“Cutting funds won’t save them”

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim interviewed by Eva-Maria Verfürth

As an advocate for Indigenous Peoples, you must have been full of hope in 2021 when donor countries and private funders announced a five-year pledge of $ 1.7 billion to support Indigenous Peoples. The pledge recognised the key role Indigenous Peoples play in protecting the planet’s lands and forests. How have you experienced this process?

I was at COP26 for the announcement of the $ 1.7 billion fund. I applauded, spoke to heads of state and felt that indigenous voices were finally being heard. Finally, it was understood that there are no “donors” and “recipients” of finance, but rather that it is a question of a financial collaboration in which one part contributes financial resources and the other part protects natural resources. But at COP28, reports revealed that only about two percent of the almost $ 500 million spent by the end of 2022 had actually reached indigenous communities. I was shocked. The rest had gone to international NGOs, UN agencies and governments, where a lot of funding gets lost in bureaucracy. 

The situation has only slightly improved, with about 10 % directly reaching Indigenous Peoples’ communities in 2023. Why is the money not getting to the people on the ground?

The institutions that receive the funding think that only they know what needs to be done. Instead of supporting indigenous leadership, they sideline indigenous communities with bureaucratic barriers and claims that they need “capacity building”. This reflects a profound lack of trust and understanding. We don’t need capacity building: We need resources to restore nature, which we have been doing for generations. We are the world’s best conservationists. Instead, institutions should build their capacity to understand and support indigenous-led solutions. To this end, I prepared a report on the financial needs of Indigenous Peoples, which was presented to the 23rd Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2024 and adopted by the UN’s Economic and Social Council. We have also developed guidelines for funding indigenous communities directly, without intermediaries. These documents highlight how funding should be structured to truly support indigenous-led action.

Why is direct funding to Indigenous Peoples so important?

First, development and climate finance should support real action – and Indigenous Peoples are the ones driving climate action on the ground. Because their lives are deeply connected to nature, they are constantly innovating and creating solutions for climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation. They protect land, forests, grasslands and oceans. Second, to achieve equity and inclusion, we must invest in those who need it most. Whether in the Nordic region, the Americas, New Zealand or the developing world, Indigenous Peoples still lack access to basic services such as education, healthcare, shelter and clean water. My community in Chad, the pastoralist Mbororo People, have to drink from rivers and lakes, there is no nearby healthcare, and access to education is difficult.

Can you give an example of how Indigenous Peoples are building community adaptation and resilience?

In Chad, we are combining traditional knowledge with science. We use satellite images and geographical data to create participatory maps. The community itself identifies and monitors areas of environmental degradation and species loss and designs restoration plans, such as replanting trees and restoring water sources with their ancestral knowledge to build local adaptation and resilience.

You’re not the only one to complain that funds are not being used effectively. What are the flaws in current climate finance?

Many funds, including the $ 1.7 billion, target only specific areas within specific countries. For example, they may be limited to the tropical forests of the Congo Basin within the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To give you an idea of its scale, the entire Congo Basin spans 11 countries! This approach ignores the interconnectedness of ecosystems. Nature has no borders. Protecting one part while neglecting another destroys the balance. In Chad, we have deserts in the north, savannah in the centre and tropical forests in the south. Climate change is forcing people and animals to migrate from north to south in search of water and food. If you want to protect the balance in the tropical forest, you also have to protect the savannah.

How should an effective funding mechanism be designed, and can you give an example?

The most effective funding I’ve received has been through awards. I received the Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award from the University of California in 2019, followed by the Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2021 and the Diane von Fürstenberg Award in 2022. As the prize money was not tied to rigid conditions, it allowed me to take risks and adapt my projects as needed. For example, I won the Rolex Award for a participatory mapping project in Chad and Niger. We worked with an organisation in Niger and made great progress. But when the political crisis hit, I couldn’t continue. Instead of pressuring me to deliver, my partners helped me move the project to another region in Chad. This kind of flexibility is crucial for indigenous-led projects to succeed.

Despite this setback, did the project achieve its objectives?

Even more than that, we actually brought about a historic change: For the first time, women in my community were given the right to land. This was unprecedented. They started to cultivate the land and got access to markets and income.

How did this happen?

