---
title: community-led conservation needs an account it controls
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/community-led-conservation-needs-an-account-it-controls
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/community-led-conservation-needs-an-account-it-controls.md
subtitle: communities should decide how conservation money is spent. that takes land they can keep and an account whose signers they choose.
category: nature-finance
---

# community-led conservation needs an account it controls

*communities should decide how conservation money is spent. that takes land they can keep and an account whose signers they choose.*

**Community-led conservation** means the people who live on and keep a place decide how it is cared for and how the money for that care is spent. Not an outside agency drawing a line on a map, and not a project office that hires locally and reports elsewhere. The community sets the priorities, chooses who does the work, and answers to its own members for the result.

Most funders now say they support it. Far less of their money reaches communities in a form they control. That gap is what this post is about, and it comes down to two practical questions: whose land the care happens on, and whose account the money lands in.

The forest, the river and the grazing land exist whether or not anyone buys a certificate, and so do the people who have kept them. [**Ensurance**](/?from=guide) is how the land gets secured and the keeping gets funded. It is not the land, and it is not the community.

## what community-led conservation asks of funders

The clearest recent statement of the ask comes from IDOS, the German Institute of Development and Sustainability. Its policy brief *Beyond markets* (25/2026) calls for distributive justice through reformed conservation finance: Indigenous peoples and local communities (IP&LCs) "should benefit more directly from forest, climate and biodiversity funding and should have a say in how money is spent in their communities."

Two things in that sentence matter. One is money arriving directly. The other is a say over how it is spent. A grant that arrives with the decisions already made satisfies the first and fails the second.

The numbers show how far there is to go. The IDOS brief, citing McLaren et al. (2025), reports that "less than 1 per cent of international forest, climate and biodiversity funding reaches IP&LCs." The tenure pledge that donors made in Glasgow in 2021 delivered US$1.86 billion from 2021 to 2024, but Mongabay reports that only about 7.6% of the 2024 funding went directly to Indigenous peoples and local community organizations, rather than through intermediaries. In the renewed pledge for 2026–2030, donors committed to raise that share, "ensuring communities have genuine decision-making power and influence over how funds are used," in the signatories' words.

The brief points to funds that communities run themselves. The Podáali Fund, which IDOS describes as "managed entirely by Indigenous Peoples from the Brazilian Amazon," is one. IDOS also notes a limit worth taking seriously: local communities often lack formally recognized tenure and the institutional means to manage such funds. Direct money needs somewhere to land that the community controls.

## the land comes before the account

A community can control its account and still lose the place. Land under debt can be foreclosed. Land under a concession can be cleared by someone else. Land with an unresolved competing claim can be taken in court. Money paid to people on land they can lose does not last, however directly it arrives.

So the order is the parcel first, then what lives on it, then the people who keep it.

1. **Ensured** means paying off the land. It funds the community, or a holder the community chooses, to acquire land it keeps or recovers, retire the debt on it and clear the claims against it. No land is acquired over a community's objection, and where Indigenous peoples are involved, free, prior and informed consent is the floor. A community that already holds title decides whether to use any of this at all.
2. **Entrust** is the land held free of debt, rent and claim, for good. Nothing left to foreclose.
3. **The land carries its species and flows.** The habitat, the water, the soil, the fire resilience. Those are what the funding keeps working.
4. **Then the people.** With the land's cost out of the picture, money that arrives can go to care, through the group that does it.

A state's legal recognition of a collective title is a state act. Ensurance can pay the costs around it (purchase, surveys, legal work, clearing debts and claims). A certificate does not create a land right.

## an account the group controls

Once the land is secured, the question becomes practical: where does the money go, and who decides what happens to it next?

In ensurance, a group can hold an **account** of its own, under its own name. A certificate for a place names its **funds recipient** when it is created. Today a group requests the certificate and ensurance creates it with the recipient the group names. That recipient can be the group's account, or a **split** that names who shares each payment and in what proportion. When someone buys the certificate, the price goes to that recipient. It does not pass through a coin pool (a coin purchase fills a pool and pays no steward), and it does not wait for a program office to release it. One cost to know: a split created through ensurance carries a fixed 10% share to the protocol's origin account. A group that wants the whole price can name its own account directly.

Who sets the split? The account that created it controls it, and only that account can change it; an ensurance admin cannot. When the group's account creates the split, that means the group's signers: one trusted person for a small group, or several signers with more than one needed to approve a change, so no single member can redirect the money alone. Where a group has adopted its own bylaws or a legal wrapper, such as a DUNA (a Wyoming legal form for a nonprofit association whose governing principles can use onchain tools), those rules apply. Where it has not, the signers decide. Ensurance does not.

