Landesa is an international nonprofit dedicated to ending global poverty by securing land rights for rural communities around the globe. Founded in 1981, Landesa has worked in more than 65 countries throughout the world, with central office staff in the U.S. (Seattle, Washington and Washington, DC) and regional programming in China, India, Liberia, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Thailand. Landesa partners with governments, civil society, and companies to develop pro-poor and gender-sensitive laws, policies and programs that have helped strengthen land rights for more than 720 million people in the last 5 years. The organization is supported by NGOs, foundations, donor agencies (USAID, World Bank, etc.), world leaders, educational institutions, and individual supporters around the world. Landesa has been consistently ranked one of the top ten international NGOs in the world and has received numerous awards for its work. Landesa’s annual budget of approximately $20 million is supported by private foundations (e.g. Ford, Rockefeller, Skoll), public donors (e.g. USAID, World Bank), individuals (including MacKenzie Scott) and corporate contracts.

Since 2022 Landesa has been carrying out the Coastal Livelihoods and Mangroves Project, an ambitious law and policy initiative in the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia to lay the foundation to strengthen the coastal tenure and resource rights of up to 73 million of the most at-risk people living in the region’s mangrove forests. Stronger tenure rights will better protect the 4.6 million hectares of mangrove forests where these communities live and make their livelihoods. If successful, the project would provide a significant boost in the global effort to slow climate change, shaping policies that would help mitigate up to 943 million metric tons of carbon in these coastal mangroves.