Unlocking Pathways: How Funding for Climate, Nature, and People Lands in Global South Territories

The Global South House represented a milestone at COP30 in Belém (PA), consolidating the debate on financing for climate, nature, and people. The program spanned seven days, featuring the direct participation of 84 organizations and 109 panelists from 50 countries across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

The panel Unlocking Pathways: Collaborative Arrangements to Ground Climate Finance at Scale in the Territories addressed the urgency of reforming the global architecture of philanthropy and social investment. On November 12, 2025, the roundtable brought together leaders from local funds and representatives from institutions such as BNDES, Caixa Econômica Federal, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

In practice, collaborative arrangements are partnership models that connect different levels of the financial ecosystem. Instead of a rigid and hierarchical structure, they function as trust networks where large institutions leverage the capillarity and expertise of local funds to ensure resources reach the territories with agility. This allows large volumes of capital to be distributed in small amounts, respecting the pace and ways of life of the communities.

The dialogue emphasized the need for communities to be the subjects of their own solutions. The founder of Fundo Casa Socioambiental, Maria Amalia Souza, reinforced this vision. “It is not enough just to support projects. There is still a lack of direct access to resources for communities so they can be the subjects of their solutions.” According to her, Fundo Casa’s role has been to build the foundations to make this protagonism financially viable.

“Turtles” in Financing

The turtle metaphor was presented by the executive coordinator of Fondo Emerger, Juan Camilo Mira, to illustrate the role of local funds as resilient guides that lead grassroots communities through complex bureaucracies and allow them to reach the great currents of international financing.

“A fund can be a very interesting mechanism to mobilize resources that are trapped in the immobility of public procurement,” highlighted the Colombian coordinator. For him, the role of these arrangements is to be like turtles, helping people join the tide of global financing.

In Brazil, Rodrigo Noleto, coordinator of the Fundo Ecos at the Institute for Society, Population, and Nature (ISPN), recalled that this construction is a 30-year legacy, started at Rio 92. “We have been contributing to building this new financing architecture that truly takes resources to the territories,” he stated.

The dialogue with the public sector confirmed that institutional innovation is a path of no return. Fernanda Garavini, head of the Management Department of the Amazon Fund (managed by BNDES), underlined that the goal is simplification. “We need solutions that provide more agility and allow for more direct support, based on the results we already have in partnerships with local funds,” she pointed out.

Similarly, Luis Felipe Bismarchi, National Superintendent of Impact Business and Sustainability at Caixa Econômica Federal, pointed to the search for equity through regenerative and distributed financing, where selection and access criteria are, above all, fair.

Closing the panel, IDB’s Amazon sector specialist, Ellen Acioli, shared the historic milestone of the co-creation of the Fondo Amazonía para la Vida, led by the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA). “For the first time in more than 60 years, we are working directly with territorial organizations in a collaborative model that makes a huge difference on the ground,” she noted.

The meeting reaffirmed that The Global South House is the space to transform commitments into action, uniting States and Traditional Peoples and Communities (TPCs) in favor of Buen Vivir (Good Living).