Maria Amália Souza, founder of Casa Socio-Environmental Fund, wins international recognition for global protection of the environment

Maria Amália Souza founded and co-leads the Casa Socio-Environmental Fund that has granted over US$ 21 million to more than 3,100 projects since 2005 and inspired similar initiatives all around the globe. 

To mark the United Nations’ International Women’s Day (IWD), observed on 8 March, the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) is honoring 16 women on the frontline of the climate and biodiversity crises. These outstanding women are the faces of innovation in science, technology, art, public policy, sustainable business, environmental activism, journalism, litigation, climate finance, international climate treaty negotiations, and grassroots ecosystem restoration across the globe.

Maria Amália Souza is the only Brazilian woman in this edition of the GLF’s recognition. Other Brazilian leaders, such as the international top model Gisele Bundchen, the indigenous leader and now minister Sônia Guajajara and the scientist Luciana Gatti were listed in previous years.

Maria Amália Souza has dedicated her professional life to designing systemic strategies to ensure that philanthropic resources reach the most excluded and vulnerable community-based groups. In 2016, she was among 7 global finalists for the Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize for Innovators in Philanthropy from the Global South.

“For decades, we’ve seen resources to protect large biomes, such as the Amazon or the wetlands, going to very large organizations, but this was never enough to change the scenario of threats, challenges and devastation of these places, much less  reach SDGs and climate agreements. People protecting our forests, lands and biodiversity are people who have been living there for hundreds and thousands of years. 80% of the forests standing on this planet are indigenous lands. What else do we need to convince ourselves that they are doing the best work? These people rarely receive investment to be able to protect their lives, their livelihoods and territories. They  suffer constant assaults and violence, yet never give up. So we invented something different that could reach these people anywhere they are, no matter how remote”, she explained during the announcement of the Global Landscapes Forum event this Wednesday.

Casa Socio-Environmental Fund that Ms. Souza founded in 2005, funds grassroots organizations working to protect their lands and lives, and also helps forest communities improve their skills to build sustainable solutions for their livelihoods and territories — for instance, through local fruit and seed-processing businesses, renewable energy in remote regions, etc. And unlike other initiatives that come and go, it is in it for the long haul. For example, the fund has been supporting the Munduruku and other Amazonian communities along the Tapajós river for the past 18 years, funding travel to international Human Rights courts, community consultation meetings and use of national and international legal mechanisms.

The grants are small but multifaceted; strategically placed to create synergies. “It is like a process of socio-acupuncture, whereby acting on certain points of the system benefits the whole,” she says.

Amália on the Jordão River, on her way to the land of the Huni Kuin people, in 2000, in Acre. Photo: Joseane Daher

“I quickly realized that to conserve fragile ecosystems, we needed to get resources to the people who belong there and are doing the toughest job: the Indigenous groups, river communities and land rights advocates at the frontlines of environmental protection; no one can do it better than them,” explains Souza, who has traveled to more than 50 countries to work, learn and share her experience.

“We [human beings] are always out there ‘fighting’ for something, focused on convincing others rather than listening to them. But all great things are achieved by joining forces.”

The fund that became Souza’s life work is like a hummingbird: nimble and agile. It is hyperconnected; able to respond to unexpected threats to people and biomes and to fund grassroots communities that are too small to be reached by philanthropy behemoths. When Maria Amália Souza left her small hometown in São Paulo state for college in the United States in the 1980s, little did she know she would eventually come back to create the  first socio-environmental fund by South Americans, for South Americans.

Casa Fund, which started two decades ago with five grants, has gone on to deliver 3,000 grants across nine countries, has inspired the creation  of 5 new funds in neighboring countries and Africa, and has now led the creation of a global alliance with like-minded initiatives from around the world, the Socio-Environmental Funds of the Global South.

Get to know other GLF’s ‘16 Women Restoring the Earth’ 2023.

• The Strategist: ANDREA MEZA MURILLO, UNCCD’s Deputy Executive Secretary and former Minister of Energy and Environment for the Government of Costa Rica

• The Connector: ANNETTE PENSEL, Executive Director, Global Coffee Platform (Germany)

• The Investor: AYESHA KHAN, Regional Director, Acumen Pakistan –expert in sustainable finance for climate

• The Steward: CAMILLE RIVERA, Co-founder and Director of Oceanus Conservation, GLFx Mindanao chapter Coordinator, and Restoration Steward 2021 (Philippines)

• The Investigator: EDILMA PRADA, investigative journalist, Pulitzer fellow and founder and director of the independent media organization Agenda Propia (Colombia)

• The Leader: ÉLIANE UBALIJORO, Incoming CEO, CIFOR-ICRAF and Executive Director, Sustainability in the Digital Age (Rwanda)

• The Educator: EVA MAKANDI, Founder, Light On A Hill (LOAH), and Forest Restoration Steward 2022 (Kenya)

• The Activist: INEZA GRACE, Coordinator, Loss and Damage Youth Coalition (Rwanda)

• The Artist: INNA MODJA, visual artist, musician, UNCCD Land Ambassador, and CEO and Co-Founder of Code Green (Mali)

• The Policymaker: IRYNA STAVCHUK, Ukraine Program Manager at the European Climate Foundation and former Deputy Minister for the Ukrainian government.

• The Philanthropist: MARIA AMALIA SOUZA, Co-Founder and Strategic Development Director, Casa Socio-Environmental Fund (Brazil)

• The Storyteller: MOKY MAKURA, TV presenter, producer, author and Executive Director of Africa No Filter (Nigeria)

• The Defender: PASANG DOLMA SHERPA, Executive Director, Center for Indigenous Peoples’ Research & Development (CIPRED) (Nepal)

• The Advocate: SYEDA RIZWANA HASAN, environmental lawyer, Chief Executive of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA)

• The Entrepreneur: VIOLET AMOABENG, Founder and CEO, Skin Gourmet (Ghana)

• The Financier: YURIKO BACKES, Minister of Finance, Luxembourg

The fourth annual ‘16 Women Restoring the Earth’ launches a day after the 6th GLF Investment Case Symposium, ‘GLF–Luxembourg Finance for Nature: What Comes Next?’, a conference attended by thousands in Luxembourg and online that examined the key role of sustainable finance as a climate change and biodiversity loss solution.

Watch her the GLF Live with Maria Amália Souza and Ayesha Khan: ‘How are women shaping the world of sustainable finance?’