Billions of dollars have been pledged by the international community to combat the escalating climate crisis, yet a stark reality persists: a minuscule fraction of these funds is reaching Indigenous peoples, the very communities globally recognized as indispensable stewards of the natural world and frontline defenders against environmental degradation. This paradox was underscored at the recent United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City, where world leaders, including UN Secretary-General António Guterres, lauded Indigenous peoples as "great guardians of nature, a living library of biodiversity conservation, and champions of climate action." However, the financial commitments have conspicuously failed to align with these pronouncements, leaving Indigenous communities struggling to adapt to the devastating impacts of climate change they did not cause.
The Disconnect Between Words and Funding Flows
Despite the eloquent recognition of Indigenous peoples’ crucial role in climate solutions, global financial institutions established to address the climate crisis have largely neglected to channel funds directly to these communities. Furthermore, there is a significant lack of mechanisms to track whether Indigenous groups are indeed benefiting from existing climate finance initiatives. At the Permanent Forum, Indigenous advocates painted a grim picture of communities ravaged by unprecedented flooding and intensifying wildfires, making impassioned pleas to governments and global funds for direct access to climate finance.
Joan Carling, a Kankanaey Igorot from the Philippines and former expert member of the Permanent Forum, who now serves as executive director of Indigenous Peoples Rights International, articulated the urgency of this demand. "The demand for direct access to finance by Indigenous peoples is a matter of right," Carling stated. "It’s actually explicitly mentioned in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that because of the historical injustices and the need for us to develop, we need direct access to finances." This assertion highlights a fundamental disconnect between international commitments and on-the-ground realities, where historical injustices continue to impede the ability of Indigenous peoples to access resources vital for their survival and adaptation.
Underrepresentation in Climate Finance: A Statistical Overview
Analysis by the Rainforest Foundation Norway provides a sobering quantitative perspective on this issue. Their research indicates that between 2011 and 2020, Indigenous peoples and local communities actively involved in land tenure and forest management received less than 1 percent of global funding allocated for climate change mitigation and adaptation. A significant contributing factor to this underrepresentation is the common practice of lumping Indigenous peoples together with "local communities" in conservation funding frameworks. This broad categorization, despite repeated calls from Indigenous U.N. experts to differentiate them, often obscures the unique rights, knowledge systems, and specific needs of Indigenous communities.
Carling further emphasized the moral and legal imperative for direct financial access. "We are not asking for charity. We are not asking for privilege," she asserted. "This is a matter of right for us because it’s a matter of social justice. It’s just enabling us to adapt to the impacts of climate change that we did not create in the first place." This statement underscores that the issue is not merely about resource allocation but about rectifying historical wrongs and ensuring equitable participation in global climate action.
The Tangible Impacts of Climate Change on Indigenous Communities
The consequences of climate change are not abstract for Indigenous peoples; they are manifesting in devastating ways, forcing communities to confront life-altering decisions. From the Amazon to the Arctic, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, and extreme weather events are rendering ancestral lands uninhabitable. Leaders are grappling with the agonizing choice between rebuilding homes after catastrophic disasters or undertaking the profound and often heartbreaking process of relocating entire villages from lands that hold deep cultural and spiritual significance. These decisions are further complicated by the severe scarcity of financial resources, even as international court rulings affirm the right to reparations for those harmed by climate change.
Deborah Sanchez, a Miskito from Honduras and director of the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative, a body established in 2021 to address the critical need for direct climate financing, highlighted the foundational importance of securing Indigenous rights. "We are protecting forests, we are protecting biodiversity," Sanchez stated. "Once the rights are realized for the communities, that’s the basis where everything can really be sustainable over time." Her organization, which primarily draws from private philanthropy to provide grants to Indigenous peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant organizations, exemplifies a growing effort to create alternative funding pathways when official channels prove inaccessible.
The Green Climate Fund: A Case Study in Access Barriers
The Green Climate Fund (GCF), designated as the official global climate fund under the Paris Agreement, boasts a substantial portfolio of $20 billion. However, according to Helen Magata, an Indigenous Kadaclan Igorot and a member of the GCF’s Indigenous advisory committee established in 2022, not a single Indigenous peoples’ organization has been accredited to receive direct funding from the GCF. "That goes without saying that access to the fund by Indigenous peoples is near to nil," Magata reported.
The accreditation process for the GCF is notoriously rigorous, requiring organizations to meet stringent criteria, including advanced financial management and accounting standards, as well as robust environmental and social safeguards. This process can span several years, a timeframe often unfeasible for communities facing immediate climate impacts. Furthermore, the GCF’s minimum grant size of $10 million can present a significant hurdle for smaller Indigenous organizations. "We have to jump through hoop after hoop in order to even qualify," explained Janene Yazzie, a Diné and member of the climate finance working group of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change. "They literally created a problem that is on us to prove our capacity to solve."
A 2025 report by the GCF’s Independent Evaluation Unit corroborated these concerns, finding that the fund "has not actively pursued a portfolio with Indigenous peoples" and that its operational processes lacked the necessary flexibility to effectively serve their needs. The report concluded that "For Indigenous peoples, this challenge is often compounded to the point of being insurmountable," and recommended the establishment of a dedicated funding window specifically for Indigenous peoples.
