1. Context and Rationale
Sustainable landscapes demand transformative change that goes beyond spatially, temporally, and sectorally bracketed NRM initiatives or projects. Bottom-up, community-led approaches by CSOs and NGOs, while important, have rarely scaled to transform entire landscapes. Likewise, government schemes and development programmes, though substantial, often fail to fully converge with grassroots needs or transcend schematic and administrative silos. Private sector efforts through CSR, sustainability, and supply-chain initiatives have typically remained within short-term impact windows, confined to sectoral or commodity boundaries. Each approach not only suffers from its own sustainability and system-wide limitations but also risks undermining the success of others.

As the world grapples with polycrisis; community-led, nature-based solutions at the landscape level are increasingly recognised as systemic, sustainable, just, and scalable. Achieving this transformation requires forging inter-sectoral collaborations and enabling interdisciplinary action at scale. Equally crucial is mobilising blended finance—drawing investments across these diverse actors—underpinned by shared impact indicators aligned with both global and local change goals.

Given the local, place-based contexts—socio-cultural, ecological, livelihood, and political—of the targeted landscapes, along with past investment-impact experiences and the emerging global consensus, two critical aspects warrant attention when mobilising finance and forging long-term partnerships and commitments.

First, the recognition of community stewardship: their intrinsic ecological knowledge, invisible labour, and ethics of care are instrumental in nurturing and sustaining landscape resilience and biodiversity. Yet, these contributions are often overlooked in development and financial models, despite being foundational and proven drivers of agroecological, commons, and conservation transformations. Encouragingly, such contributions are gaining global attention, with financial commitments at COPs—beginning with the $1.7 billion pledge at COP26 for IPLCs (Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities). At the national level too, the growing emphasis on agroecological approaches in agricultural landscapes and CFR management in forest ecosystems reflects this shift. On the corporate front, agendas are moving beyond CSR to integrate socio-ecological concerns into core governance through sustainable and inclusive supply chains, BRSR and biodiversity reporting, and mitigation contributions. The critical question, however, is whether landscape financing by these actors aligns with principles of community stewardship—valuing and strengthening it—rather than replacing it.

Second, alignment around secure tenure and rights: without legally recognised land and forest rights, communities are less likely to invest in landscape restoration and resilience, and are also unable to effectively access formal finance and institutional support. Whether it is credit through primary sector lending (e.g., KCC), entitlements (e.g., DBT, PM-Kisan, AFBY from the Agriculture Ministry, or land development under MGNREGS), climate finance (e.g., carbon or biodiversity credits), or supply chain incentives (e.g., certification or traceability), all are contingent on formally documented, recorded, and digitised land records. Proper tenure documentation, and its recognition by state and financial institutions, ensures that financing flows to genuine rights holders, making restoration more resilient, just, and fair.

A sustainable landscape financing approach should ideally be:

• Larger in size and diverse in portfolio: blending collateralisation, supply chain investments, public investment and service delivery, philanthropic and CSR funding, climate finance (including PES markets and mitigation contributions), as well as community contributions—addressing scale and sustainability through long-term commitment.

• Responsible and just: recognising and supporting communities’ generational stewardship and local tenure arrangements.

Together, these elements can create pathways for transformative landscape change, integrating ecological regeneration, common governance, and socio-economic well-being.

2. Objectives of the Proposed Session:

• To assess the contemporary landscape finance ecosystem and emerging changes

• To explore how landscape financing can recognise and value community stewardship (knowledge, labour, and care).

• To unpack how tenure documentation catalyse fair and effective landscape financing.

• To identify ways of making landscape financing larger (size), more diverse (modes), and more sustainable.

• To draw lessons from landscape-level agroecological and commons-based initiatives in India and globally.

• To chart pathways for designing just and scalable financing architectures for landscape transformation.

3. Expected Outcomes

• Concrete ideas on scaling and diversifying landscape finance through collateralisation, blended models, and new mechanisms (PES, mitigation credits, carbon markets).

• Shared understanding of why and how it is crucial to support communities' generational stewardship and how integrating locally understood tenure arrangements is central to financing resilient and just landscape transformations.

• Identification of roles and synergies across stakeholders (communities, CSOs, funders, value chain actors, researchers, and government).

• Recommendations for designing financing architectures that align with rights, equity, and sustainability goals.