As the effects of climate change continue to threaten the world’s most vulnerable communities, change leaders are stressing the important of climate financing that directly benefits communities and addresses the needs of Indigenous organizations.
At the 2024 Skoll World Forum, a dynamic group of nonprofit leaders and philanthropists called for a more holistic approach to climate financing, combining mitigation, adaptation, and development efforts. They explored ways to streamline processes and collaborations by reducing reporting requirements and indirect costs. Funding must consider the full cost of climate financing programs along with equity and the complexity of social and geographic landscapes.
Watch the session and read the transcript to hear from climate leaders like Solange Bandiaky-Badji from the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and Rukka Sombolinggi of AMAN, an organizer of Indigenous communities and 2023 Skoll Awardee.
Transcript from “360 Degree Climate Financing,” filmed on April 10, 2024 at the Skoll World Forum:
Peter Prengaman: Well, thank you very much. Very good to be with everybody. I’m really excited to be here. My name’s Peter Prengaman. I’m the AP’s Climate and Environment News Director based in New York and I work with the team around the world covering climate change. I’m excited to have this conversation with this great panel. I think over the next hour plus we have a big challenge and also a big opportunity, and that is to explain why climate finance is so important to address various aspects of climate change. And then, to talk a little bit about scaling it up, right? And what that might look like.
To start, I want to level set a little bit just for anybody out there who doesn’t know this term or doesn’t know exactly what it is. Climate finance is really an umbrella term to refer to money which can come from many sources to mitigate climate change, to try to stop what’s happening to the Earth. It can be money to adapt for communities that are being hit hard by climate change, and also it can be a term used to talk about how we transition, how we pay to transition to green energy.
So with that, in sum, to mitigate, adapt, and transition, the world needs trillions and trillions of dollars. Every study that comes out on this has, what I think of as a new eye-watering figure of how much money is needed to transition, particularly. And as a journalist, I’m always thinking of simple ways to explain things. So, I’m going to break climate finance into three questions, three key questions that I think we’ll get to some in this panel.
First, who’s going to pay? This is a big one. Who’s going to pay to finance some of these things? What’s the best way to use money for any initiative? I mean, once you have money, that’s just the start, right? You have to figure out how to use it. And then finally, how can the world really scale up this kind of finance? Well, many different kinds of finance that can come from banks, it can come from countries, it can come from foundations, come from individuals. It can be loans. It can be like lots of different ways that money gets used to address various issues of climate change.
So to wrestle with this, I have four panelists all with a wealth of experience connected to climate change and climate finance. And I think instead of introducing each of you, I want to ask each of you to introduce yourselves and talk a little bit about the work that you do, because it’s going to set the stage for what comes next. Solange, why don’t we start with you?
Solange Bandiaky Badji: Great, thank you very much, Peter. Good morning, everyone. I’m very happy to be here to see familiar faces and to meet new ones. My name is Solange and I’m the coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative, which is a global coalition of more than 150 plus collaborators in the Global South: Africa, Asia, Latin America, but also strategic allies. And I’m very honored today to be sharing the stage with Rukka, who is from AMAN. AMAN is a partner of RRI. We also do have RRI partners here in the room and collaborators, so I’m very excited to speak on behalf of the coalition.
And, just to say it, RRI was created in 2005 and next year we will be celebrating our 20th anniversary. And really, what I’m hoping to celebrate is RRI as a solidarity network. And I refuse the term intermediary because we’re not like intermediary. We’re here in solidarity and through collective action to really push for the recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant. And just maybe for the sake of this conversation, we do have donors who are supporting our work. We do have bilaterals, foundations like the Skoll Foundation, Packard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, just to name a few. But also, we do receive funding from philanthropies lately around climate. I can just name the Bezos Earth Fund and MacKenzie Scott, just to say the type of donors that we work with. So, very happy to be here.
Peter Prengaman: Thank you. Nancy?
Nancy Lindborg: Great. Thank you, Peter. Great to see everybody. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I am the President and CEO of the Packard Foundation. I come to this personally from a background of several decades working internationally at that intersection of development, democracy, conflict, and humanitarian assistance, which is excellent preparation for addressing the climate challenge which is so acute at the intersection of all of those issues.
I’ve been at the Packard Foundation for about three and a half years now. And the Packard Foundation, about 15 years ago, really turned its attention to climate change and climate action as a real priority, and we’ve put a little more than a billion dollars against that challenge in that time period. And early on, really focused on investing in the architecture that helps philanthropy come together and bring more philanthropies into the space so that they can collaborate and work on this issue.
And we’ve also moved in recent years to a much greater focus on nature-based solutions and on working with local forest, Indigenous Afro-descendant communities, including my wonderful co-discussants on the panel here. And we’ll continue to look at all the ways that we can really move those solutions forward. I see a number of you in the audience who I know are real experts in climate finance. I am not, so I really do look forward to the conversation.
Peter Prengaman: Perfect. Rukka?
Rukka Sombolinggi: Hi, good morning. In my language, Toraja, we say: is the food ready? Food is very important in our culture, and that’s how we nurture relationship with the universe, with our ancestral spirit, and with the creator. My name is Rukka Sombolinggi. I belong to the Toraja, Indigenous peoples in central part of Sulawesi. We always call ourself mountain people. Yeah, we’re not very comfortable to call ourself forest people. Although we have forests, but we always identify ourself as mountain people. So I’m a mountain girl.
