Climate finance is essential to address the large-scale investments needed to help low-income countries reduce emissions and become climate resilient. Indigenous Peoples play a vital role in this process by driving effective and ambitious climate action and acting as key partners in climate finance projects.

To prevent harm and mitigate the environmental and social impact of projects on Indigenous Peoples, many international financial institutions have developed clear safeguard policies and procedures, including the IFC’s Performance Standard 7 (PS7) and the GCF’s Environmental and Social Policy and Indigenous Peoples Policy (IPP).

However, despite policies that are intended to both prevent harm and ensure organisations “do good” in their development practices, climate-finance mitigation and adaptation projects can sometimes adversely impact the livelihoods of local individuals and communities, including Indigenous Peoples who remain particularly vulnerable to poverty and loss of identity, culture and natural resource-based livelihoods.

This side event, co-hosted by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the Indigenous Peoples' International Centre for Policy Research and Education (Tebtebba) and the Independent Redress Mechanism (IRM) will discuss how Indigenous Peoples have been impacted by large-scale development projects and climate finance projects, and how grievance accountability entities like the IRM have helped provide recourse to Indigenous Peoples and others who have been affected by Green Climate Fund projects.

Event information

• Date/time: Thursday, 10 November from 3:30 - 4:30pm
• Location: GCF/GEF pavilion at COP27
• Online streaming available on the GCF COP27 website