Billions of dollars have been pledged to combat the escalating climate crisis, yet a stark disparity exists: virtually none of this vital funding is reaching Indigenous peoples, even as world leaders increasingly acknowledge their indispensable role in finding solutions. This paradox was a central theme at the recent United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York City, where Indigenous advocates voiced profound frustration over the disconnect between rhetoric and reality.
"From the Amazon to Australia, and Africa to the Arctic, you are the great guardians of nature, a living library of biodiversity conservation, and champions of climate action," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stated at the forum’s opening ceremony. His words, however, have not been matched by tangible financial support flowing to the communities on the front lines of climate change.
The Funding Gap: A Chasm Between Words and Deeds
Despite the billions allocated to climate action through multi-billion-dollar financial institutions, these mechanisms have largely failed to deliver funds directly to Indigenous communities. Furthermore, there is a significant lack of tracking to ascertain if these communities are even beneficiaries of climate finance. At the Permanent Forum, Indigenous representatives shared harrowing accounts of communities devastated by unprecedented flooding and wildfires, underscoring their urgent plea for direct access to climate finance from governments and global funds.
Joan Carling, a Kankanaey Igorot woman from the Philippines and former expert member of the Permanent Forum, who now serves as the executive director of Indigenous Peoples Rights International, emphasized the legal and ethical imperative for direct access. "The demand for direct access to finance by Indigenous peoples is a matter of right. 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," Carling stated. She further clarified, "We are not asking for charity. We are not asking for privilege. 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."
Data Reveals Alarming Underrepresentation
Analysis by the Rainforest Foundation Norway paints a grim picture: between 2011 and 2020, Indigenous peoples and local communities actively engaged in land tenure and forest management received less than 1 percent of global funding designated 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 initiatives. This categorization, despite persistent calls from Indigenous U.N. experts to establish clear distinctions, obscures the unique rights, knowledge, and needs of Indigenous peoples.
Indigenous Communities Bear the Brunt, Face Difficult Choices
The escalating climate crisis is forcing many Indigenous leaders into making agonizing decisions. Communities are grappling with the immense challenge of either rebuilding homes in the wake of catastrophic natural disasters or undertaking the heartbreaking task of relocating entire villages from their ancestral lands. These already arduous choices are made exponentially more difficult by a severe lack of financial resources, even as international court rulings increasingly affirm the right to reparations for those disproportionately harmed by climate change.
Deborah Sanchez, a Miskito woman from Honduras and director of the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative, an organization established in 2021 to address the critical need for direct climate financing, articulated this struggle. "We are protecting forests, we are protecting biodiversity," Sanchez said. "Once the rights are realized for the communities, that’s the basis where everything can really be sustainable over time."
The Green Climate Fund: A $20 Billion Portfolio, Little Reaching Indigenous Peoples
The Green Climate Fund (GCF), the primary global climate finance mechanism established under the Paris Agreement, boasts a substantial portfolio of $20 billion. However, according to Helen Magata, an Indigenous Kadaclan Igorot woman and a member of the GCF’s Indigenous Advisory Committee, not a single Indigenous peoples’ organization has been accredited to receive funds directly from the GCF. "That goes without saying that access to the fund by Indigenous peoples is near to nil," Magata stated.
The accreditation process for the GCF is notoriously stringent, requiring applicants to meet rigorous criteria, including robust financial management and accounting standards, as well as comprehensive environmental and social safeguards. This process can often take years to navigate. Furthermore, the GCF’s minimum grant size of $10 million presents a significant hurdle for smaller Indigenous communities, making it difficult for them to manage such substantial sums.