And I’m currently the Secretary General of Indigenous Peoples Alliance of Indonesian Archipelago. We represent 20 million of Indigenous peoples Indonesia, and we present across the country. I made some notes because I realized I also have many other hats. I’m also a board of IPRI, and I have my friends here. Hi! She came all the way from Australia, and that organization works really to protect Indigenous people’s rights, and especially working on criminalization of Indigenous peoples which is more and more happening across the globe today. And I’m also part of the Pawanka Fund. Well, I have hats, many hats already.
And I’m also the co-chair of Global Alliance of Territorial Community. It’s representing organization of Indigenous peoples and local communities from Africa, from Latin America, and from Asia. And finally, as we talk about money, AMAN is also under GATC. We have the Shandia platform, and under the wing of GATC is AMAN also a member. We are the host container of IPAS, Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Fund and Nusantara Fund in Indonesia. In Indonesia, it’s a big coalition between peasant movement and environmental movement and with Indigenous peoples. Thank you very much.
Peter Prengaman: Perfect, thank you, thank you. Barbara?
Barbara Brakarz: Hi, good morning, everybody. I am Barbara. Hello, Solange, Lindsay, and Rukka. I’m the Executive Director of Conexsus, the institute for sustainable connections. We’re a Brazilian NGO working on promoting socio-biodiversity and looking at the bioeconomy as a new model for sustainable development in our forests and biomes.
We work with providing technical assistance to small businesses, community-led cooperatives and associations, working on the management capacity of these organizations so they can grow and scale. And we also provide impact financing. So we structure and operate different blended finance instruments. We work with philanthropic resources, catalytic philanthropic resources, resources from bilateral, multilateral organizations, but also market, the capital market issuance of debt instruments.
We work with approximately 350 organizations today, cooperatives in Brazil, 80% in the Amazon forest, but also in the Caatinga, Cerrado and Pantanal, and at Mata Atlantica biomes, which are also as important as the Amazon. We are about 60, 65 people, half of us are in the front lines working every day with these small businesses. We’re looking at not just the advisory services that we call them, but also market intelligence and the financial intelligence as the three pillars to promoting biodiversity products as the main or the most efficient solution to avoid a deforestation and forest conservation. And looking forward to this discussion today.
Peter Prengaman: All right. Well, let’s get into the questions. I think there are many disagreements about what climate finance should be used for and where it should come from. And we’re going to get into some of those things, but I think one thing probably everybody working in the climate space would agree on is that more money is needed.
So I want to start with you, Barbara, and we’ll come back this way, and ask each of you to just speak generally about what you think could be done to get more money into the pipeline, wherever it comes from, right? Because we talk, it comes from lots of different places, but like, what’s one thing that could be done to increase the amount?
Barbara Brakarz: I would say two things, to increase amounts, but also to deploy the resources I think are the two challenges. We need about, the estimates are $100 billion per year to achieve the Paris Agreement targets, both in terms of energy and forestry. But in order to be able to deploy those resources, it’s as difficult to fundraise and mobilize resources today. But in order to deploy these resources efficiently in a timely matter, we need to operate the different channels and different instruments.
That means setting up the different mechanisms, the different vehicles, working mostly with the public banks, commercial banks. But also different multilaterals today offer different mechanisms that we can use to basically channel the resources from the big targets and the big commitments that are being announced to, actually to the floor of the forest and to reaching the population that needs it. We need this agility in the types of instruments that we are structuring and using.
It’s very costly today and it’s very difficult to actually have the amount of resources at the scale that is needed at the point where we are able to reach all the different, in terms of scope and geographic reach. It’s very difficult to reach all the areas that we need to reach in order to actually have an impact, to actually bring scale.
So today, what we do as Conexsus is actually just a small part of what is needed in terms of mobilizing resources, in terms of providing actual credit to organizations. We’re talking about very small tickets actually from $20,000 to $100,000 depending very much. So it’s very fragmented. And so, we need to filter the resources and be able to allocate efficiently. And for that we need teams, we need capacity, we need to grow as organizations and not to be struggling every year with financial health and financial planning. It shouldn’t be an issue. We should be able to focus our time and energy and intellectual capital on actually originating the demands and getting these organizations mature and more able to access public credit on their own, to access commercial credit on their own. But at the scale that we are at today, we’re very far from that.
Peter Prengaman: Okay.
Rukka Sombolinggi: We’re not going to be able to achieve the results that we want in time.
Peter Prengaman: Okay, Rukka, how about you? What do you think? How do we get more money?
Rukka Sombolinggi: Yeah, I think I will not stop reminding all of us that it is also about lifestyle.
Peter Prengaman: Lifestyle?
Rukka Sombolinggi: Lifestyle, consumption. We also need to invest on how are the people, especially who live in the cities really change their way, their consumption, the lifestyle. Because those are the one who create the problems for us today. I think that’s one thing fundamental. We will not need money if the people in the city is living in a wise lifestyle. So I think money should be also invest on that. For the government to make a better policy, a policy that will make us a better human being that is much more safe to our Mother Earth because we are now become the harm. Our lifestyle, the way we live now is very much harmful for our Mother Earth.
