When Rainforest Communities Lead, the Planet Heals: Health In Harmony’s Three-Year Strategic Plan
When rainforest communities lead, rainforests thrive, and the planet heals.
We just launched a new three-year strategic plan at Health In Harmony. It’s a roadmap for action at a moment when the planet cannot afford to wait. It’s our commitment to the communities we stand alongside and to you: our partners, advisers, and donors.
Why does an organization like HIH need a strategy like this?
Because the stakes are enormous and the window for change is closing. Tropical rainforests stabilize Earth’s temperatures, regulate water cycles, and host extraordinary biodiversity. They are pillars of planetary health. And critically, their survival depends on the people who have stewarded them for thousands of years: Indigenous Peoples, Afro-Descendant Peoples, and local rainforest communities. The evidence is clear. Forests under their leadership store more carbon, face less deforestation, and are more resilient. And yet, from 2019 to 2023, these frontline communities received less than 1% of global climate finance.
That is not just unjust. It’s foolish.
Why make this strategy public?
Because accountability builds trust. If we’re asking governments, philanthropies, and financial institutions to change how they move climate funds, we must be transparent about how we operate. A public strategy invites scrutiny. It signals seriousness. It tells partners and critics alike: this is what we will do, this is how we will measure it, and this is where we expect to be by 2028.
A strategy forces clarity and turns urgency into direction. It aligns every dollar raised, every partnership formed, and every policy engagement around a single outcome: shifting power and capital directly into community-designed, systems solutions for planetary health.
Our 2026–2028 plan operationalizes our 2030 Big Goal: to mobilize over $100 million in direct capital into rainforest communities, protect more than 20 million hectares of tropical rainforest, and help push toward 2% or more of global climate and biodiversity finance flowing straight to the communities who safeguard these life-giving ecosystems.
By 2028, we will support communities in protecting between 6.6 and 8.4 million hectares of tropical rainforest across 54 to 90 territories. We will demonstrate a fivefold return on our investments in community-designed solutions, measured in forest carbon value. These are not abstract targets. They are proof points, evidence that justice and effectiveness are not competing values, but mutually reinforcing ones.
How does strategy translate to action?
Our plan stands on four pillars, orienting us towards: building rigorous data-backed evidence; advocating to ensure this proof reshapes policy; mobilizing ethical, creative finance to deliver climate justice (including a $75 million Surge Fund), and strengthening institutional agility to manage this across global HIH affiliates incorporated in Brazil, Madagascar, the U.S. and (pending) the U.K.
Our goal is simple and bold: by 2028, we will have demonstrated beyond debate that direct investment in community-designed solutions is one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to protect rainforests, stabilize Earth’s climate, and reverse nature’s collapse.
We are helping shift the balance of power in the climate movement.
When local communities lead planetary health investment strategies, rainforests thrive. And when rainforests thrive, Earth’s biosphere heals.