The Standing Together for Environmental Defenders (STAND) Initiative is a collaborative effort between the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Alliance for Land, Indigenous, and Environmental Defenders (ALLIED) with presence in Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Liberia.
The STAND Initiative is designed to respond to the call of environmental and land defenders to strengthen prevention strategies, especially those from underserved and underrepresented communities in places with weak governance. It also supports civil society organisations working to protect the environment, whose members have been subject to government-sanctioned harassment, threats, assassinations and abuses of the justice system. The project aims to expand financial resources to address the risks faced by environmental and land defenders and to improve the mainstreaming of environmental protection and advocacy into broader work on livelihoods, forest protection and combating the climate crisis.