But then, speaking of money, at the same time, we need to restore, we need to heal, we need to rehabilitate all the thing that we have destroyed. And that’s where the roles of Indigenous peoples and local communities. Today, we are the one who protect the best ecosystems that we have, and we need to support the guardian of our best ecosystem, but we also need to provide more support that we can multiply the contributions that we have today.
It’s also very important to build the strength and resiliency of Indigenous people. So invest in resiliency of Indigenous peoples, because resiliency of Indigenous peoples will guarantee the resiliency of our Mother Earth and the civilizations at large.
Peter Prengaman: We’re going to come back and talk more about that, about the relationship between donors and recipients, particularly Indigenous people. Nancy, how about you? Like, just simple terms, how do we get more money? What’s–
Nancy Lindborg: Yeah, I mean, it’s a staggering number, and I’ve seen all kinds of different estimates.
Peter Prengaman: Yeah.
Nancy Lindborg: And what is most compelling is that you either pay now or you pay a whole lot more later if the damages continue to accrue. So we really need to mobilize resources from every possible source, governments, philanthropies, the private sector, and individuals. And if you think about, okay, how do you do that? On the philanthropic side, there is a big effort to try to get new donor money into this field.
Packard helped found something called the Climate Lead, which specifically works with new donors to help them understand how their funds can be best deployed. And it has led to things like the pledge during COP28 that mobilized $1.7 billion to ensure more money went directly to local communities and Indigenous people, forest communities.
On the institutional donor side, that’s a direct intersection with topics that are being discussed throughout this forum related to democracy and media and dis and misinformation. And the more that publics, especially in the wealthier countries, do not believe, and specifically in the United States, do not believe that climate change is real or that there are solutions, the harder it will be to mobilize capital. So, there’s a whole cluster of relationships there that we need to think about.
And finally, once we do have the funding or the funding that we do have, it’s how we deploy it. And just two quick comments on that. One is, I am always struck by the very separate lanes in discussion of development finance and climate finance. And you end up cannibalizing each other as opposed to looking at how you bring those two streams together for greater impact in both areas instead of seeing them as dichotomous. And then finally, on the how to make the funding scarce that is more effective, a lot of what I know we’re hearing from this panel is making sure that it’s more inclusive of communities who are able to be the best stewards of the resources and whose voices matter at the negotiating tables.
Peter Prengaman: Okay. All right, Solange?
Solange Bandiaky Badji: I conquer with my fellow panelist. And just to say, there are many ways to increase climate finance, but I would like to focus on climate finance dedicated to supporting Indigenous peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant. And the reason why I want to focus on that, not because I work for RRI, but also research has shown that most of the climate finance or funding is going to multilaterals and to big conservation organization. So that need to shift.
And I’m very happy today to talk about a new tool that we’ve just launched today, which is the Path to Scale dashboard. And it’s a dashboard produced by RRI and Rainforest Foundation Norway. And my colleague Bryson here has been the one leading it from outside if you have questions around it, and from RFN’s Torbjorn. We also got support on the data from Indufor, Jeff Hatcher and Sam and Michael. And I just wanted to name them.
So this dashboard actually, the reason why we created it is, we wanted to make sure there is transparency, like when it come to climate finance, but also coordination and how do we support self-determined priorities? So this dashboard, we look into data like climate funding for Indigenous peoples and local communities from 2011 to 2023–
Peter Prengaman: Okay, specific to those communities.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: To those communities.
Peter Prengaman: To see how much is going. Yeah.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: It’s how much is going to that.
Peter Prengaman: Okay, okay.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: So one of the major findings is that between 2020 and 2023, 517k is going per year to this. And we have done a study where we realize that we need by 2030 at least 10 billion to support community tenure right. And the 10 billion is around like recognition, titling, not including the enabling conditions. If we include the enabling conditions, it might reach like, you know, 30 billion. But if you take like 517,000 per year and you do the math, you will realize by 2030, we will not reach actually. It will be half of it. So how can we really achieve the global climate goal and biodiversity goal if we don’t invest in communities that are really the steward of the forest, that are really doing the work?
So there’s need for donor transparency so we need to know how much donors are contributing. So this dashboard will allow that. But also that will allow donors to see how their peers are really funding or not, and they can come together and coordinate and see, okay, how do we better support? Another dimension, the last one would be the self-determined priorities. Because what we have seen in this field is that, most of the donors they come with their own priority and try to see, “Okay, how do we fund around those priorities?” But if you ask the Indigenous people, local communities, they know what to do and how to do it. So how can we support them around those enabling condition and not come up with some rigorous requirement?
Peter Prengaman: It seems to me in pretty much everything that you all have just said here, I mean, we’re in some ways in a fight for attention, right? There’re just so many things going on in the world that people could put their money towards. And Nancy, just a second ago you mentioned democracy, and so I want to follow up on that.
You had a conversation last year with the CEO of The Carter Center talking about democracy, and you said, “Threats to democracy can lead to threats on global advancements including climate.” So here’s my question. In 2024, with so many elections, right? So many important elections, arguably some where democracy is at risk, is this creating problems for gathering money, for getting donations for climate finance? I mean, are the two kind of in competition?
