When the ECCP community of practice decided to become a funder, their grants “behaved like seeds: catalytic, flexible, and capable of taking root in many spaces and directions.”

Curiosity was the spark for a small group looking at a massive challenge: resource scarcity for peace and environmental actors who want to collaborate. Climate and conflict are among the mega challenges of our time. But the mentality of not enough funding, not enough capacity, not enough access keep groups siloed. It begs the question, what would be possible if the issue of funding scale was taken out of the equation?

This is the story of the Community of Practice on Environment, Climate, Conflict, and Peace (ECCP) choosing to become a funder and what we learned about the resource shift this moment demands.

As diverse local and global organizations, academic centers, individuals, and even small foundations, the ECCP Community of Practice grew from a desire for networking and community building on environmental peacebuilding, conflict-sensitive conservation, climate security, and other related topics through collaboration, dialogue, and learning. Some members participate in high level forums and major UN climate and biodiversity meetings like COP30, just concluded in Brazil. Many more members are active in communities around the world, where climate change and conflict compound each other, and where environmental stewardship is an essential driver of social cohesion and sustained peace.

Engagement in the ECCP Community has mushroomed in the past two years, with global coordination and place-based gatherings for activation on shared issues. This organic, vibrant ecosystem generates critical questions and ideas that push sectoral boundaries. But what impact could our small resources support?

When we set scale aside and embraced what was in our power to do, we quickly centered around what we knew: that well-timed investments can shift who participates, how communities organise, and what futures become thinkable. Appreciating the emerging experimentation led by others around participatory funding models, we recognized that resource shifts begin long before budgets increase; they begin when funders choose curiosity over compliance and treat storytelling and learning as part of the work. Why not try?

The ECCP Community Fund, piloted in 2025, was designed as a light, participatory micro-grant mechanism. Grants were tiny by sector standards—USD 400 to USD 2,000—yet they behaved like seeds: catalytic, flexible, and capable of taking root in many spaces and directions. Across six very different contexts, from Suriname to Somalia to Washington DC, the funding created openings for “first-ever” encounters, nourished fragile ecosystems of practice, and strengthened community identity within ECCP’s global network.

What emerged from this pilot is not only a set of projects, but a shift in how resources—and responsibility—circulate within a community of practice.

Small Seeds, Long Shadows

For many project teams, the grants created permission to do what they already sensed was needed but could not justify from core budgets: convene, experiment, test new framings, or respond in real time to opportunities. In Rwanda, a one-day forum introduced the concept of an “ecosystem for peace,” linking environmental degradation to everyday risks faced by women and youth. Participants reframed tree-planting not as an isolated environmental task, but as a peacebuilding act that reduces tensions and strengthens local resilience. Some have since begun mapping ecosystems more thoughtfully, an early signal of how new narratives reshape practice.

In Suriname, Saamaka and Indigenous women travelled by road and river to meet for the first time. They cooked, shared stories of land rights struggles, traded handmade gifts, and exchanged ancestral myths. One story, about Saamaka ancestors who “lost the ability to fly” after eating salt, reframed how participants understood one another’s histories and rootedness.

This is an ecosystem for peace: repairing relationships, rebuilding trust, and creating cultural architectures to support future action. In Kenya, a youth-led sports tournament drew more than a thousand participants, creating a joyful entry point for climate awareness. Between matches, farmers and government officials talked about tree-planting funds, climate-smart agriculture, and local adaptation options that some had never heard about. Officials connected young people to information about grants for youth. A single weekend seeded a year-round community organisation now forming around these conversations.

And in Somalia, the fund enabled a woman activist and Somali civil society organisations to speak at the Africa Climate Summit, an opportunity they could never have afforded on their own. That single platform changed how national authorities perceived their work and opened doors for future collaboration. The throughline is clear: change is not only a function of how much money is available, but whether the right people and ideas are given the chance to meet.

Resource Shifts Beyond the Financial

One of the most powerful findings from this pilot is that changing how money moves can be as transformative as increasing how much money moves. The participatory design, in which applicants reviewed each other’s proposals, shifted power in subtle but important ways. Instead of competing at a distance, project leads learned from one another’s ideas, discovered potential partners, and saw in concrete terms the diversity of environmental peacebuilding practices emerging around the world. Instead of funding those who already had sufficient support, projects were able to amplify the voices of those who may have been left out.

Transparency was key. Many grantees described this as the first time they understood how and why small-grant decisions were made. In a field accustomed to black-box processes, the ability to trace decision-making built trust and a sense of fairness. One participant said simply: “The activity is not the metric. The learning is the metric.”

This shift—from compliance to curiosity, from pure accountability to learning—lowered psychological barriers for small and non-traditional organisations. Several grantees said this was the shortest application and fastest transfer they had ever experienced. That efficiency was not just administrative; it communicated respect. It told people their time matters.

The relational dimension of sustainability often goes uncounted, but in this work, it surfaced repeatedly. Project leads said they felt “known and valued,” not as beneficiaries but as contributors to a shared field. The funders themselves described the process as hopeful, an antidote to a sector increasingly dominated by risk aversion and heavy paperwork. The fund created solidarity: among grantees, between communities and government officials, and between practitioners and donors.

Lessons for Sustainable Funding Futures

Three insights from this pilot point toward a broader rethinking of sustainability in climate and peace work, and are relevant far beyond:

Small, human-scaled resources can unlock participation at the margins. When women in Suriname or youth in Kenya are able to engage without navigating rigid bureaucratic systems, entirely new forms of initiative and leadership emerge.

Story-rich, learning-oriented models strengthen communities of practice. Narratives travel. They make possible what people can imagine. When funders invest not only in projects but in the stories that hold them, they shape the futures that communities can collectively sense and build.

Sustainable resource shifts require sustainable relationships. Fast transfers, simple reporting, responsive communication—these are not administrative choices but strategic ones. They determine trust, and trust determines the long-term viability of any ecosystem of practice.

The ECCP Community Fund demonstrates that sustainability is as much about shared imagination as it is about financial inputs. When resources are offered with humility, transparency, and a willingness to learn, they generate connection, creativity, and durable networks far beyond their monetary value.

Small grants cannot fix structural inequities. But they can create the conditions in which communities begin imagining, and practicing, the futures they want to sustain. That is the resource shift this moment demands.

About the ECCP

The ECCP Community of Practice is a collective of more than 1,300 individuals around the world, working for more than 400 organizations and institutions. (See the ECCP mapped out here.) This website showcases the collective work of the ECCP,  from 2020 to today. Co-hosted by the Center on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding, the ECCP brings together practitioners, researchers, and policymakers working at the intersection of climate, environment, and peace. Stay connected to the latest reflections, collaborations, and community-led work emerging across the ECCP. 

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