Indigenous groups say big forest funds don’t cut it for them
The UN’s first Amazonian climate conference has put a spotlight on primary rainforests and the need to support their preservation. But Indigenous groups have their own proposals.
BELEM, Brazil — Amid slacking efforts to address climate change, countries meeting in Belém for climate talks this month have upped the focus on how forests can help bring down carbon emissions.
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva launched last week the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), aimed at rewarding developing countries for preserving their existing forests. Twenty per cent of the funds are expected to go to Indigenous and local communities, provided that recipient countries commit to allocating it to them. The fund has already received $5.5 billion in pledges, meeting over half of its $10bn revised target – down from the $25bn initially sought. It would be the world’s largest blended finance scheme, focusing on leveraging public money to raise private funds instead of providing outright grants.
Meanwhile, the Amazon Fund, a Brazilian-focused mechanism created in 2008, was resuscitated with new funding to expand deforestation-monitoring efforts. Carbon markets linked to avoided-deforestation projects are also beginning to pick up again – albeit timidly after a recent reputational hit following media reports alleging fraudulent offsetting deals.
On Monday, Geraldo Alckmin, Brazil’s vice-president, said TFFF “will value tropical forests even more”. More than 70 developing countries, with tropical or subtropical moist broadleaf forests could benefit from the fund, which would provide $4 per hectare of standing forests while penalising countries for degraded land. Indigenous leaders remained sceptical of how much could be achieved.
“Within the current political context – and the political makeup of the Brazilian national parliament – conditions are not very favourable for the ministry of Indigenous peoples to advance its goals,” Ianukula Kaiabi Suia, the president of the Association of Xingu Indigenous Land (ATIX), said, noting how government initiatives by the leftwing government regarding land preservation and Indigenous rights are having to deal with a strong opposition in Congress, including from politicians allied with former president Jair Bolsonaro.
A recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme on public and private forest finance in 2023, including carbon and biodiversity markets, philanthropy and private capital mobilised through public funding, warned of severe underfunding. It said that funding would need to rise from $84bn in 2023 to $300bn by 2030.
The Glasgow Declaration, a pledge made at the Cop26 to end deforestation and restore 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, is also offtrack, with 8.1m hectares having been lost in 2024 alone.
Even more striking, just two per cent of global climate finance goes directly to Indigenous communities responsible for protecting 36 per cent of tropical forests, often under terms they didn’t set. Many are also wary of REDD+ voluntary carbon trading schemes, private projects that emerged following UN agreements that developed countries to support developing states “reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation”. Indigenous people feel that the deals often do not take into account the interests and needs of the communities, as well as provide sufficient funding where forests – and those caring for them – are under threat.
As a result new Indigenous-led funding mechanisms have started to emerge.
Read more: Carbon markets require rights focus, say NGOs at Cop28
Protecting the ‘Indigenous way of life’
Kaiabi Suia says that Indigenous peoples want to ensure that amid the Cop’s focus on nature and its ability to trap carbon emissions, communities want to “ensure that the ways of life of Indigenous peoples continue to exist”.
In Brazil, the Podáali Fund, launched in 2020 by the Coordination of Indigenous Organisations of the Brazilian Amazon (Coaib), the nation’s biggest alliance of Indigenous groups, is the first Indigenous-led fund covering the Amazon. Aligning with REDD+ principles, the fund’s goal is to support life plans and projects designed by communities and local organisations in the world’s largest rainforest that strengthen self-determination and sustainability, while valuing cultural traditions and promoting autonomous management of territories and natural resources.
“These sorts of funds, with much less bureaucracy, need to be supported,” says Kaiabi Suia. “Indigenous people’s organisations will know how to manage funding as we know how to care for the forest without major interventions, but by maintaining what already exists.”
The fund has received backing from a number of philanthropies, including the Ford Foundation, the Rainforest Foundation and Prince William’s Royal Foundation, and the Tenure Facility, a multi-stakeholder financial mechanism that supports Indigenous peoples secure land rights. The Stockholm-based initiative injected $3million (CHF2.4m) in funding in 2023, though not all of Podáali’s donations are publicly disclosed, In 2022 to 2023, the fund supported some 47 initiatives with a total of $413,000. Podáali was unavailable for comment.
Meanwhile, other direct funding schemes exist elsewhere, including the Nusantara Fund in Indonesia and the Mesoamerican Alliance of People and Forests (AMPB), having been founded by and for communities. José Luis Rengifo, project director of the Process of Black Communities in Colombia, which works with AMPB, underscored that conservation projects need to come from the ground. “The lesson we have learnt is that the grantor goes there to learn what communities have been doing and what they have been investing in,” he told a panel focusing on direct nature conservation finance to Indigenous communities at the Indigenous Village, which is hosting a parallel summit nine kilometres from the Cop30.
“We need to be considered as subjects, not objects,” Gregoria Jimenez, president of the Organisation of Ethnic Community Development (ODECO), a group of Afro-Honduran communities, also said to the panel. “We need to change actions so that there are actions to save the lives of environmental defenders,” she added, noting that people are often left out of the equation in forest preservation plans.
All agreed that recognition of land rights was key to achieving this.
Where it fits in
Back at the Hangar Convention Centre, the main venue of the climate summit, Cop30 president Andre Correa do Lago said Tuesday evening midway through the final week that he hoped a new draft of a deal that would include a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels could be presented as early as Wednesday. Earlier that day, ministers from over 80 countries, including nearly all European countries, joined together to call for a phase-out plan.
Two negotiation “packages”, one consisting of interrelated topics such as the climate target shortfall, finance, trade and transparency reports, and the second tied to more technical issues, were welcomed by delegates who took Brazil’s initiative as a sign of momentum in talks.
“Cop30 could make history by agreeing on roadmaps for both a transition away from fossil fuels and to combat deforestation,” Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, WWF Global Climate and Energy Lead, and Cop20 President, said. “It must also respond to the emissions gap in national climate plans, and make advances on finance, including to help countries adapt to climate change “
But disagreements over issues, including calls by developed countries to provide climate finance to developing ones – with some suggesting that adaptation finance could be included in commercial deals such as carbon credits –, were keeping delegates holed up in unventilated negotiating rooms.
Agriculture days
On Thursday and Friday, the Cop30’s agriculture thematic days will focus on the sector’s climate impacts. Agricultural management is deemed critical for tackling the environmental crisis, as evidenced in Belém’s own state of Pará, which has topped global rankings in deforestation, due mostly to illegal cattle ranching.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, agricultural food systems contribute to one third of global greenhouse gas emissions, though more than 300 lobbyists from the agro-industry are estimated to be converging at the climate summit.
Meanwhile, a report released on Tuesday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Save Soil movement and Aroura Soil Security Think Tank found that topsoils could mitigate 27 per cent of emissions needed to keep global warming under the 2°C limit. However at current rates, it said soil degradation could release the equivalent of half of annual US emissions.