Aug 05, 2024
Although Indigenous people constitute just 6.2 percent of the global population, they make an outsized contribution to climate action. A quarter of all land and 80% of the world's animal and plant biodiversity are currently safeguarded and managed by Indigenous people, along with tropical forests that sequester billions of tons of carbon annually.
As we celebrate International Indigenous Peoples Day on August 9, the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) is highlighting four key insights from a new independent evaluation of its Forest Investment Program (FIP). The evaluation draws out important successes and setbacks from FIP in complex and diverse country contexts, as well as assesses its groundbreaking Dedicated Grant Mechanism (DGM), a funding mechanism designed to empower Indigenous People and local communities to sustainably manage their natural resources by giving them direct access and self-determination in the use of financing.
Read the full evaluation and the summary brief
The evaluation found that the DGM accounts for an astonishing 8 percent of all worldwide finance disbursed directly to Indigenous People and local communities for forest management and tenure. As such, it can provide a variety of practical insights about the power of Indigenous-led climate investments to deliver tangible improvements for both people and their environments.
Four Lessons from the “Midterm Evaluation of CIF’s Forest Investment Program” Indigenous-led climate investments through the DGM:
1. Boosting livelihoods while protecting forests
Since 2010, the DGM has channeled US$34 million to 628 community projects in 12 countries. In every country studied, these grants—ranging from ecotourism to honey production—have empowered Indigenous People to unlock sustainable benefits, without deforesting land.
In Burkina Faso, for example, DGM projects have led to significant improvements for community members, including better healthcare, clothing, and food. In Peru, DGM-funded projects helped Indigenous communities to increase incomes by transforming from primary producers of raw timber and agricultural products to tertiary producers.
An indigenous woman from Peru carrying fruit
2. A stronger Indigenous voice
The DGM is unique because it recognizes Indigenous People not only as beneficiaries of climate funding, but also as active agents of change. DGM national steering committees in each country are predominantly made up of Indigenous people and local community (IPLC) representatives, helping to successfully elevate Indigenous voices in the management of natural resources. It has also set important legal precedents on land tenure and access, and contributed to securing greater recognition of Indigenous rights.
In Brazil, for example, existing quilombo networks in the Cerrado Biome used the DGM to foster unprecedented levels of collaboration and consensus among diverse community groups, expanding their influence beyond the Cerrado. Their insights are now contributing to the development of a REDD jurisdictional system in the Amazon. In the DRC, technical and financial assistance provided by the DGM has not only secured perpetual community forest concessions covering about 200,000 hectares but has helped deliver substantive legal reforms: DGM support for several Indigenous organizations helped their voices to inform a new law, requiring all land use planning and decision-making to protect Indigenous rights.
Cattle farmers in Brazil
3. Indigenous-led, women-led!
Currently, 46 percent of the DGM Global Steering Committee members are women, and a quarter of all DGM projects have been dedicated to women-focused initiatives. These projects have helped shift gender dynamics and strengthen the agency of women in their communities.
In Ghana, for example, men and women in the Koradaso community reported that once women began bringing in an income through improved farming or honey production, they were empowered to begin making decisions and changing perceptions at household and community level. A female project participant in the San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán community in Jalisco, Mexico, describes a similar transformation: “Now women have greater participation, their opinion is taken into account and their vote is of equal importance to anyone in the project.”
A DGM banner in Ghana during the CIF@10 meeting in 2018
4. A springboard for future climate action
In all countries studied—from watershed restoration in Brazil to more sustainable cacao production in Ghana—DGM has helped Indigenous communities to establish a solid track record and position themselves to pursue additional climate funding.
As the independent evaluation finds, these meaningful outcomes are possible because the DGM invested significant time and funding in establishing the Indigenous-led structures so critical to its success. While other initiatives have succeeded in channeling only a tiny percentage of overall funding to Indigenous-led forest initiatives, more than half of DGM country budgets have flowed directly to projects led by Indigenous people and local communities.
A young Peruvian girl carrying fruit in the forest
Other contributors could now fund these established and accountable structures, to create lasting change in a cost-efficient way. This would recognize evidence established in numerous studies, including this evaluation, that when the world’s most precious ecosystems are managed directly by the Indigenous People who live in and depend on them, the benefits multiply for their communities and beyond.