The account is an address and a set of permissions. It does not replace a community's assembly, its customary authority, its nonprofit or its fiscal sponsor. It gives the decisions those bodies already make a place where money can follow them. For how a group forms, says who is in and chooses where its money sits, see [a small group is big enough](/guide/a-small-group-is-big-enough?from=guide).

Here is what runs today and what does not:

| what | status |
|---|---|
| A certificate purchase sends its price to the recipient it names | Live |
| Splits and streams route money where the group points them | Live |
| The split is set by whoever controls the group's account | Live; the account's own signers decide |
| Automatic batch payments to every certificate holder | Designed, not live |

The last row is about holders, not stewards. A steward's money arrives when the certificate sells. What holding is designed to pay later is a separate question, set out in [what stewardship funding is designed to pay](/guide/what-stewardship-funding-is-designed-to-pay?from=guide). No rate or yield is promised here.

:::johnson
**community-led means the community holds the account.**

The price of a certificate goes to the account the group names. The group's signers set the split. Secure the land first, and then every dollar can go to care.

[read the certificate rules →](/manual/certificates?from=guide)
:::

## how a group shares its stream is its own decision

A group might split its stream equally among members. It might share it per household. It might put all of it into community work: a patrol, a nursery, a legal fund, the boat that reaches the far boundary. It might change the split each season as the work changes.

That choice belongs to the group. Ensurance sets no amount per person, keeps no registry of who qualifies, and promises no figure. This is not a basic income: the stream goes to the stewards and the group of a place, by the group's own rules, not to every resident by eligibility. Public social protection and basic income programs stay real. They can pay alongside this, and they can use the same rails.

The community decides who gets paid. The land decides how long: held free of debt and claim, it cannot be foreclosed out from under the work.

## where the money comes from

Direct money still needs a payor. The most durable ones are those who already pay when a place fails: the utility downstream that treats dirtier water, the insurer that pays out after the fire, the supply chain that loses a harvest, the town that rebuilds after the flood. They pay before the failure instead of after.

Tenure funders fit here too. A funder buys a certificate for a named place, and the price goes to the recipient the community names. The certificate is not a deed: it gives the funder no claim on the land and no vote in the group's decisions. The community keeps the decision, and the funder gets a record of where the money went.

## frequently asked questions

### what is community-led conservation?

Conservation in which the people who live on and keep a place set its priorities, choose who does the work and decide how the money is spent. IDOS's *Beyond markets* brief frames it as communities benefiting directly from conservation funding and having a say in how that money is spent.

### how can a community receive conservation funding directly?

It needs land it can keep and an account it controls. With ensurance, a certificate for the place names the group's account or a split as its recipient, and the purchase price goes there when the certificate sells. Splits and streams then route money where the group points them. Both are live today.

### who decides how the money is spent?

The group. Specifically, whoever controls its account: its signers, under the rules the group has adopted. Where a group has adopted its own bylaws or a legal wrapper such as a DUNA, those rules apply. Ensurance does not set the split, the amounts or who qualifies, and an ensurance admin cannot change a split the group's account controls.

## next steps

If you keep land with a group and want the money for that care to arrive in an account you control, start with the [land stewards page](/solutions/land-stewards?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land), or [talk with someone about securing the land](/contact?from=guide&topic=secure-the-land). Next in this series: [how to fund indigenous land rights that last](/guide/how-to-fund-indigenous-land-rights-that-last?from=guide).

## sources

[IDOS Policy Brief 25/2026, *Beyond markets: how to achieve just and transformative biodiversity conservation*](https://www.idos-research.de/en/policy-brief/article/beyond-markets-how-to-achieve-just-and-transformative-biodiversity-conservation/) — Hein, Figueroa, Loft, Ramutsindela et al.; the distributive-justice message, the Podáali Fund, and "less than 1 per cent" (citing McLaren et al. 2025, World Resources Institute)

[Mongabay, "Donors renew $1.8 billion pledge for Indigenous land rights," 12 November 2025](https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/11/donors-renew-1-8-billion-pledge-for-indigenous-land-rights/) — US$1.86 billion delivered 2021–2024; about 7.6% of 2024 funding went directly to community organizations; the renewed pledge's words on decision-making power

## the series

1. [what a conservation basic income leaves unfunded](/guide/what-a-conservation-basic-income-leaves-unfunded?from=guide)
2. [community land rights come first](/guide/community-land-rights-come-first?from=guide)
3. [what cash transfers for conservation showed in the peruvian amazon](/guide/what-cash-transfers-for-conservation-showed-in-peru?from=guide)
4. [the alternative to fortress conservation is not a market](/guide/the-alternative-to-fortress-conservation-is-not-a-market?from=guide)
5. [community-led conservation needs an account it controls](/guide/community-led-conservation-needs-an-account-it-controls?from=guide)
6. [how to fund indigenous land rights that last](/guide/how-to-fund-indigenous-land-rights-that-last?from=guide)