Nancy Lindborg: Well, they’re certainly linked. And we’re seeing in this year of probably more consequential elections than in a very long time that it’s climate finance related to climate policies are very much on the line. Indonesia already had their presidential election, and we’ll see what the impact of that is on some of the extraordinary progress that Indonesia has had in stopping tropical deforestation. We also saw in Brazil, with the election of President Lula, progress accelerated. In the US, which is an enormously consequential election, I think it is on the line how much capital the US will be able to continue to mobilize. We’re seeing the big fights in Congress about putting money toward both development and climate challenges in following through in our commitments.
So, there’s an inextricable connection between countries that are able to go past the kind of rampant mis and disinformation that help move a population toward a more authoritarian pathway and help them understand that it’s in everyone’s benefit to address climate change. And I think that’s just done far more effectively, not always, but usually through democratic systems.
Peter Prengaman: Okay. So if you were trying to decide between two things, right? Which is kind of a false choice, but let’s just go with it for a little bit. You’ve got $100 million to give towards democracy initiatives this year, or 100 million towards climate initiatives, you would go with democracy initiatives because that’s going to ensure that there’s more chance for good climate policy.
Nancy Lindborg: You know, I love this setup of choices.
Peter Prengaman: I know it was a false choice. I told you. I told you.
Nancy Lindborg: But I would say it this way. I’m struck by all the time people cite these statistics. 2% of philanthropy goes to climate action. 2% of philanthropy goes to democracy. 2% goes to… I mean, there’s a lot of other money out there that you can mobilize.
Peter Prengaman: Where’s the other 90 some percent, right?
Nancy Lindborg: Schools, hospitals, universities.
Peter Prengaman: Yeah, yeah.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Healthcare. Yeah.
Nancy Lindborg: Yeah. So, you know, I’m going to reject. You know, they say that when faced with a dichotomy, choose both, which is what we did at the Packard Foundation. We have not scaled back our funding. If anything, we’ve increased it for climate action and we’ve added a US democracy line of effort. And again, I’ll say, I was struck last night at my… I got off the plane and went to an event last night and the conversation was about how all these things intersect. And if we don’t, you know, development, climate, democracy, media, technology, if we don’t think about them as more intertwined, I don’t think we’ll make progress.
Peter Prengaman: Okay. Solange, I want to go to you for the next question. You wrote a column recently on offsets, and particularly offsets in Africa. That you said, “Don’t take into account the views of Indigenous people.” And I want to ask you to tell us what that next step is. It’s one thing not to take in the views of people, and that’s wrong, right? But then the next step is, will you actually be effective in a carbon offset market that doesn’t take into the views of Indigenous people? So talk a little bit about what you see in Africa with some of the stuff happening with carbon blue and like, yeah.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: Before that, I just wanted to touch a little bit on the democracy.
Peter Prengaman: Okay, sure, sure.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: I’m originally from Senegal, and last month, as we could see, Senegal elected its first youngest president since its independence from France in 1960, which is great. But the reason why we’ve seen this is that, there were so many human right violations, youth unemployment, and we have seen many young people taking the boat, migrating to Europe and dying there. Now we have seen a wave of young people from Senegal going through Latin America, through Nicaragua and coming through the border of Mexico to reach the US.
You go to New York City, there is what we call Little Senegal. You go there, you’d be amazed of how many thousands of young people just sitting there that came from that route. But just to say, many donors now, or national government, are shifting their international development aid talking about nationalism, national security, humanitarian assistance, like military defense. But what I’m saying is, if you don’t invest in securing the land rights of people on the ground, providing job to people, to young folks, and also looking into equity when it come to natural resources such as oil and gas, you will see more floods of migrant, of refugees in Europe and in the US. And just to say, not investing in land right is a national security issue. So how can we really look into democracy through the lens of natural resources?
And now coming back to your question around carbon market, what we are seeing of course is, I would say it’s the biggest threat right now to land rights. And the reason why I’m saying that, we have seen cases. For example, in Kenya, in Western Kenya, the Ogiek communities, they have been evicted from their land in the name of carbon. You go to Liberia, already Liberia, 40% of Liberia is under industrial concession. And now, what we are learning is that with the carbon deals, 10%, that will add 10%. Meaning that half of Liberia will be just under like carbon and industrial concession.
So you just wonder, how in the name of carbon market can we really go into that kind of human right violation? So I think it’s very important to think about it. And how can we achieve the climate goal, the biodiversity goal, without going through this eviction? I think those are the big question that we should be asking. And I’m sure people like Rukka and AMAN, they’re very radical about it, and they have good reason for that. I’m not saying that all carbon market is bad, but what I’m saying is what we’re seeing right now, it should help us to really think through and say, “Okay, how do we involve the communities on the ground around these deals and not let government make those deal and take the lands of people out?”
