Host Organisation
Land is Life, Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad, AFPAT
Roraima Indigenous Council (CIR)
Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia Brasileira (COIAB)
Kapaeeing Foundation
Outline
The report draws on a global questionnaire completed by 216 Indigenous Peoples’ organizations in 46 countries across four regions (Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific), together with in depth case studies from Africa, Asia, and the Americas, including Brazil, Chad, and Nepal. The report presents four findings. The first two are diagnostic: they show that climate related environmental disasters are increasingly frequent and interconnected, with 81.9% of respondents reporting two or more hazards occurring at once and 93.1% perceiving an increase in their frequency (Finding 1), and that Indigenous Peoples are already responding, not through isolated measures but through integrated territorial systems that combine ecosystem protection and restoration, agricultural adaptation, territorial governance, and early warning (Finding 2). The third finding identifies the mechanism that makes these responses effective: the continuous interaction between Indigenous Peoples’ governance institutions and their knowledge systems, sustained across generations through the complementary roles of elders, women, and youth (Finding 3). The fourth finding identifies what determines whether that governance can be fully exercised: the legal, financial, and institutional conditions surrounding it. This fourth finding, specifically, shows that access to climate finance is the enabling condition Indigenous respondents cite most often (51.4%), while limited finance is the barrier cited most often (36.1%). This scarcity is measurable: according to UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025, developing countries face estimated adaptation costs and financing needs of US$310 billion to US$365 billion annually by 2035, against actual international public adaptation finance flows of only around US$26 billion in 2023, an annual gap of roughly US$284 billion to US$339 billion. In this sense, one of the report’s recommendations call for climate finance to move beyond funding individual, externally designed projects toward direct, flexible, and long term resources that strengthen Indigenous Peoples’ own governance institutions and financial architectures. This way of financing makes the allocation of resources more efficient, and in a world of scarce resources, how they are allocated matters the most. COP31 is where governments, climate funds, multilateral institutions, and philanthropy come together to shape decisions on adaptation and climate finance. Following the report's launch, this side event brings its evidence directly into that space, and calls for financing the solutions that are already working on the ground: Indigenous Peoples' governance and knowledge systems. 2. Event objective To bring the report's findings into the COP31 arena and position the adaptation finance gap as an urgent issue before the Parties and finance actors, with Indigenous Peoples' organizations from the Americas, Africa, and Asia as the central voices behind the evidence and the solutions. Present the report's findings and its recommendations for strengthening Indigenous Peoples' governance, with emphasis on Recommendation 2, on the financial conditions for that governance. Create a space for direct dialogue between Indigenous Peoples' leadership and the actors the report calls on to act: Parties to the UNFCCC, climate funds, multilateral institutions, philanthropy, and others. Build on the momentum from the Climate Week NYC launch to generate media visibility and encourage the report's use in COP31 discussions.
Speakers
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Mbororo People, Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad, AFPAT (Africa).
Sineia do Vale, Wapichana People, Roraima Indigenous Council (CIR), COIAB & co-chair of the IIPFCC (Americas).
Gisela Hurtado, Author of the report
Hlamraching Chowdhury, Marma People, Kapaeeing Foundation
Languages
EN SP