Both ENDS
In recent years, Both ENDS has received an additional contribution of €875,000 from the Postcode Lottery for the Autonomy & Resilience Fund (2022–2025), implemented in collaboration with the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA). This support was essential because female environmental rights defenders around the world are increasingly facing climate change, repression and shrinking civil space. With this contribution, Both ENDS supports female activists and their communities with flexible, trust-based funding, enabling them to develop their own solutions to urgent environmental and climate problems.
Because of the close relationship with their living environment, local communities often have the best ideas for the sustainable and equitable use and governance of land, water and forests. These environmentally just practices and processes successfully protect and restore ecosystems and address climate change. They are essential in the light of the multiple crises the world faces, but are in dire need of financial and policy support.
At the UNCCD COP14 in India, which is taking place from 2-13 September 2019, Both ENDS is co-organising a number of side events.
Trust builds trust. That is what I have learned from how Both ENDS works - within our team, with partners in joint strategies and advocacy, and in our relationships with partners as a funder. Trust is the foundation. It is what allows compassion to grow, what gives rise to hope, and what fuels real solidarity. This is especially powerful in contrast to the prevailing global trend of political and international leaders who prioritize hard measures and self-interest, ignoring relations of trust. It is even more reason for us to share what we have experienced when we put trust first.
Last week, GAGGA, the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action, with Both ENDS as one of the Alliance members, together with FCAM and Mama Cash, organised its Global Meeting in Indonesia. The goal of this meeting was to recognise, celebrate and look ahead at cross-movement and cross-regional connections, to strengthen the collective power of gender, climate and environmental justice movements.
In various countries in the Sahel, vast tracts of degraded land have been restored by the local population by nurturing what spontaneously springs from the soil. They do this using a method called 'Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR)'.
Both ENDS has a new 5-year strategy. It is set up along three strategic pathways that together lay the foundation for our vision to become reality: 1) An empowered and influential civil society; 2) Systemic change in public institutions that prioritizes people and planet; and 3) Transformative practices are the norm.