Tracking and Accountability: The Missing Links
Adding to the challenges, Magata pointed out the absence of a robust mechanism within the GCF to accurately track the amount of funding that ultimately reaches Indigenous peoples. While project proposals may claim to benefit Indigenous communities, the actual percentage of funds that flows to these groups often remains ambiguous. "If you don’t have a framework like that, then how could you say how much Indigenous peoples are really benefiting or not?" she questioned.
Rebecca Phwitiko, a communications specialist for the GCF, acknowledged in an email that the fund currently lacks "a dedicated marker to track funding flows specifically to Indigenous Peoples’ organisations." She noted that the GCF has undertaken revisions to its accreditation process and has supported projects that have benefited Indigenous peoples in regions such as the Amazon, Australia, and the Pacific. "Strengthening tracking, reporting, and accountability around Indigenous Peoples-related finance is an area GCF recognises as important and is continuing to work on," Phwitiko stated. The fund recently convened its first-ever Indigenous peoples conference in South Korea and, in the past year, accredited the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, an organization dedicated to securing land tenure rights for Indigenous peoples and local communities.
The Global Environment Facility: Incremental Progress and Ongoing Challenges
The Global Environment Facility (GEF), another significant international climate fund, has disbursed over $27 billion in funding over three decades. In recent years, it has allocated $50 million in dedicated funding for Indigenous peoples and local communities. Adriana Moreira, the GEF’s head of partnerships, indicated plans to increase this allocation to $100 million for the upcoming four-year funding cycle and expressed an intention to collaborate with five Indigenous-led trust funds. "We are constantly seeking to learn and improve," Moreira stated.
Unlike the GCF, the GEF does not mandate an extensive accreditation process and offers capacity-building grants of $75,000 to Indigenous-led organizations. It has also set an ambitious goal of directing 20 percent of its total funding towards Indigenous peoples and local communities. However, similar to the GCF, the GEF is still developing effective methods to verify whether these funds are indeed reaching their intended beneficiaries. Sarah Wyatt, a senior biodiversity specialist at the GEF, mentioned that the fund has recently piloted a new tracking method within one program and intends to expand its application. "It is admittedly not going to be an exact science," Wyatt conceded. "But still, if you don’t count, you can’t try to improve, right?"
The "Official Development Aid" Dichotomy and the Global North
Even with improvements in the operational frameworks of major funds like the GCF and GEF, a fundamental limitation remains: their reliance on governmental contributions classified as "official development aid" (ODA). This classification restricts funding flows exclusively from wealthy countries to developing ones, effectively excluding Indigenous peoples in the Global North from accessing these critical resources. At the U.N.’s annual climate conference in 2022, Janene Yazzie was part of an Indigenous peoples’ caucus that called for an end to the "false dichotomy of developed and developing countries in regard to funding initiatives and actions directed to Indigenous Peoples."
Delegates from North American Indigenous nations at the Permanent Forum shared accounts of melting ice and rising seas causing irreparable damage to their homelands – communities that are currently excluded from the existing global climate financing architecture. "We are dealing with the same issues and same forms of disenfranchisement across those global barriers," Yazzie stated. "It actually invisibilizes the way that the so-called ‘developed North’ profits from the theft of lands of Indigenous peoples within their own territories. To demand that those flows only go to the South is a continuation of those same colonial policies." This critique highlights how current funding structures can inadvertently perpetuate colonial dynamics by focusing aid solely on the Global South, overlooking the climate vulnerabilities and rights of Indigenous peoples in wealthier nations.
The Ambiguity of "Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities"
Yazzie also voiced concerns about the pervasive use of the term "Indigenous peoples and local communities," a phrase that U.N. experts have urged climate treaties to abandon. Representatives from the GEF explained their use of this terminology stems from the Convention on Biological Diversity, which defines local communities as those embodying traditional lifestyles relevant to conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. "So you see how much more narrow that truly is," remarked Wyatt from the GEF. However, she acknowledged the utility of the broader term in channeling funding to communities in countries that do not formally recognize Indigenous peoples, while admitting they lack data on the specific share of grants that reach Indigenous communities versus local communities more broadly. This lack of specificity raises questions about the true impact and reach of climate finance initiatives.
Building Alternative Pathways to Resilience
The persistent challenges in accessing global climate finance are spurring some Indigenous groups to forge their own alternative funding mechanisms. Sanchez from the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative observed, "We were in the communities, we saw that the funding didn’t go to the ground." Her organization’s model, which relies heavily on private philanthropy, aims to directly support Indigenous peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant organizations.
Despite the formidable obstacles, a sense of cautious optimism prevails. Helen Magata remains hopeful that major climate funds can evolve. "At the end of the day, the ultimate objective is we want to bring as much money as near to the ground as possible," she concluded, underscoring the enduring commitment of Indigenous communities to building resilient futures. The ongoing struggle for equitable access to climate finance underscores the urgent need for a fundamental re-evaluation of global funding mechanisms to ensure that the voices and needs of Indigenous peoples, the frontline stewards of our planet, are not only heard but also adequately supported.
