Indigenous Peoples are key agents of change for climate action and for ensuring a just transition for all. Growing evidence shows that Indigenous Peoples' knowledge, practices, and ways of living are instrumental across mitigation efforts, environmental conservation, maintaining biodiversity, furthering green jobs, enhancing resilience, and addressing climate change.

However, there is a lack of Indigenous data on the climate environment¹, meaning that Indigenous Peoples’ Climate Contributions are not accurately captured or reflected in international climate discourse and decision making.

This has a knock on effect on resource and financial allocation to support Indigenous-led climate action. For example, there is a lack of funds that reach Indigenous Peoples who are leading climate action on the ground – less than 1% of funding currently reaches Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to secure tenure rights and manage forests in tropical countries.²

To address this, the High-Level Champion for COP28, Razan al Mubarak, launched the Global Study on Indigenous Peoples' Climate Contributions.

The Global Study on Indigenous Peoples’ Climate Contributions aims to examine the experiences, interpretations, and responses of Indigenous Peoples to climate variability and change and will be led by the ELATIA (Indigenous Peoples’ Global Partnership on Climate Change, Forests and Sustainable Development) Consortium, with ongoing support from the Climate Champion Team and the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund.

The Study emphasises a rights- and responsibilities-based approach, highlighting Indigenous Peoples as agents of change in climate action at local, regional, national, and international levels. It will focus on case studies from the seven socio-cultural regions of Indigenous Peoples, illustrating their contributions to climate ambition, mitigation, adaptation, and finance.

The Study will showcase Indigenous knowledge systems as vital for climate actions while documenting the impacts of loss and damage experienced by Indigenous Peoples. This approach will also underscore the necessity of climate justice in the context of their territorial management practices, which reflect diverse lifestyles, including hunting, fishing, herding, and cultivation.

In the next important stage of the Study, ILEPA is seeking powerful case studies, personal stories, and data points that showcase the innovative climate efforts led by Indigenous Peoples across the globe. Whether it’s sustainable land or water management, community-driven conservation, or funding IP-led projects – they want to hear about your work and experiences.

To make a submission on the study please email ipglobalstudy@gmail.com for more information.

Alternatively, please visit the Global Data Study on Indigenous Peoples’s Climate Contributions website to explore submissions made thus far.

“Indigenous Peoples are at the forefront of climate action, yet their critical contributions remain underrecognized and underfunded. The Global Study on Indigenous Peoples’ Climate Contributions aims to provide the data needed to bridge this gap—demonstrating the impact of Indigenous leadership and advocating for the rights, resources, and recognition they deserve in global climate solutions.”

Razan al Mubarak
UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP28 and IUCN President

“The first and initial place of exclusion of indigenous peoples – their rights and voice, ways of knowing and doing and access to development benefits – is in data sets that are Indigenous Peoples-blind. This has often been termed as erasure through non-disaggregated data sets across scales. Data is foundational in shaping opinions, policy, resource allocation, and actions across scales and political spaces. The study is therefore an attempt at demonstrating and reaffirming IPs’ agency and giving space to IPs’ hues in the rainbow of knowledge systems, climate action and trends in access to resources.”

Kimaren Stanley
Executive Director for Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners (ILEPA)

Note: The Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners (ILEPA) is part of Indigenous Peoples’ Global Partnership on Climate Change, Forests and Sustainable Development (ELATIA). ELATIA is the consortium delivering the Global Study on Indigenous Peoples’ Climate Contributions.

This article was originally published by the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund.

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[1]This refers to the significant absence of data collected and documented by Indigenous communities regarding climate change impacts on their lands, often due to historical exclusion from research, lack of access to technology, and a failure to adequately incorporate their traditional knowledge systems into scientific studies, leading to an incomplete picture of climate change effects on Indigenous populations and their environments.

[2] Norwegian Rainforest Foundation, Making funding for Indigenous Peoples and local communities fit for purpose