Global Environment Facility (GEF)

Drafted by the Indigenous Peoples Task Force on the Global Environment Facility Indigenous Peoples’ Policy (IPTF). The task force is composed of the following: Joenia Batista de Carvalho, Brazil; Johnson Cerda, Ecuador; Herminia Degawan, Philippines; Famarck Hlawching, Burma; Edna Kaptoyo, Kenya; Jadder Mendoza Lewis, Nicaragua; Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Chad; Saro Pyagbara, Nigeria, and Jennifer Rubis, Malaysia. The Task Force is supported by the GEF Secretariat, the GEF NGO Network and Helen Tugendhat.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) secretariat will propose to the next GEF Council meeting a revised set of Environmental and Social Safeguard Standards and accountability mechanisms that will accompany such standards.

With the GEF’s increasing engagement in REDD+ related activities and a long history of involvement in protected area establishment and management, these standards will be essential to ensuring that the expansion of GEF delivery partners does not result in a lowering of standards in GEF-financed projects. 

As awareness of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has grown, we as indigenous peoples have actively sought the implementation of this document in all institutions, policies and programmes that have the potential to impact us. To be able to address the exclusion that indigenous peoples face at the grassroots, we have consistently fought for the right to full and effective participation in mechanisms that affect us. Moving the battle upstream is not easy as we have to educate ourselves in a language and cultural environment that is far removed from our own processes of participation and decision-making. It takes time away from the priority – the persistent violation of our rights and resources at the community level.