Indigenous Peoples' Rights, Global Climate Policies and Finance

A brief critical review for COP26 and beyond

SUMMARY

Indigenous peoples have long called for national and global actions to tackle the root causes of climate and environmental destruction and associated rights abuse. They have additionally demanded that all international climate policies, funding, and initiatives must respect and protect their rights, cultures, and knowledge. They have insisted repeatedly that they be acknowledged and rewarded as key actors in climate solutions. Yet, from their experience, global climate policies developed and implemented to date have often marginalised their communities and failed to uphold their rights.

 

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This briefing presents a rapid review of existing climate programmes and finance and their impacts on indigenous peoples. This review also flags several new so-called ‘green’ finance and sustainable trade initiatives as well as funds and market-based instruments that are being showcased by governments, large NGOs, and big business at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), herein after COP26. These global initiatives that will be launched during COP26 are being proposed as possible solutions to the climate crisis affecting the planet and all of humanity.

OPPORTUNITIES

Increased focus by major bilateral donors (including the Government of the United Kingdom) on the importance of secure indigenous land rights, could provide a new opportunity for addressing the long-term problem of land tenure insecurity faced by many indigenous peoples and communities around the world. Although dwarfed by private sector financial flows for commodity extraction and trade, these emerging public commitments on indigenous peoples may indicate important improvements in donor government policies to fight against climate change and biodiversity loss through support for secure indigenous collective tenure rights. The application of robust rights-based approaches, coupled with a renewed emphasis on direct funding, where support organisations and international agencies are seen as enablers of local action, hold potential to empower indigenous peoples not only to own, but to govern, control and sustain their lands and build sustainable economies. An emerging global consensus on the need to ensure all environmental policymaking aligns with, advances and does not violate international human rights law is also a critically important step in building alliances for effective action.

RISKS AND POTENTIAL PERVERSE OUTCOMES:

Without robust guarantees for the protection of indigenous peoples’ rights, particularly in countries where such rights are weakly or inadequately protected, many of the proposed solutions for tackling the climate crisis risk enabling ‘green land grabs,’ leading to the expropriation of the lands, territories and resources of indigenous peoples and other customary communities. At the same time, global solutions based on the pursuit of flawed ‘net zero’ policies threaten to enable business as usual, fail to push for real and rapid reductions in emissions and allow destructive development to continue. Indigenous advocates and social/climate justice movements are again calling on world leaders to put human rights at the core of environmental and climate policies and demanding rapid and robust measures to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by phasing out dependence on fossil fuels and industrial agriculture as well as stopping harmful megaprojects.