Reflections from the Skoll World Forum
by Heidi Burgess and Amy Coughenour Betancourt
After participating in the events around this year’s Skoll World Forum in Oxford, UK, the theme of “Regeneration,” along with our many conversations with practitioners and funders, left us with both a profound sense of urgency and a renewed sense of possibility.
For one of us, this was a fifth journey to Skoll—a reminder of how much the social impact community has evolved, and how many big ideas have come and gone. For the other, it was a first—an introduction to a community wrestling honestly with some of the defining funding questions of our time: How do we repair what has been depleted? How do we build systems that are more just, resilient, and lasting? And what does regeneration truly require?
Regeneration is not simply about restoring forests, landscapes, or ecosystems. It’s about restoring the relationships and systems that allow people and nature to thrive together. It is about rebuilding trust, partnering for greater impact, investing in local leadership, and creating the conditions for communities to shape their own futures.
The cracks in the global funding architecture are impossible to ignore. Capital is becoming harder to access, more risk-averse, and increasingly concentrated, just as the scale of social and environmental need continues to grow. Yet moments of disruption also create space for reinvention, an opportunity to rethink not only how capital flows, but what it is ultimately meant to build.
For too long, funding has largely flowed toward projects and short-term outcomes, while the foundational systems needed for durable change have remained under-built. Nowhere is that more evident than in land and resource rights.
Across the Global South, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples steward some of the world’s most important ecosystems—protecting forests, preserving biodiversity, storing carbon, and sustaining livelihoods. Yet billions of people still lack secure, documented land and resource rights. Too often, communities are celebrated rhetorically, but remain invisible where it matters most: in formal systems, public decision-making, and investment flows.
Recognition changes everything. This is why Skoll has prioritized Indigenous and Local Community rights and protection, particularly in forests and critical climate hotspots.
When communities can map, document, monitor, and steward their lands using trusted tools, data, and systems aligned with government recognition processes, land becomes visible—not only as territory, but as the foundation for climate action, conservation, livelihoods, and long-term prosperity.
→ Roads move goods.
→ Energy grids move power.
→ Digital networks move information.
→ Trusted land information moves rights, investment, and protection into action.
This is where regeneration becomes tangible.
We left Skoll energized by a growing recognition that the future will belong to solutions that build interconnected, enabling systems and capacities rather than isolated interventions. Technology alone is not the answer. But it can help deliver practical, community-centered systems that make rights visible, actionable, and investable, unlocking entirely new pathways for equity, resilience, and stewardship.
Regeneration begins with shedding what no longer works and creating new pathways for lasting impact. For Cadasta and partners, this means ramping up the recognition of communities, of rights, and of the systems needed to support both.
Learn more about Cadasta’s work through local insight. Visit our StoryMap page to hear how communities are benefitting from securing their land and resource rights.