"We have to jump through hoop after hoop in order to even qualify," explained Janene Yazzie, a Diné woman 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 confirmed these concerns, stating that "the Green Climate Fund has not actively pursued a portfolio with Indigenous peoples" and that its operational processes lacked the necessary flexibility to effectively serve them. 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 Transparency Deficiencies
Magata also highlighted a critical gap in the GCF’s operations: the absence of a mechanism to accurately track the amount of funding that actually reaches Indigenous peoples. Funding recipients may claim their projects benefit Indigenous communities, but the precise percentage of funds reaching these groups often remains unclear. "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 Green Climate Fund, acknowledged in an email that the fund currently lacks "a dedicated marker to track funding flows specifically to Indigenous Peoples’ organisations." She added that while the GCF has revised its accreditation process and supported projects benefiting Indigenous peoples in regions like the Amazon, Australia, and the Pacific, strengthening tracking, reporting, and accountability around Indigenous peoples-related finance remains an area of ongoing work. The GCF recently hosted its first-ever Indigenous Peoples Conference in South Korea and accredited the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility, an organization dedicated to securing land tenure rights for Indigenous and local communities.
The Global Environment Facility: A Modest Step Forward
The Global Environment Facility (GEF), another significant international climate fund, has disbursed over $27 billion in the past three decades. While it has provided $50 million in dedicated funding for Indigenous peoples and local communities over the last eight years, this still represents a fraction of its overall disbursements. Adriana Moreira, the GEF’s head of partnerships, indicated plans to increase this to $100 million in the next four-year funding cycle and expressed intentions 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 $75,000 capacity-building grants to Indigenous-led organizations. It has also set an ambitious goal of directing 20 percent of all its funding towards Indigenous peoples and local communities. However, similar to the GCF, the GEF is still developing robust methods to verify that funds effectively reach these communities. Sarah Wyatt, a senior biodiversity specialist at the GEF, mentioned that the fund has recently piloted a new tracking method within a specific program and intends to expand its application. "It is admittedly not going to be an exact science," Wyatt admitted. "But still, if you don’t count, you can’t try to improve, right?"
The "Official Development Aid" Barrier and the Global North
Even with improvements in the processes of the GCF and GEF, a significant barrier remains: their reliance on governmental contributions classified as "official development aid." This classification dictates that funding flows exclusively from wealthy countries to developing ones, effectively excluding Indigenous peoples in the Global North from accessing these vital climate resources.
At the 2022 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27), Janene Yazzie was part of a significant caucus of Indigenous peoples who called for a reevaluation of the "false dichotomy of developed and developing countries in regard to funding initiatives and actions directed to Indigenous Peoples."
Invisibilizing the North: A Continuation of Colonial Policies
During the Permanent Forum, delegates from Indigenous nations in North America shared their experiences of irreversible harm caused by melting ice and rising seas. These communities, facing existential threats, find themselves excluded from the current global climate financing structure. "We are dealing with the same issues and same forms of disenfranchisement across those global barriers," Yazzie observed. "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."
Yazzie also critiqued the pervasive use of the phrase "Indigenous peoples and local communities," a practice that U.N. experts have urged climate treaties to abandon. Representatives from the GEF explained their use of the term "local communities" aligns with the Convention on Biological Diversity’s definition, which describes them as embodying traditional lifestyles relevant to conservation and sustainable use. However, as Wyatt from the GEF acknowledged, this definition is "truly more narrow." She offered an example from the Pacific, where individuals may not identify as Indigenous but fit the broader definition, and noted that this terminology helps channel funding to communities in countries that do not formally recognize Indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, the GEF, like the GCF, lacks precise data on the proportion of grants that specifically reach Indigenous communities versus broader local communities.
Building Alternative Pathways
The persistent challenges in accessing global climate finance are prompting some Indigenous groups to explore and build alternative funding models. Deborah Sanchez of the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative explained, "We were in the communities, we saw that the funding didn’t go to the ground." Her organization primarily relies on private philanthropy to provide grants to Indigenous peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant organizations.
Despite the systemic hurdles, Helen Magata expresses a guarded optimism 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 fundamental goal of ensuring that climate finance effectively supports those most impacted and most capable of implementing solutions. The path forward requires not only increased financial commitments but also a fundamental restructuring of how climate finance is accessed and distributed, prioritizing the rights, knowledge, and agency of Indigenous peoples worldwide.
