Preity Gurung is a member of the Tamang people of the Himalaya. The climate effects here are deeply felt: After a long period of drought, more than 200 people in Kathmandu were killed by floods in October 2024. 

“The situation in the mountains, where our community lives, is even worse,” she says. More floods as well as long periods of drought have made the perennial water sources in the upper mountains run dry.

Thousands of kilometers from Gurung’s community in the mountains, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP29, was just held in Baku, Azerbaijan. At this annual global convening, professionals, stakeholders, and politicians spent weeks deliberating situations like that of the Tamang and the nearly 500 million Indigenous people around the world. 

Gurung attended COP29 as program officer for the Center for Indigenous Peoples’ Research and Development, based in Kathmandu, Nepal. And her demands were clear: “We want $5 trillion—not as a loan, but as a grant,” she says. 

This target aims to address the urgent needs of developing countries for transitioning to clean energy and adapting to climate change. But COP29 ended on Nov. 24 with a pledge from developed nations to contribute just $300 billion annually to support adaptation. It has not been decided whether this will take the form of a grant or a loan.

Gurung was certainly disappointed. The Inuit Circumpolar Council described the outcome as “unacceptable.” And climate envoy Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, the chief negotiator for Panama, called it a “spit in the face.” 

Despite Indigenous peoples’ crucial and outsized role in climate action, their demands for financial support have again gone unheeded.

COP’s History of Exclusion

Indigenous peoples have always been shortchanged by the agreements that have come out of COP negotiations. 

In 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, a pledge of $1.7 billion was made to support land rights and forest tenure for Indigenous peoples and local communities. And while countries are on track to meet that goal, only about 2.1 percent of this funding reached Indigenous communities directly.

Much of the funding that comes out of these global agreements is funneled through institutional banks including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These entities have been criticized for their approach to climate finance, particularly in relation to Indigenous peoples. By providing a significant portion of the climate finance in the form of loans rather than grants, for example, they increase the debt burden on those communities. 

Also, the process to access these funds is often complex and bureaucratic, making it difficult for Indigenous communities to benefit directly. Funds are often channeled through national governments or large organizations, which may not prioritize or effectively address the specific needs of Indigenous communities. There even have been instances where projects funded by these institutions have led to human rights abuses and displacement.

So besides a bigger “fair share,” of climate funding for Indigenous communities, Gurung wants direct access to these grants “without an international finance institution in between, like the World Bank or the IMF.” She emphasizes that Indigenous peoples are rightly afraid that those international institutions could demand economic reforms or policy changes that may not align with the priorities or needs of those communities.

“It’s important that Indigenous peoples obtain direct access and control without bureaucratic delays and mandates about how the funds are allocated and spent,” Gurung says. 

Investing in Indigenous Women and Youth

While there is much discussion about Indigenous communities, Indigenous voices aren’t heard enough at COP gatherings, Gurung says: “A lot of negotiations are not open for us.”

Many Indigenous representatives and civil society observers criticized the exclusion and lack of transparency in the negotiation process. Indigenous leaders publicly expressed their frustration with the process’s inadequate consultation of Indigenous communities. For instance, Alessandra Korap Munduruku, an Indigenous rights campaigner from Brazil, criticized the carbon-credit mechanisms being discussed, highlighting how they often lead to land grabs and displacement of Indigenous communities.

Indigenous delegates also reported limited access to negotiation rooms and decision-making processes to the Institute of Development Studies. This exclusion was highlighted by various human rights groups and Indigenous organizations, who noted that their voices were not adequately represented in the final agreements. 

As a kind of protest against this exclusion, Gurung organized a side event about Indigenous women. Along with two colleagues, she shared her experience and how climate change affects Tamang women more than men. She also highlighted the resilience and the knowledge of Indigenous women in her community and Indigenous communities more broadly: “We have more knowledge about natural medicines, about seed banks, food storage, and agricultural practices. We know the surroundings, the environment, and to work as leaders.”

Gurung argues that Indigenous female knowledge is not only richer than that of non-natives, but also superior to that of Indigenous men. She says that for men in her community, it’s more acceptable to find a job in the city, so “men are often migrating from the community.” 

Therefore, in order to make the most meaningful investments in climate solutions, the focus should be on women and youth. “For they need to gain the knowledge and they need to take leadership in the future,” Gurung says. 

The Challenge of the Maasai

The climate realities faced by the Tamang are not unlike those of the Maasai in East Africa. Pastoralist Isaac Nemuta says the effects of climate change have held him and his peers in an iron grip for decades. 

The Maasai are known as a people who hold on to their traditional way of herding—having persisted through centuries of persecution by British colonial rule and Christian missionaries—but they are now being forced to change. In the past 30 years, periods of drought have become more frequent and intense, with rising temperatures and unpredictable rainfalls. 

“In recent years, the situation has worsened,” he says. The past five consecutive rainy seasons all brought way too little water, leading to severe drought conditions. Since the end of 2020, hardly a drop of rain has fallen, which has led to the death of more than 2.5 million cattle.

With millions of pastoralists in East Africa adrift, Nemuta teamed up with colleagues to start an NGO called Climate Smart Pastoralists Limited. They help pastoralists adapt to the new climate conditions and mitigate the impacts of drought through sustainable practices such as rotational grazing, water conservation techniques, and grassland restoration. 

The NGO also engages in community education and capacity building. Their school for pastoralists, launched in 2007, serves not only Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania, but all pastoral peoples. “Even Turkana from the far north of the country attend our school,” Nemuta says.

Most of the funding for Climate Smart Pastoralists Limited comes from small and medium NGOs like Heifer International and German Agro Action (Welt Hunger Hilfe). They also receive funding through the Savory Institute and the Africa Wildlife Foundation.

Nemuta says he has tried to gain access to international climate finance money, like that coming from COP, but without results. The different funding streams for climate adaptation, mitigation, and even the loss and damage funds discussed at COP29 are simply out of reach. The application process for the climate funds that are collected on a global scale is inscrutable for small, Indigenous communities like his.

Making COP Money Accessible

Many Indigenous peoples face significant challenges in accessing the large amounts of money that come out of global conferences like the one in Baku.

The application procedures for UN funds can be highly complex and bureaucratic. Indigenous communities often lack the technical expertise and resources needed to navigate these processes effectively, according to a report from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. 

Applications and related documents are often in languages that Indigenous peoples may not be fluent in, making it difficult for them to understand and complete the necessary paperwork. And like Nemuta’s Maasai community, many Indigenous communities are not aware of the available funding opportunities or do not have access to the necessary information to apply. 

But solutions to overcome these barriers exist. The UN itself, through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (which organizes COP29), describes an alternative approach for Indigenous peoples to access climate funding without the bureaucratic hurdles typically associated with UN climate money. The mechanisms are built by and for Indigenous people and local communities, and they can operate in different sociocultural regions and contexts.

These Indigenous Led Funds (ILFs) provide a mechanism for resources to reach Indigenous communities directly, bypassing complex bureaucratic processes, with culturally appropriate grantmaking. They use approaches that align with Indigenous knowledge, priorities, and worldviews.

Some ILFs work internationally across several countries, while others focus on national or community-based initiatives, allowing for flexible and context-specific support. 

At the end of the day, all different forms of ILFs strengthen Indigenous peoples’ ability to make decisions about resource allocation and project implementation. And they act as intermediaries between Indigenous communities and external resources, facilitating partnerships and knowledge exchange. In short: ILFs streamline climate solutions. 

Gurung is clear that for climate solutions to get traction, climate funding needs to be available through an easy and accessible process without too much delay. In short, she says, “It needs to be Indigenous friendly.”