Quiet moment

As we try to find a quiet moment during this holiday season, we hold the year in enormous gratitude for bringing us to this point. Our major undertakings allowed Samdhana and Partners to support transformative solutions on the ground - from basic water systems to recovering local cultures, to testing small granting by strategic partners like the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) and to reducing methane from subak farms in Bali.  We are at the end of 2025, and yet, we remain vigilant for any urgent action requests from disaster-affected partners in Sumatra and other areas. This is the evidence of the harsh realities of climate change. In the same breath, we set out for the coming 2026, mindful of lessons learned, strategic in our support to local partners and hopeful in the transitions and opportunities ahead.  

Weaving Futures
We began 2025 with Weaving Futures: Wisdom, Practice and Sustainability, a gathering of weavers from six Southeast Asia countries, held in Luang Prabang; while we ended the year with a Regional Youth Exchange around the theme: Advancing Youth Participation in Environmental Conservation in Vientiane. Both were co-organised with Huam Jai Assasamak in Lao PDR, a long-time collaborator. We convened six regional events this year and we extend our warm appreciation to all our co-convenors, and everyone who contributed in many different ways to pull the events through together in solidarity. We hope these exchanges brought snippets of knowledge, formed connections, deepened our understanding and analysis, and brought forward the social-environmental movement in the region -reflecting on Samdhana being a truly regional institution. 

Southern Voices

This year, we helped amplify the message that Southern voices are essential in solving climate change and biodiversity loss. Southern funds, particularly led by Indigenous Peoples or local activists, work in solidarity and are able to navigate the social, environmental and political contexts better, allowing them to reach communities and local people when and where they need the support most.  We joined events in the 19th International Conference on Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change (CBA19), the Climate Weeks in New York and Bangkok in September, and the International Civil Society Week in November. We joined the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi and supported the recognition of indigenous territories not only as Indigenous Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs) but as potential areas managed by Other Effective Conservation Means (OECMs) that could enable countries to meet their target of 30 by 30 under the Global Biodiversity Framework under the Kunming Protocol. We co-created events in The Global South House in Belem as part of the Socio-Environmental Alliance of Southern Funds. The results of the study “Funding from the Ground Up” shows the depth, diversity, and strategic relevance of Global South–led funding infrastructures.  

Loss and Damage

In the second half of the year, the region reeled from the ravages of typhoons, rainfall  of unnatural intensity resulting to severe floods. Community capacities to adapt and cope are being tested severely as each disaster hits. The urgency to operationalize Loss and Damage—both economic and non-economic—has never been clearer, even as those who emit the most greenhouse gases refuse to put a cap on their use of fossil fuel as evidenced by the results of the 30th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Despite the gains of COP30,  a just transition that puts the needs of those most marginalized and affected by climate change impacts, and does not create another environmental disaster is yet to be seen and put into action. In Belem, we joined the resounding calls for funders to directly fund Indigenous peoples, local communities, and organizations, and increase the resources to scale up their community resilience efforts leading for just transition, adaptation, mitigation, and responding to loss and damage. 

Committed to Co-creation

2026 will be a year of changes and consolidation, and we remain committed to co-creating with partners on the solutions from the ground and working in solidarity for systems change locally and globally.  We remind ourselves  that this work is not just our own; we provide accompaniment to the efforts and struggles of indigenous and local communities living out their everyday realities and as part of the local to global social environmental movements.  

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