COP30: Putting Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities and Afro-descendant Peoples at the center of forest protection

Building direct funding mechanisms that work

Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities and Afro-descendent Peoples (IPLCPAP) protect over 55% of the world’s remaining forests, yet they only receive a fraction of global climate funding. This year’s COP, in the heart of the Amazon, is the place to reaffirm our commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030, but to do so we must hear forest peoples’ voices and find lasting solutions in partnership with them. Together, we will spotlight innovative community-led financing models from the world’s three largest forest basins.  

Where: Forest Pavilion  

When: 12 November, 12:10 – 13:30 (GMT-3) 

Tyala Ifwanga, Forest Governance Campaigner at Fern, opened the event by outlining the significant existing funding gap for protecting forests, and the key role that IPLCAP must play in using the available funds to reach our social and environmental goals. COP30 is the theatre of new forest funding initiatives, from the launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) to the presentation of the Central African Forest Initiative’s (CAFI) pilots of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), all of which intend to channel funds directly to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. Direct funding mechanisms are not new, and IPLCAP have a wealth of knowledge for making them work, from their experience of setting up territorial funds and direct payment schemes. This event’s purpose was to share lessons from the three Forest Basins (Amazon, Congo, Borneo-Mekong - Southeast Asia), existing opportunities, and the obstacles preventing forest peoples taking their rightful place in forest protection mechanisms. 

Ode Rakhman, director of the Nusantara Fund, highlighted that in Indonesia, communities with customary rights over 3.2 million hectares of forests are already benefiting from unrestricted direct payments. The Nusantara Fund supports Indigenous Peoples, farmers, women, and youths' groups, and provides technical support so that IPs and LCs can engage in relevant human rights and environmental legislative reforms. Their holistic approach helps tackle the underlying causes that hinder these communities’ ability to secure a decent livelihood. 

Silas Siakor, director of Integrated Development and Learning (IDL) and founder of the Payment for Stewardship initiative, explained that in Liberia, frustration from being unable to access REDD+ funding - despite two decades of reforms - led him to launch a Payments for Stewardship scheme. His approach also includes a combination of direct, unrestricted payments, and technical support to help communities define their own development objectives and achieve them. In this scheme, communities will work with Silas to tackle the drivers of deforestation, and start receiving payments from the beginning of their collaboration rather than after they have proven ‘results’. The watchwords are flexibility, simplicity and trust, as local communities themselves are the best placed to know how to spend these funds. 

Diel Mochire, Indigenous’ representative from the North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), highlighted the lack of funding available for the Congo Basin. The region hosts some of the richest ecosystems and is the second largest forest basin in the world, yet it receives only a fraction of the climate funds. The Indigenous Peoples of the Central African forests are among the most impoverished communities in the world, so the REPALEAC, a network representing more than 200 Central African Indigenous organisations, launched a scheme in the past year that has allowed them to technically support seven Indigenous groups across the eight countries of the Congo Basin region, and give a $30 000 (US) cash transfer to nine women’s organisations. This is early days, and more coherence between the existing funds would enable better support for the communities that need it most. 

María Pía Hernández, regional director of the Territorial Mesoamerican Fund, outlined the fund’s critical role as a link between existing climate finance and the communities that need and deserve it most.  Very often the heavy bureaucratic procedures and demanding reporting requirements mean that funds for protecting forests frequently go to less legitimate organisations, or never reach the communities that need them. IPs and LCs are consistently treated as project managers who must prove the benefits of practices that they naturally rely on, or they are forced to regroup in organisations that are far from their traditional ways of community building. The Mesoamerican Alliance of People and Forests and their Territorial Fund strive to overcome these obstacles, but donors must understand the cultural specificities and practical limitations that consistently impede forest stewards’ access to climate funding. 

Event Discussion 

No one size fits all: The panellists discussed the need for funding mechanisms to replace the one-size-fits-all approach. There are mosaics of contexts across forests: just like every forest has a different ecosystem, every community has specific needs, traditions, and ancestral knowledge that deserves to be nurtured. 

Self-determination: Whether it is new schemes or existing multilateral funds like the Green Climate Fund (GCF), these entities cannot be aware of the true needs and difficulties experienced by IPLCs everywhere, and they should trust them to define their development objectives and the best way to reach them. That is why all the existing territorial funds not only provide funding to these communities, but also technical support to accompany them in strengthening local governance mechanisms, influence relevant policies, secure land tenure and the right to use their forests resources sustainably, as well as improve their livelihoods.   

Flexibility and trust: Extensive work already happens to bridge the gap between existing climate finance and the communities that need and deserve it most, and we should rely on their expertise but also support these trusted initiatives first. Particular attention will have to be paid to ensure that the TFFF and other new initiatives address the obstacles that limit communities’ access to funding. More flexibility and trust in IPLCAP’s ancestral knowledge is required. For the TFFF, just like many Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES_ schemes, in many cases the funds earmarked for IPs and LCs will still have to go through governmental structures, which raises doubts over the actual sums that will reach forests communities. The TFFF Secretariat and World Bank must ensure that all tropical forest countries’ governments are committed to channelling these funds to IPs and LCs and develop credible structures to trace the money. 

The event was concluded by Abdourahamane Diallo, Resident coordinator of the United Nations in the Republic of Congo. He acknowledged all of the important and hard work that the panellists and their organisations are putting into ensuring that we put IPLCAP at the centre of forest protection and highlighted the role of the United Nations in ensuring coherence and stronger synergies between all of these initiatives and the available funds. He echoed the message of the Brazzaville Declaration that was developed during the first Indigenous Peoples’ three basins congress in Brazzaville earlier this year.  

Image: VaLife/Shutterstock

Catégories: Events, Finance for forests and peoples