Ibrahima Cheik Diong, executive director of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (centre), and Tunga Rai, a Nepalese indigenous leader (right) at Cop29 in Baku, 20 November 2024. (Geneva Solutions/Paula Dupraz-Dobias)

A United Nations loss and damage fund expected to begin disbursing funds in 2025 vows to be fair and inclusive. For Indigenous peoples, among the worst hit by the climate crisis while contributing the most to protecting the environment, having representation in the new mechanism can ensure that much needed funding gets to them.

“The village has died,” Tunga Rai, an Indigenous leader from the Rai community in Nepal, said, describing one of the group’s communities in the Himalayas. As glaciers disappeared due to climate change and water sources dried up, inhabitants were forced to leave. “But the memories and recollections from their ancestral land keep following them,” Rai said listing what are termed in Baku as non-economic losses. “They could not relocate their food, monasteries, cultural entities, traditional homes and memories of their parents, grandparents and ancestors.”

While indigenous populations constitute only 6.2 per cent of the global population, not only are they among those contributing the least to the climate emergency, they are estimated to be responsible for safeguarding and managing 80 per cent of the world’s biodiversity and rainforests that sequester billions of tonnes of carbon annually. Yet funding to them has been limited.

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