“To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.”
– Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
For funders investing in the benefits of environmental education and the outdoors for all, land justice isn’t an “add-on”—it’s the foundation that makes connections to nature achievable in a real, lasting way.
Since 2024, Blue Sky Funders Forum, the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, and the Highstead Foundation have been collaborating to build a shared understanding of land justice among funders, particularly in the Northeast. In November 2024, our partnership hosted Beyond Access: Land Justice, a gathering that sparked rich discussion and highlighted the interest among funders to better understand what land justice means for philanthropy—and how to move toward action.
Building on that momentum with additional partners RESIST! and the Maine Climate and Environmental Funders Network, we are excited to host this 2026 series highlighting working examples of land justice in practice, featuring bold funders who are integrating land justice into their portfolios and the visionary partners with whom they work. Our hope is for participants to leave each live session feeling inspired to begin or deepen land justice practices in their grantmaking, and ready to turn discussion into aligned, collaborative philanthropic action.
Start here for an introductory grounding in land justice and an overview of the key ideas you’ll need to know for the upcoming sessions.
What is Land Justice, exactly?
As Land Justice Futures puts it, land justice is, at its core, about “centering racial repair, ecological healing, and community power into how land is loved, used, and governed.”
In this webinar series, we’ll use land justice as a lens for exploring each session’s topic, inviting us to reframe how we see land: not as a tradable commodity, but as a living, shared resource essential to redistributing power, catalyzing restoration and healing, and repairing historical, social, and ecological injustices.
In practice, this lens continues to guide work across diverse movements, including Black liberation and reparations, Indigenous Land Back, agroecology and community food systems, housing justice, and many more.
Why Philanthropy Can’t Ignore Land Justice
Land justice is not peripheral to philanthropy—it is central. Who owns land, who stewards it, who benefits from it, and who decides how it’s used inherently shape environmental outcomes and community well-being.
When land is equitably owned, stewarded, and governed, communities have greater opportunities to engage with it, learn from it, and steward it for future generations. Yet, when these opportunities are denied, land injustice can persist unchecked, reinforcing economic inequity, ecological degradation, and barriers to outdoor access and environmental education.
Using a land justice lens—even on narrow, seemingly unrelated grantmaking areas—offers a way to address these structural harms and help ensure that funding decisions lead to true repair and regeneration. Shifting from extractive relationships with land toward reciprocal ones requires certain resources that philanthropy is uniquely positioned to contribute: capital, alignment, courage, and collaboration.
By using a land justice lens in our funding, we move closer to the intertwined future many of us hope to see: thriving communities, resilient ecologies, and just economies.
Putting Land Justice into Practice
Practicing land justice involves asking questions like: Who owns the vision? Who’s governing the process? Who will reap its lasting benefits?
To that end, we see land justice as existing on a spectrum, ranging from recognition to repair. A flow chart is one way of visualizing this, with arrows indicating increasing control, power, and benefit to the community:
Access → Stewardship → Ownership → Community Control → Wealth-Building
Additionally, the model below offers a brief, non-exhaustive overview of how philanthropy can center land justice in practical terms. We’ll explore each approach in greater detail, with real-world examples in the live sessions to come.
Frameworks:
- Capital stacks
- Community ownership models
- Regenerative land stewardship
- Narrative change
Philanthropic Approaches:
- Direct grantmaking to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-led land organizations
- Impact investing strategies that support community land acquisition
- Intermediary and flow-fund models that move resources more equitably
- Collaborative funds designed to pool and align philanthropic capital
- Partnerships with land trusts and community land stewards
- Returning land stewardship roles and benefits over to Tribes
Possibilities for Collaboration:
- Co-learning cohorts
- Shared diligence
- Pooled or aligned capital
- Coordinated funding strategies
Finally, we invite you to reflect on these questions:
- Does land justice show up in your current portfolio? If yes, where along the spectrum have you been funding?
- What would it look like to deepen your practice?
- What kinds of partnerships or collaborations would help you move further?
- What barriers are you navigating internally?
Join Us!
We hope to see you on April 14th for the first webinar in this series: The Tributary Project: A New Paradigm for Land Justice. We’ll build on the concepts discussed above and hear from the leaders driving one of the largest private land returns in U.S. history, a prime example of long-term community vision, control, ownership, and benefit.
This session is open to all funders. Registration is required.
Questions? Reach out to Berkeley Bryant, Director of Programs & Membership, at berkeley@blueskyfundersforum.org.
Looking for more on land justice? We recommend checking these resources out:
- Introduction to Land Justice by Land Justice Futures
- Land Justice in Action: Models and Tools by Land Justice Futures
- EARTH SEED Visual Poem by People’s Kitchen Collective
- Land Justice, Re-imagining Land, Food, and the Commons in the United States, Chapter 15: The Future is Here: First Nations & Black Sovereignties in a New Era of Land Justice by Richael Faithful
- Land Justice, Re-imagining Land, Food, and the Commons in the United States, Conclusion: Together Toward Land Justice by Eric Holt-Giménez and Justine M. Williams
- Land Rematriation: A Conversation with Cyndi Suarez, Donald Soctomah, Darren Ranco, Mali Obomsawin, Gabriela Alcalde, and Kate Dempsey, Nonprofit Quarterly