Peter Prengaman: Yeah, I think there’s several issues there, right? Not including people, and then asking how effective it’ll be if you’re not really building it. In offsets, we could have lots of conversations about that. There’s a lot of issues, positive things, negative things. You mentioned, Rukka, and I want to go to you for the next question, and I think it’s somewhat maybe tied to carbon markets, but also just in general. I’ve heard you speak about the need to change the terms between donors and recipients in the way that this relationship is thought of and talked about. So I want to ask you to talk a little bit more about that.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Yeah, I think we need to see all the works today that we are facing the climate crisis. So it has to be, you know, we have to stand on the equal footings, all right? That we are actually collaborating, we are helping each other. We are all donors, we are all givers, we are all recipients, and I think that should be the way that we really have to see each other.
On the other side, because of that, there are really, really pressure on us that we need to prove ourself. Donor, you don’t have to prove yourself, but as Indigenous peoples, we are not just under pressure, but under fire to prove ourself. You say, “Oh, I have money, I can give money,” but they have capacity. So there’s always the question of capacity. And I think we will fail if we don’t provide the right meaning of what capacity means.
Capacity for donors is to provide financial assistance and capacity of Indigenous peoples is to continue to nurture our Mother Earth, to heal our Mother Earth. Capacity of Indigenous organizations like me is to provide the guidance and leaderships for Indigenous peoples on the ground. So that’s how I think.
We have worked in the last few years to, okay, when people talk about capacity it’s about administrations of the money. And I remember we had discussion the other day here, and they said there’s organization that can give huge amount of money, but it takes long time to get that money and not necessarily we will get it in the end. And I was like, “Okay, I will just step back because I have no chance.” I have no chance. Why? Because while I’m thinking about, “Oh, there is money there, big one,” but at the same time, we get all the requests from the ground, from our community.
People are being killed, people are being imprisoned. Bulldozers are already in the front gate of our community. In last 10 years in Indonesia itself, we’ve lost 8.4 million hectares of Indigenous people’s land. So land grabbing. And those land grabbing, it’s always by private company. And then, the case of criminalization of leaders is more than 1,000 in the last 10 years alone. So, when we talk about capacity, what capacity you’re talking about? And this is always the reason why donor don’t give us money directly.
Peter Prengaman: When you say prove yourself, like can you be more specific? What do you mean?
Rukka Sombolinggi: Prove myself like, “Oh, do you have good story to tell? Do you have big numbers to prove me that you have baseline data? Are you sure you’re not going to steal the money?” You have to prove that you have all this anti-corruption policies. You know?
Peter Prengaman: Yeah.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Anti-corruptions policy. And let me tell you about anti-corruption and bribery and gratifications. My mother, until she died, has had problem with one of my dear friend, because my friend was on the mission sent by, my government asked AMAN to deploy him on behalf of the ministry. He came home to my mother’s homeland and she signed the paper that he must not receive anything. My mother has been always consider us, all of us, as her children, and he would find any possibility to send us food.
So by the time my friend went home, because he signed already this paper of integrity, anti-corruption, anti-bribery, gratifications, and my mother was very happy, sending box full of rice through him to our office in Jakarta. And my friend say, “No, I cannot accept this.” My mother carried that hurt until she died five years ago. But you know, all these things, like we are being forced to be into the reality that is not our reality.
Peter Prengaman: All right, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here for a second, right? I want to pretend, I’m a funder, right? Why shouldn’t I ask you these questions? I mean, isn’t it fair for me to ask where my money’s going to go?
Rukka Sombolinggi: And because that’s the symbol of distrust.
Peter Prengaman: So your argument would be, “Look, we’re managing forests. We’re doing the job,” right? “What else is there to prove?”
Rukka Sombolinggi: Well, in our community, in AMAN, what we do as a proof that we use the money is the money is being signed. The expenditure is being signed by the whole community representative. Because that is much more meaningful because the whole community knew that the money–
Peter Prengaman: Goes direct to the person, yeah, okay.
Rukka Sombolinggi: direct money. Unlike the other, I know some of my friends working in NGO, they know how to make the receipts. They can make up receipts, but in our community we don’t do that.
Peter Prengaman: You’re going to say something?
Nancy Lindborg: Well, I–
Rukka Sombolinggi: You know? But what I’m trying to say is like, it’s lacking of trust actually on us. People always doubt us, you know? It’s like, “Ah, you don’t have capacity.” “Oh, you’re too small,” you know? It’s like that kind of doubt that is always on us. Well, at the same time I’m thinking of it, “Oh, I have 1,000 staffs across Indonesia that I need to feed.” We don’t even have basic social insurance for these people working, and we still have to, you know, in between all these things, the questions and everything. So that’s why I say it’s very unfair for us.
Peter Prengaman: Nancy, you were going to say something? So Nancy, I mean, you come from the other side, the donor side–
Nancy Lindborg: Yeah.
Rukka Sombolinggi: No, by the way, before… We have some friends who, including Nancy who said–
Peter Prengaman: That do trust, that do trust.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Yes.
Peter Prengaman: Okay.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Who give us and say, “Okay, this is the money.” Well, not big, but that’s very meaningful because that’s how we survive. We survive not on the project money, but we survive on the generous what’s so-called, what do you call it?
Nancy Lindborg: General operating support.
Rukka Sombolinggi: General support.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: Core support.
Nancy Lindborg: Core support.
