Indigenous Tribes Hailed as Key Partners in $5.5B Climate Fund

Indigenous tribes are being hailed as key financial partners in a new $5.5 billion climate fund, a move that shifts them from stakeholders to shareholders in the fight to save the rainforests. The “Tropical Forests Forever Facility,” proposed by Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, mandates that 20 percent of its funds go directly to Indigenous communities.
This rule, announced at the Belem climate summit, is a historic acknowledgment of the role Indigenous peoples have played for millennia as the most effective preservers of these lands. A large presence of tribal leaders is expected at the talks, where they are being treated as central actors.
The fund itself is a new “pay-to-preserve” model. It will use $5.5 billion in pledges—including $3 billion from Norway—to compensate 74 developing countries for halting deforestation.
The financing, based on loans from wealthy nations and investors, is designed to make preservation a more viable economic choice than the destruction caused by logging and mining.
This progressive, Indigenous-centered financial model is being proposed as the antidote to the “moral failure” and “deadly negligence” condemned by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. It is a concrete step toward climate justice, even as the summit is shadowed by the absence of the world’s top polluters.