We are excited to share our new grant partners in East Africa focusing on addressing non-economic loss and damage!
Visualizing Loss and Damage: Displacement in Cogea, Fiji
A year ago, United Nations University - Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) published a report about the work of CJRF partners addressing issues related to climate mobility. It’s often difficult to visualize how climate mobilities interact with Loss and Damage, so we are sharing a series of illustrations to bring the interactions between these issues to life.
Among the questions explored in the report is: How can displacement drive losses and damages? The experience of communities in Cogea, Fiji, helps illustrate this.
In 2017, Tropical Cyclone Yasa caused severe flooding that destroyed homes and infrastructure. Afterwards, government authorities declared the village site unsafe due to unstable ground conditions, forcing residents to abandon their land and begin a prolonged period of displacement.
Since then, they have faced slow-moving, partial, and incomplete relocation efforts. Much of the community has spent three years living in tents and temporary shelters. These conditions have given rise to significant losses and damages—both material and psychological. These include reduced access to clean drinking water, unsafe conditions for women and children, and deep uncertainty about their future.
Today, Climate Tok, working in collaboration with Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), other civil society actors, and the Fijian government, is supporting the community’s efforts to secure permanent relocation.
This illustration was created by Victor Ynami, whose work helps visualize the realities behind climate mobility and Loss and Damage. Stay tuned for more illustrations we’ll be sharing in the coming weeks, each one capturing a different story from the report.
Announcing New Loss and Damage Grants in Bangladesh and India
Unlocking the Taps: Building a United Front for Water Justice in Harare
Harare, the capital and largest city of Zimbabwe, is experiencing rapid urban sprawl and population growth, with 1.6 million people spread across the 45 municipal ward boundaries of the city. As the population surges, so to do the demands on the water infrastructure of the city. Furthermore, all of this is happening in a region where persistent droughts are already threatening water supplies.
Driven by Communities: Participatory Systems Mapping for Climate Justice grantmaking
Our past and current partners in Kenya alongside our board members and staff recommended individuals and groups in Kenya and Tanzania to be a part of this pilot’s journey. We held an introductory meeting about the proposed approach with prospective Tanzanian collaborators in Arusha on the margins of the Community Based Adaptation Conference in May 2024. It was crucial for us to create grantmaking processes that fostered genuine collaboration and centred our partners’ expertise and experience to map systems, identify and prioritise points of leverage, and bring in other collaborators.
Collectively Conceptualizing the relationship between Loss, Damage, and Adaptation
Learning by doing: Testing New Models for Participation
Participatory grantmaking is a growing ethos in philanthropy, where funders cede power over funding decisions to the people affected by those decisions. It may include a wide range of practices, such as co-creation of strategy and priorities, diversification of grant committees and review panels, or even crowd-sourced decisions and voting by large groups.
Uniting Black and Indigenous Voices for Climate and Racial Justice
The Black Indigenous Liberation Movement (BILM) was formed in response to a dual crisis of racial and climate injustice that disproportionately affects Black and Indigenous communities across the Americas. Extractive industries—both legal and illegal—are rapidly depleting natural resources, polluting water sources, and displacing entire communities.