cases, that is exactly where support is needed.

What we believe

The convictions behind our North Star.

Anchor conviction

Durable climate impact depends on durable governance. Durable governance depends on rights. Rights are won politically and legally — and capital's job is to make that fight survivable and winnable.

02
Context and community-defined priorities should shape how capital is sequenced — never whether it arrives at all.
03
Money should never buy influence — only remove the penalty of participation.
04
Capital should reach communities directly, unless effectiveness genuinely depends on neutrality, credibility, or safety.
05
Governance is not overhead — it's what turns funding into protection that lasts.
06
A territory is a governed homeland, not a project site.
07
Good intentions don't fix bad sequencing: capital that comes too early, too late, or in the wrong form misses the bottleneck.

Durable climate impact depends on durable governance. Durable governance depends on rights. Rights are won politically and legally — and capital's job is to make that fight survivable and winnable.

Context and community-defined priorities should shape how capital is sequenced — never whether it arrives at all.

Money should never buy influence — only remove the penalty of participation.

Capital should reach communities directly, unless effectiveness genuinely depends on neutrality, credibility, or safety.

Governance is not overhead — it's what turns funding into protection that lasts.

A territory is a governed homeland, not a project site.

Good intentions don't fix bad sequencing: capital that comes too early, too late, or in the wrong form misses the bottleneck.

What comes next

Resonate with these convictions?Help build what comes next.

We are starting small, with real relationships and real territories. If these convictions resonate with you, the next step is a conversation.We are starting small, with real relationships and real territories. The ambition is larger: a better way for capital to support community-led stewardship.

Become an ally Meet the communities