About Us
Inclusive Development International supports communities around the world to defend their rights and resources in the face of harmful corporate activities and internationally financed development projects, and we advocate for a more just and equitable global economy.
We are working toward a world in ecological balance, in which communities and individuals determine their own development paths, and businesses respect their human rights and environmental responsibilities.
Our Impact
Our Story
Every year, millions of people are forcibly driven from their land, homes, and farms to make way for hydropower dams, large-scale plantations, oil and gas pipelines, and other mega-investment projects. These projects are often touted as “development,” but in practice, they provide few local benefits, while exacting a devastating toll on the well-being of affected communities and their environments.
Countless livelihoods have been destroyed, along with the natural resources that underpin them, impoverishing communities for generations to come and causing a breakdown in social networks and cultures. Human rights defenders who dare to resist these projects have faced criminalization and repression.
The global financial system is fueling this crisis with its relentless pursuit of new resources and markets. As capital becomes more interconnected, communities are excluded from investment decisions that affect them and then face further marginalization when they are forced to shoulder the costs.
Inclusive Development International was launched to fight back.
We have been deeply inspired by people who have risked their lives and liberty resisting displacement and other human rights abuses caused by unjust development, unbridled greed and unchecked power.
We have witnessed the destruction of entire communities, whose struggles have become our own, but we have also seen how the world’s most powerful corporations can be held accountable by organized communities engaged in persistent, smart and strategic advocacy.
We founded Inclusive Development International in 2012 in order to bring new resources and strategies to support those fighting on the front lines for just and inclusive development. Building on the innovative advocacy strategies developed through the earlier work of our founders in Cambodia, Inclusive Development International began analyzing the corporations behind land grabs, environmental destruction and other human rights violations, and the hidden financial actors enabling them. And they began leveraging that information to affected communities’ advantage.
The approach worked—helping secure multi-million-dollar compensation packages for families displaced by internationally-financed development projects, stopping forced evictions in their tracks, securing land titles for threatened communities, and preventing thousands of acres of old-growth forests from being cleared to make way for industrial mono-crop plantations.
For over a decade, Inclusive Development International has been refining its methods and expanding its research and advocacy toolkit. The result is a uniquely effective approach to advancing corporate accountability, human rights and environmental justice, including through:
Investigations using our Follow the Money approach to reveal the hidden web of corporate and financial actors behind harmful projects.
Accompanying affected communities in specific cases to undertake advocacy and legal action targeting those actors.
Providing tools and training to grassroots advocates and frontline human rights defenders to support them in doing this work themselves.
Advocating for policy changes that strengthen access to remedy for corporate and development-related harms, and to prevent corporate abuse and impunity in the first place.
Read more about our approach here.