IKI Small Grants: Sustaining Nature and Empowering Communities through Funding to Local Conservation Actions

Project background

KWCA works with its network of conservancies and landscape associations to design locally led approaches that benefit people and nature. The network comprises nearly 200 conservancies and supports the growth of 12 associations working at landscape level to coordinate the growth and coverage of conservancies and develop communities. Among these 12 associations, 5 are at the emergence phase (AKThw WCA, NECA, RLCA, WWCA, PECFO), 5 are at early maturity (LCA, TTWCA, AET, SORALO, BCCA), and 2 are at the maturity stage (NRT, MMWCA), while the network conservancies comprise 69 emerging, 135 operational and 39 mature conservancies.

The Small Grants facility is designed to accelerate the readiness of Kenyan conservancies for private sector investment and self-reliance by strengthening conservancies' governance, financial sustainability and conservation impact — providing targeted small grants, technical support and capacity development to enhance biodiversity conservation, climate resilience and sustainable livelihoods through community-led natural resource management.

Problem statement

Kenya's conservation efforts are severely hampered by an over-reliance on competitive donor funding directed toward high-priority tourism sites — a failing system that persists despite a disastrous 68% wildlife decline over four decades, and the critical fact that 65% of the country's wildlife is found outside formal protected areas within a network of over 190 community conservancies, only 30% of which report positive biodiversity outcomes.

The ineffectiveness stems from inequitable access to start-up grants for early-stage and lower-profile conservancies in regions such as the marine and western areas, which are consistently overlooked by existing donor models and by national government, whose funding remains focused on state parks. This leaves emerging conservancies likely to collapse and susceptible to being overrun by infrastructural and agricultural development, exacerbating rangeland degradation, human–wildlife conflict and poverty if they cannot deliver tangible community benefits.

To reverse this, an accessible small grants facility is crucial for strengthening governance, covering priority operational costs, and supporting nature-based enterprises to achieve the national goal of increasing the area under conservation from the current 8% to 30% by 2030. The IKI small grant facility supports newly established and nascent conservancies with seed grants ranging from €47,625 to €70,000 to put in place basic operational capacity and grow them toward investment readiness.

Project goal

To strengthen the governance and financial resilience of community-led conservancies, thereby accelerating biodiversity conservation, climate resilience and sustainable livelihood outcomes in Kenya.

Project activities

• Provision of small grants to 12 nascent conservancies to implement interventions across three thematic areas: strengthening governance and operational capacity; supporting biodiversity conservation efforts; and implementing climate change adaptation interventions.
• Implement capacity-building activities for grantees to improve their programming, management and sustainability.
• Conduct project monitoring, evaluation and learning sessions with grantees to gather insights and knowledge that inform the documentation of actionable best practices and lessons learned.