Peter Prengaman: Core support. Okay.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Core support, that’s how we survive.
Peter Prengaman: Yeah.
Rukka Sombolinggi: That’s how we survive. It’s not on the projects. Because with the projects, they give us, they call it, how do you call it? Indirect, indirect. I don’t know why they call it indirect. But indirect, I mean, let me tell you. The indirect money is actually the one who makes sure that we can work.
Peter Prengaman: Yeah.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Yeah, and they give you 10%. So this is how I always tell the stories. Like, you ask us to climb the mountain, but you give us enough money to buy food to the foot of the mountain.
Peter Prengaman: You can’t get to the top.
Rukka Sombolinggi: We won’t be able to climb the mountain with that amount of indirect cost.
Peter Prengaman: Nancy, I want to go to you, so is that, what about the mountain?
Nancy Lindborg: Well, I was just going to say that for a lot of donors who are not familiar with countries like DRC and Indonesia and they don’t know the individuals, it’s been very helpful to set up strategies or vehicles and allow them to invest. So for example, the Nusantara Fund that you might want to mention, and the larger Forests, People, Climate program that Packard has been very involved with allows other donors to come in and be able to do the kind of funding that you both are talking about without having to go through those processes of due diligence that are so problematic because it is about trust and relationships.
And so, I think the more we have those kinds of collective strategies and vehicles that allows that kind of money to flow at greater amounts and in ways that reach folks directly in a more palatable way, because I hear you on the issues.
Rukka Sombolinggi: I know.
Peter Prengaman: Okay. Barbara–
Rukka Sombolinggi: Actually, I have a challenge today, if I have one more minute. Like, now we have all this, as Nancy mentioned about the Nusantara Fund earlier, we already have all this mechanism, or it took us years to really establish this kind of mechanism. Because first, we want to strengthen the solidarity among different ecosystems. We want to make sure that our Indigenous communities will get the money and we want to make sure that they are not going to be changed to become the proposal writers. It’s not the reality.
But then, well, I have to say that the money that we have now is all from the philanthropists, like from Nancy, from Ford Foundation, from Skoll. The bilateral donors are the one who really difficult to get. And I think with this, actually I’ve been calling for them and say, “Okay, can we do some exercise? Like your compliance officers come and work with us and we see how can we match this, your compliance and our compliance?”
Peter Prengaman: I want to go to you, Barbara. I mean, you have something to say about this.
Barbara Brakarz: Yes.
Peter Prengaman: So go ahead, yeah.
Barbara Brakarz: I absolutely agree that we need more trust-based dynamic between donors and recipients. Maybe even use different terms. But the idea that we need more resources for our operational administrative costs, I think it goes hand in hand with the idea of larger scale of resources. Because the transactional costs of $10,000 is almost the same as $100,000 or $100 million, and it becomes very burdensome for organizations.
We need to bend the arc so organizations like Skoll and now USAID also looking at locally led development, looking at trust-based philanthropy is I think the only way that we have forward to be able to achieve our results that we want anytime soon. The idea is the GCF, the Green Climate Fund, or the GEF, the Global Environmental Facility, they’re almost outdated in a way because it takes years to prepare a project. Then you’re stuck with a four-year project that you planned four years ago and you need to report on the indicators. There’s no room for innovation, there’s no room for adaptations, and so the system is very–
Rukka Sombolinggi: Rigid.
Barbara Brakarz: its perverse incentives, yes, it’s very rigid. And I think there’s a movement now of funders that are starting to see the benefit in this more flexible resources. It’s not trust, it’s about co-responsibility on both sides.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: And I would like to add–
Peter Prengaman: Solange?
Solange Bandiaky Badji: maybe two things in this conversation. In addition to the flexible funding, I think that the amount that we’re giving, because most of the time when it come to local organization, people talk about small grant. How can we move away from small? Of course, there are organization that need that small grant, but we have seen now local organization who have reached a level where they could really absorb big funding, big grant. So that’s one thing.
The long-term also. I mean, in one year you cannot expect to get impact or results. And most of the time what we’re seeing is this short funding and expecting organization to report on impact. How can we make it long-term, I think, it’s very important. And the last thing, what we are seeing right now, and it’s a new good development in the sector, is all these new Indigenous and local community led funding mechanisms.
You have the Nusantara Fund, you have the Mesoamerican Territorial Fund, Podáali Fund in Brazil, IPAS, which is original one in Asia that Rukka mentioned. You have the AYNI Fund you have for women. You have CLARIFI. So there’re so many out there, and now the main question is direct access to funding. Because they want to make sure that funding goes directly to the territories because they are again at the front line and they are the one doing the work on the ground.
So I think there is a shift that is happening, which is good to realize and to recognize, and it’s a good shift. And how can we really work in coordination with donors to grab that big funding and deploy it on the ground.
Peter Prengaman: Yeah. And hopefully, cut the bureaucracy a little bit–
Solange Bandiaky Badji: Yes.
Peter Prengaman: so that so much of the money doesn’t get spent in the measuring and writing reports and stuff like that.
Rukka Sombolinggi: It has to be simple.
