By Amy Coughenour Betancourt, CEO, Cadasta

I returned from Climate Week NYC with renewed conviction that progress on climate depends on communities having the rights, resources, and authority to shape their own futures. Across the conversations our Cadasta team joined, the questions were practical: Who controls funding? What is holding up recognition of land rights? And how will communities know that climate investments are improving conditions in their territories?

Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples are advancing their own approaches to finance, territorial governance, and monitoring. The responsibility for donors and partners is to listen and respond in ways that strengthen this leadership.

The practical barriers to securing land rights remain substantial. Lack of political will, limited resources, and historic discrimination continue to hinder many communities’ progress. Demarcation can be expensive, documentation difficult to assemble, and legal recognition slow. Addressing these barriers requires sustained investment in community institutions, local professionals, and accessible tools, alongside government capacity to carry recognition processes through.

Another important thread was how communities define progress. Discussions convened by the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC), their direct funding mechanism, Shandia, and the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund (FTM) of the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB) connected climate finance with practical territorial monitoring tools that ensure self-sovereignty while promoting accountability. Tracking investment needs to help answer questions about forest health, land tenure, livelihoods, cultural continuity, and the ability of communities to govern their lands. Communities must have authority over the information used to tell that story.

The week also reinforced the close relationship between land rights and adaptation. Indigenous responses to climate-related disasters draw on established governance, local knowledge, and cooperation across generations. Secure rights help communities sustain this work. Building resilient livelihoods also requires access to finance, infrastructure, and support suited to local economic priorities.

For Cadasta, these conversations sharpen the purpose of our mapping and data work. Its value lies in helping partners as they advance recognition, make informed decisions, and use information on their own terms. That begins with understanding what communities want to achieve and where they choose to bring in support.

I left New York encouraged by the leadership and practical approaches already taking shape, and conscious of the work ahead. The collective responsibility now is to turn these conversations into partnerships and investments that strengthen community authority and deliver lasting progress on the ground.