It was an outcome of the participatory mapping process: Once the maps had been drawn, the communities came together to develop a plan for stronger adaptation and mitigation measures. During these discussions, we realised that women needed to contribute to the effort but lacked land rights. In our customary system, land, territories and resources are governed by traditional law, and chiefs have authority over large areas of land. So, the chiefs decided to give part of it to 233 women for collective farming. After they had started to farm the land, they raised another problem: Many of their children weren’t going to school. We applied for permission, the community built a boarding house, and now more than 100 children are in school. This has happened simply because the women were given land to work. In 20 years, these children will be the next leaders – this is how real, lasting change begins. The project has even inspired the chiefs of two other communities to allocate some of their communal land to women. Imagine if even a fraction of the $ 1.7 billion pledged to Indigenous Peoples were spent in this way. The impact could be enormous! When funding is flexible, responsive and adapted to people’s needs, it can work magic.

Direct funding to Indigenous Peoples is often limited to smaller amounts. Does this make sense?

With small, symbolic amounts of $ 10-15,000, we will never achieve real solutions. We need trust, risk tolerance and direct investment – and if we fail along the way, funding institutions and Indigenous Peoples can learn and do better. Those who manage global funds claim to know better, but if their approach worked, we wouldn’t be facing such severe deforestation and increasing climate disasters around the world. They are the ones who don’t manage money effectively.

Let’s look at the international situation: The US is planning to withdraw from international organisations, and ODA is in a downward spiral. What’s your view on this?

This is deeply unfair. Western nations seem to forget how they got rich in the first place: Europe and the US built their wealth on the exploitation of natural resources from other countries, which is our common capital. They drove the climate change that we are now suffering, especially those that rely directly on nature. Yet they pretend that the money they’re giving to developing countries is charity. It isn’t, it’s justice. But in the end, they will pay the price: Cutting funding won’t save them.

In what sense?

Do they really think they can protect themselves by hoarding their wealth? They can build walls, they can isolate themselves, but there is only one atmosphere. Pollution in Europe and the US is far worse than in many developing countries. In Chad, we can still go to our forests and breathe fresh air, while in Berlin, Paris, New York or Washington the air is toxic. My point is: Investing in the global south is investing in their own survival. The healthiest ecosystems, the greatest biodiversity, the last remaining untouched lands are in our territories. What’s more: If the western nations stop climate finance, they will lose any moral standing to tell developing countries how to manage their resources. 

Are rich nations compromising their credibility? 

The nations that preached democracy and human rights to the world are silently withdrawing. They created international organisations like the UN, but now they are retreating from commitments and responsibilities. If they don’t respect their own rules and principles, how can they expect anyone else to?

Against this backdrop, what do you expect from the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4)?

It is an opportunity to redefine the meaning of social development and debt, which has been shaped by the so-called developed world. Instead of just talking about developing countries’ financial debt, we need to talk about the ecological debt developed nations owe us for the damage they have done to the planet. We should no longer allow them to dictate the terms but must hold them to account when they renege on their own promises and withdraw funding from the very countries that need it most. FfD4 is a chance for developing and developed countries to talk as equals and for the people who are doing the work on the ground to be part of the conversation. 

Indigenous Peoples must be in the room when high-level negotiations on treaties, agreements and declarations on development take place. I call on all leaders at this conference to think hard about how to transform the global economy, how to make our world fairer and more just and to come to the table with ideas that are workable and realistic.

Links

Ibrahim, H. O., 2024: Indigenous Peoples are the world’s best conservationists. Climate funders must recognize that. time.com/6983186/indigenous-peoples-climate/ 

UN ECOSOC, 2024: Financing the future: the financial needs of Indigenous Peoples to support their actions for biodiversity, climate and the protection of Mother Earth
digitallibrary.un.org/record/4038517?v=pdf 

Principles and guidelines for direct access funding for Indigenous Peoples’ climate action, biodiversity conservation, and fighting desertification for a sustainable planet: 
assets.takeshape.io/86ce9525-f5f2-4e97-81ba-54e8ce933da7/dev/01375808-c4d4-412c-80a5-8a516e835976/Indigenous%20peoples%20-%20principles%20%26%20guidelines%20for%20direct%20access%20funding.pdf  

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is the President of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad (AFPAT).
afpat.net