Across the world, rivers move like living memory through landscapes—carrying water, culture, and the lifeblood of communities. They connect forests to oceans, glaciers to farms, and people to place. For many Indigenous Peoples and riverine communities, rivers are not simply resources to be managed, but living relatives.
At Global Greengrants Fund, we see this truth reflected in the grassroots movements we support. Protecting rivers means protecting cultures, ecosystems, and futures. That is why we are proud to partner with International Rivers as one of our Global Recommending Partners—an organization whose deep expertise and movement relationships help ensure that resources reach communities working to defend the world’s waterways.
International Rivers is one of several Global Recommending Partners who help guide Global Greengrants’ grantmaking. These partnerships allow us to leverage the expertise and long-standing relationships of movement organizations that work directly with frontline communities.
Alongside International Rivers, our Global Recommending Partners include 350.org, the Africa Just Transition Network, Earth Island Institute, Friends of the Earth, Oilwatch International, Pesticide Action Network, and Rainforest Action Network. Through these collaborations, philanthropic support can move more effectively to the grassroots leaders driving environmental solutions—often long before their work becomes visible to mainstream funding channels.
Together, we support the people who live alongside rivers and are leading their protection.
A Partnership Rooted in Community Expertise
For decades, International Rivers has worked alongside communities worldwide to protect freshwater ecosystems and the people who depend on them. Their work spans the Amazon Basin, Southeast Asia, Africa, and beyond—supporting grassroots movements confronting destructive dams, mining, and other threats to rivers and watersheds.
What makes this work effective is the recognition that those who live closest to rivers are often their most knowledgeable stewards. Indigenous Peoples, fisherfolk, smallholder farmers, and riverine communities have cultivated relationships with these ecosystems over generations. Their knowledge of seasonal flows, biodiversity, and watershed health is essential to sustaining rivers amid accelerating climate disruption.
Through Global Greengrants’ decentralized grantmaking model, partners like International Rivers help ensure that philanthropic resources reach these frontline leaders—many of whom are women and Indigenous organizers whose leadership is often overlooked in traditional environmental funding.
Grassroots Leadership Protecting Rivers Worldwide
In 2025, grants recommended through the International Rivers partnership supported community-led river protection efforts across multiple regions—demonstrating how locally rooted leadership can safeguard ecosystems that sustain millions of people.
In Brazil’s Tapajós Basin, Movimento Tapajós Vivo mobilizes communities across the watershed to defend forests and rivers threatened by large-scale infrastructure and extractive development. Their organizing strengthens collaboration among Indigenous communities and riverine populations working to ensure that decisions about the basin reflect the lives of those whose lives are intertwined with the river. Learn more about a recent victory in which the government suspended a decree on dredging and privatizing the Tapajós River, after protests shut down a grain terminal.
In Chile, Malen Leubu / Niñas del Río—a women-led collective rooted in Mapuche territory—protects rivers while supporting young girls with environmental education grounded in cultural relationships with water. By nurturing the next generation of river stewards, their work bridges environmental protection with cultural continuity. Learn more about the collective here. (ESP/EN)
Across West and Central Africa, organizations such as Solidarité des Femmes sur le Fleuve Congo (SOFFLECO) and the Centre pour la Justice Environnementale – Togo are strengthening community-led water governance while amplifying women’s leadership in river protection. Women farmers, fisherfolk, and community organizers are advancing solutions that sustain freshwater ecosystems while supporting food systems and local livelihoods. Learn more about SOFFLECO from our funding partner Agroecology Fund in this short video.
In Nepal, the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation for Academic Research supports community-driven research and advocacy focused on protecting fragile Himalayan water systems, which are increasingly affected by climate change. Their work connects scientific insight with local stewardship to strengthen long-term watershed resilience. Read a recent op-ed that illustrates how reversing the drying of Nepal’s springs requires a fundamental shift in how land and water use are understood and managed.
And in the Phillipines, Asia Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy (AIPNEE), is a regional platform for solidarity and support for Indigenous communities affected by State and corporate-sponsored extractive and energy projects implemented in their territories. Learn more about their roadmap for action and follow their work.
Across these efforts, a clear lesson emerges: rivers are most resilient where communities have the power and resources to protect them.
Following the Flow of Grassroots Leadership
Rivers teach us that lasting change is rarely immediate. It gathers strength through tributaries, shaped by landscapes and sustained by those who live along its banks. Grassroots movements follow a similar course.
Through partnerships like the one we share with International Rivers, Global Greengrants helps ensure that communities protecting the world’s rivers—especially Indigenous leaders, women organizers, and frontline defenders—have the resources and solidarity they need to continue their work. Because when communities protect rivers, they protect life itself.
And like the rivers they defend, these movements continue to flow—connecting people, ecosystems, and futures across the planet.
You can help these movements continue to flow. By making a donation to Global Greengrants Fund, you support grassroots leaders around the world who are protecting rivers, ecosystems, and the communities that depend on them.