Peter Prengaman: Well, I just want to fully agree, and I think actually, Solange, your point is a really important one. There is a shift on all of these fronts. I know that at Packard, we very closely track how much of our funding goes directly to locally led development, how much is general operating longer term, and we have a built-in overhead rate that fully covers costs.
But I also want to give, you mentioned USAID, and I don’t know if there’s a USAID person here, but Administrator Samantha Power has really been very adamant about increasing the amount of money that goes to locally led development in concert with 16 other bilateral donors and about 18 major foundations. So there is a big movement, and that has to be coupled with the kind of funding that supports leadership development, right? We need more of you all who are able to be at the table and help with the negotiations. And I do think there’s progress and we just need to keep really focused on it and build on that progress.
Peter Prengaman: Okay. I want to go to some specifics and projects because I think that helps people kind of think about what these are, or what they can be, right? It’s this huge umbrella, as we said at the beginning. Barbara, I want to go to you. Before you worked for Conexsus you worked at the Inter-American Development Bank in Brazil, and one of the projects that you worked on was around farming, low carbon farming with farmers both in the Atlantic region and the Amazon, right? Can you talk a little bit about the specifics of that project?
Barbara Brakarz: Okay, it was funded by the UK government. It was around $30 million that went to technical assistance looking at behavioral changes. So, changes in how small and medium producers and farmers applied low carbon agriculture practices, like integrated livestock-crop-forestry systems and integrated agroforestry systems. And a lot of it was looking at generational changes in moving from cattle to these low carbon agricultural practices.
And then, the second element of the project was then looking at the supply chains for the selling of these products and the fair pricing of these products and how to access markets. We worked with about 3,500 beneficiaries that were working on at least four hectares of their land, and we’re talking about four soccer fields, they say to compare it with. And the idea was, bring about behavioral change and test different instruments, like the facilities and funds that either public or private, that work for farmers to be able to access.
There is a lot of restrictions to access public credit in Brazil, where you need to have territorial issues resolved. You have to have land titling. You need to have the guarantees to take out the loans with banks. So a lot of the resources, some of the resources were used to create a small guarantee mechanism. And it worked, and I think it was a lot of the beginnings of what we look at today in terms of blended financing.
Peter Prengaman: And how is it going today? Like if you follow that project, are those farmers still doing that kind of agriculture?
Barbara Brakarz: Yes, they are.
Peter Prengaman: Okay.
Barbara Brakarz: They are and they’re making sometimes, you know, they’ve seen the productivity level rises. Sometimes 15 times as much depending on the practice that you’re applying there. They are multiplying in a way the effects of this. So we had the demonstration units and the multiplying units. And in terms of spread in geographical scope, it has also been spread out. And it’s a program that is owned by the Ministry of Agriculture of Brazil. So they are the ones that lead on this program.
Peter Prengaman: Okay. I wonder, I want to ask the others, if you can think of one really successful project or something that you’ve been part of just like another example like she was saying. I know Solange, Nancy, Rukka, who, go ahead, Solange.
Nancy Lindborg: Go ahead, Solange.
Peter Prengaman: Looks like you, yeah.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: Well, I can share a global funding mechanism that we launched two years ago at RRI. It’s called CLARIFI, the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative. And the reason why it was launched because the RRI coalition members were like, “We need to have direct access to funding. We need, but we don’t know how to get there.”
So through this, it has been launched over the last two years and we are around 70 projects already in 24 countries. And the average of grant that we have been giving is between 150 and 400k. And what we are also seeing, the demand is getting higher. So we are building a pipeline and which is getting, we’re getting a lot of demand from the communities. Just to say that the demand is there, the need is on the ground. How can we really capture more funding and deploy it on the ground? And I think that’s what will make the big shift on the ground.
And maybe later on in 10 years actually, those organization might not need RRI at all. And that’s what we call sustainability. You want to empower organization where they get to a point where you’ll be like, “Okay, what am I going to do now with my organization?” You reinvent yourself and you let them take the big funding. Like Nusantara, I mean, I want to make sure in 10 years Rukka is just running it and get the audacious like maybe 100 million, right? We have seen also the Tenure Facility–
Peter Prengaman: More than that. She’s like, “That’s not enough.” She’s like shaking her head.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: No, I mean, we have seen the Tenure Facility. RRI created the Tenure Facility in 2013. It was to respond to a call from the coalition members who are like, “Okay, now we are seeing progressive laws and policies. How do we make sure that implementation happen? The implementation of right recognition?” Now the Tenure Facility is independent, up and running, and doing great work on the ground. So just to say that there are many examples that are happening that we should really look into and say, “Okay, what can we learn from it and how can we really move that at scale?”
Peter Prengaman: Okay. Nancy, a project successful?
Nancy Lindborg: I want to mention two.
Peter Prengaman: Okay.
Nancy Lindborg: One is from a decade ago when Packard was helping to set up the architecture for climate philanthropy, and it’s still going strong, it’s ClimateWorks Foundation, which is really about helping philanthropy come together to pursue high impact strategies at scale. And it provides data and insight at a global level, and then dedicated strategies and granting in sectors and regions. So it helps to bring in new philanthropy and then deploy it in a coordinated way.
