Four Indigenous communities in Bolivia’s Madidi Landscape now have a dedicated fund to secure their land rights, protect their territories, and carry out the conservation work they have been doing for generations. Launched on Oct. 30, 2024 C.E., the fund has attracted $650,000 in initial support from the Bezos Earth Fund, with additional sources under exploration — a significant step toward getting conservation money into the hands of the people who need it most.
At a glance
- Indigenous Life Plans: The Tacana, Lecos, T’simane Mosetene, and San José de Uchupiamonas communities have used these territorial management plans for 20 years to guide conservation, resource use, and community goals — updated every five years through community assemblies.
- Madidi biodiversity: The 1,895,750-hectare national park — three times the size of the Grand Canyon — has been classified by Wildlife Conservation Society researchers as the most biodiverse terrestrial protected area in the world, with 9,193 recorded species.
- Indigenous-led governance: All funding decisions are made by an Indigenous-led board appointed by each territorial organization, with quarterly reporting to Bolivia’s Foundation for the Development of the National System of Protected Areas (FUNDESNAP) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
Why Madidi matters
Madidi National Park sits in northwestern Bolivia, running from Andean glaciers down into the Amazon basin. Scientists have documented more plant, butterfly, bird, and mammal species here than anywhere else on Earth. That list includes the Andean condor (Vultur gryphus), the Andean bear (Tremarctos ornatus), and the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus).
Yet the park faces serious pressure. Illegal gold mining has crept into its borders, and campaigners warn that large infrastructure projects — including oil drilling proposals — could affect up to 60% of the park’s biodiversity by altering watersheds and habitats. The communities living inside and alongside Madidi are the park’s most consistent line of defense.
“The management of protected areas, the conservation of biodiversity and the fight against climate change all depend on these Indigenous organizations,” said Sergio Eguino, executive director of FUNDESNAP. “Unlike other actors, they are the ones who live there and are directly affected.”
How the fund works
Money collected through the fund will be managed by FUNDESNAP, with technical support from WCS. But the governance structure is explicitly Indigenous-led. Each of the four territorial organizations appoints members to the decision-making board, which controls how funds are allocated. Leaders provide quarterly technical and financial reports, creating a layer of transparency that supports both accountability and trust-building with donors.
This design reflects a broader problem in conservation finance. Indigenous peoples currently steward nearly 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, yet research from the Forest Tenure Funders Group shows that as little as 2.1% of conservation funding actually reaches Indigenous communities directly. Most flows through international NGOs, development banks, and consultancies — intermediaries that donors find easier to work with, but that add distance between money and impact.
This fund aims to close that gap. “It is one of the few that sees Indigenous peoples as managers and administrators of their own resources,” Eguino told Mongabay.
Decades of planning, now resourced
The Indigenous Life Plans behind this fund are not new documents. Communities first drafted them 20 years ago in a series of workshops and assemblies, identifying shared goals for territorial management, natural resource use, monitoring, and capacity-building. WCS technicians and community leaders have updated them every five years since.
What has been missing is reliable funding to act on them. Gonzalo Oliver Terrazas, president of the regional Indigenous organization CPILAP and a member of the Tacana community, described the fund as a chance to close that gap. “For many years, we have been working on consolidating the territorial management of our Indigenous territories,” he said. “This fund will help us put into practice our territorial management plan.”
WCS has also provided training in administrative, financial, and operational skills to help communities manage resources and meet the objectives laid out in their plans. Oliver sees this as a long-term investment. “As Indigenous peoples, we have learned to develop powerful tools, such as planning and territorial management,” he said. “I believe that these funds will help us enhance, improve and strengthen our capacities.”
A model worth watching
Laura Aileen Sauls, a professor of global affairs at George Mason University, told Mongabay that the initiative “could lead to improved territorial management by enhancing rights, tenure security and livelihoods.” She added that success depends on consistent funding and on Indigenous groups retaining the right to refuse projects that do not serve their needs.
That conditionality matters. Community-managed conservation works best when communities hold genuine authority — not just advisory roles. The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bolivia program, led by director Lilian Painter, has emphasized that Indigenous authority over territorial decisions is central to the fund’s design, not an afterthought.
Research published in Global Environmental Change in 2024 C.E. supports this approach, finding that Indigenous lands with secure tenure show measurably lower forest loss in deforestation hotspots — direct evidence that land rights and conservation outcomes are linked.
The fund is still in its early stages, and the gap between initial commitments and long-term reliable financing remains a real challenge. But for four communities that have spent two decades planning for the future of one of Earth’s most remarkable landscapes, this is a concrete step toward having the resources to match their vision.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous land rights reach 160 million hectares ahead of COP30
- Ghana expands marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Bolivia
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