An Oxford dialogue on community justice, landscape finance and community-led restoration
On April 23, 2026, the Raintree Foundation and the Atlantic Institute hosted “Landscapes of Justice”. The session was a powerful exploration of how community-led landscape regeneration can address the twin crises of climate change and systemic inequality. The session moved beyond traditional conservation, positioning landscape restoration as inseparable from human dignity, collective responsibility, and long-term ecological justice.
As Rachel Kyte, UK Special Representative for Climate, noted in her opening reflections on fairness and justice:
“The only way for [landscape restoration] to happen politically and economically is for it to be fair and for there to be justice in that landscape restoration… as we reset our relationship with nature, having these principles, developing these principles, will be very important.”
Building on this, climate and biodiversity leader Justin Adams provided a perspective on the systemic roots of the current environmental crisis. He highlighted that while the world focuses on a $220 billion nature-finance gap, nearly $7.3 trillion annually continues to fund nature-destructive activities. He identified three causes that we must address to achieve true justice. The first crisis is our separation from the natural world. The belief that we are separate from nature, not intimately bound. The second is our short-termism. Lastly, the third is the deep inequities that pervade our economic system.
“Unless we address the inequities, unless we address justice, we will not find our way to a different and better future.”
At the heart of the event was the Raintree Foundation’s vision for community-led landscape regeneration. Founded in 2018, the organisation works to restore ecosystems and build resilient landscapes by weaving science with social innovation. Leena Dandekar, co-founder of the Raintree Foundation, described their unique deep listening model as the starting point for all intervention:
“We start this journey of equity and justice at Raintree with deep listening – listening to each other with respect, listening with the view to wanting to understand, to empathise, and then co-creating solutions from that deep listening with the community at the centre.”
This philosophy is operationalised through the 4 Returns Framework, a narrative thread featured in the film screened at the event, which defines the interconnected outcomes of their work:
The Foundation’s work in Velhe, a biodiverse region in India’s ecologically sensitive Western Ghats, serves as its “proof of concept”. Covering 2,100 hectares across nine villages, the project has demonstrated that placing communities at the centre of systemic action can influence 15 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Successes in Velhe include:
Raintree is now embarking on its next major chapter: the Shastri River Basin in the Western Ghats. This scale-up covers 209,800 hectares and 386 villages. The Shastri is one of the region’s few undammed river systems in the region, connecting 400,000 people through water, agriculture, horticulture, fisheries and local livelihoods. By intervening while the landscape is still relatively intact, Raintree aims to prevent irreversible ecological decline through integrated climate education and green enterprise.
“The Shastri River Basin is the next chapter… it calls for new kinds of partnership, more patient and aligned finance, and a shared sense of responsibility, equal to what is at stake. This cannot be achieved by one organisation or one village; it requires many hands, many hearts to restore dignity and well-being for people and the planet.”
The film concluded with a powerful call for a new era of collaboration, emphasising that the scale of the climate crisis requires more than fragmented solutions. They invited purposeful partners to join this journey of regeneration and help share a resilient future for all.
Natasha Chávez is Marketing and Events Support at Alliance magazine
