Promoting people-driven solutions
Our goal is a massive upscaling and mainstreaming of bottom-up, planet-friendly practices, supported by favourable governance systems and availability of financial resources. There are many examples of successful community-led livelihood models based on collective participation, healthy ecosystems, gender justice and a vision of wellbeing beyond individual wealth. Approaches such as Regreening focus on ecosystem restoration led by forest communities or local farmers in the Sahel. These initiatives recognise and respect the interdependence between human prosperity and healthy ecosystems. They help to empower women, youth and other groups that often lack access to decision-making processes and tend to be excluded from land, water and forest management to assert their agency and rights to self-determination.
To achieve this goal, there needs to be financial and policy support for community-led initiatives. Together with our partners, we advocate for such supportive policies and financial resources at local, national and international levels, using the evidence and first-hand knowledge we gather about effective and inspiring initiatives in different parts of the world.
Local actors must be enabled to upscale and replicate their practices. Both ENDS and partners support local actors in these efforts by linking them up with each other, conducting joint fundraising, communicating successes and providing the space to develop leadership skills to local communities, indigenous peoples, women-led groups, youth movements and others. For over 20 years, Both ENDS has been instrumental in co-founding and upscaling regional and global networks of CSOs that work on locallymanaged forest ecosystems and land restoration. Examples include the Non-Timber Forest Products Exchange Program working in six Asian countries, the International Analog Forestry Network in 20 countries on five continents, and the Drynet network in thirteen dryland areas globally. Through these networks, countless people have been reached and thousands of hectares of land are being conserved and restored. Both ENDS has built up extensive experience supporting and facilitating the growth and success of these networks and is strategically positioned for policy advocacy, fundraising and upscaling.
To mainstream these concrete and feasible approaches and the norms they promote, they must be integrated in a broader narrative of transformative change that takes environmental sustainability, human rights and gender justice as the starting point. We work with our partners to elaborate this narrative and make the case for the transition to new social and economic models in every forum where we have a voice. Both ENDS continues to influence political, financial and civil society stakeholders to create policies, governance structures and financial systems that promote the values, perspectives and practices of bottom-up movements and their perception of the relationship between human society and nature.
Our work on this subject
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Transformative Practice /Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs)
About one in every six people, particularly women, directly rely on forests for their lives and livelihoods, especially for food. This shows how important non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and forests are to ensure community resilience. Not only as a source of food, water and income, but also because of their cultural and spiritual meaning.
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Transformative Practice /Analog Forestry
Analog forestry is a transformative approach to the ecological restoration of degraded lands. Natural forests are used as guides to create ecologically sustainable landscapes, which support the social and economical needs of local communities.
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Transformative Practice /Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration
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)'.
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Transformative Practice /Agroecology
Agroecology is a diverse set of agricultural practices, a field of science and a social movement. It aims to transform food systems towards greater ecological sustainability, social justice, and resilience. Both ENDS and CSO-partners around the world support farmers and pastoralists practising agroecology, both on the ground and in gathering political and financial support.
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Transformative Practice /Inclusive Land Governance
Both ENDS works with partners around the world to ensure that land is governed fairly and inclusively and managed sustainably with priority for the rights and interests of local communities.
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Transformative Practice /A Negotiated Approach for Inclusive Water Governance
A Negotiated Approach envisages the meaningful and long-term participation of communities in all aspects of managing the water and other natural resources on which their lives depend. It seeks to achieve healthy ecosystems and equitable sharing of benefits among all stakeholders within a river basin. This inclusive way of working is an essential precondition for the Transformative Practices that are promoted by Both ENDS and partners.