The second project that we’re super excited about and is very much related to these two or three is Forests, People, Climate, which is a significant multi-stakeholder, $2 billion philanthropic ambition to stop tropical deforestation. Because if tropical deforestation were a country, it would be the third largest carbon emitter behind China and the US. And so, it’s working in the systems, in the three tropical basins, which are represented here on the panel, co-creating the strategies with looking at the needs of land titling, of forest and Indigenous communities, but also looking at what are the market incentives, how do you get government policy, businesses involved in each of those three basins for really longer-term solutions?
We’ve raised about $785 billion thus far, and we need to get the balance to two billion over the next five years. But the partners are up and running in each of these areas, and I think it’s super exciting. And if you’re a donor and you’re interested, let us know. We’re looking for more funds, and a lot of those monies are going directly to the communities on the front lines for all the reasons that we’ve heard about.
Peter Prengaman: Okay. Rukka, a project particularly that you’re proud of or that you think’s really worked well?
Rukka Sombolinggi: Yeah. I think there are two. Looking at Nusantara Fund and the way we also personalize in AMAN. Making sure that the decisions are collectively built by communities. So in Nusantara Fund, we don’t go out and call for proposals because then we will get like thousands proposals, where we only have for 10 projects. So we try to not to break the heart of communities. So that’s why when we built the consensus building, like for AMAN’s community, only have like 10,000. And so, we get all our leaders to decide who will get more, because everybody needs money, but there’s so little money available. So that’s why we need to put in the decision-making processes that nobody will get hurt. But we respect.
Those who don’t get money, we say, “Okay, you wait, maybe next year you will get it.” We can give more money than that, but the problem is we always thinking, “If I spend all the money now, how about tomorrow?” So that’s why, I mean, the way we operate I’m very happy about that. Then second one is when we raise awareness among our Indigenous community that don’t sell the best food.
Peter Prengaman: Don’t sell the best food?
Rukka Sombolinggi: Never sell the best food of yours because you need to eat good food. Yeah, because now we are so obsessed with the market, market, selling, selling, selling. And I know some of our community they sell their best food, rice, and then they buy the Chinese rice, which is, it’s like downgraded. So for me, I’m very… Yeah, because they travel all the way from Southern China and the quality is going down. But what make me happy the most is, when we manage to provide legal defense to our Indigenous leaders, then they’re free in the court, which is like once in a million nights is when our community managed to kick out the company from our territory. That makes me very happy.
Peter Prengaman: Okay. I want to pause here and make sure we have some time for questions. I have more questions if people in the audience don’t, but I want to pause a little bit. Yeah, we have a microphone, so make sure you get the microphone before you ask your question. Go ahead.
Laurie Goering: Hi, I am Laurie Goering. I’m a journalist working on climate change and some of these issues.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Oh, I know her.
Laurie Goering: Hi. We’ve been talking about this for quite a long time, trying to make this change. I know Rukka and I have talked two years ago, three years ago about–
Rukka Sombolinggi: Or, maybe five.
Laurie Goering: Maybe five years ago about these changes needing to be made. And I’m still hearing a lot of the same things about the changes needing to be made. So I’m curious about two things. How far along you think we are in this process of the change being made to what really needs to happen, and why it’s not happened? Now, what are the things that are holding that back and how might you change those?
Peter Prengaman: Can I just clarify, just a second, your question? So change, what specifically? Like how money is given?
Laurie Goering: We’ve been talking about, yeah, this change that needs to make it easier for communities to access money, to remove some of the barriers to that, the reporting barriers, just ensuring that this money reaches the ground in a lot of different ways in the way you’ve been talking about making the change. Why isn’t that happening? How far along are we to making that happen, and what are the barriers and how might we remove those now to make this happen much faster?
Peter Prengaman: Nancy, it seems like you want to start, or probably everybody–
Nancy Lindborg: Rukka, I go after you.
Peter Prengaman: has something to say.
Nancy Lindborg: If you can–
Rukka Sombolinggi: Yeah, there has been a lot actually in terms of progress, right? We already have this, you know? When we say shifting, I think it’s happening. And also, as Nancy mentioned earlier, it’s very promising if USAID is the one who lead. It’s a good sign. It’s a good sign because in the… Well, AMAN, this year, we are 25 years of our organization, but we’ve never got assistance from USAID because it’s so difficult to get it. Consider we are one of the high skill Indigenous organizations under the sky, but we still couldn’t match them.
But anyway, at the same time, I think we try to reach the, how do you call it? The common ground together? But in order to do that, we need the donors to move into the middle and also the Indigenous organizations also to, you know, so we can create the source that we can actually exist together. And I think that’s now in the form of the Indigenous led and community led funding mechanism. So there’s a lot going on.
Nusantara Fund today, now we are on the phase of a second cycle of delivering money to the community. And I have to say, we got the additional money from Ford Foundation. So that’s how, I’m sure. But we actually need more, you know? I mean, if there are donors here, where’s the 100 million?
Peter Prengaman: I got it. I got it right here.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Yeah. So, I think a lot of things. We cannot say that there’s nothing change, but because there’s a lot. But we cannot give up–
Peter Prengaman: So it is slowly changing.
Rukka Sombolinggi: on pushing.
Peter Prengaman: Sounds like we got to meet in the middle. Nancy, what were you going to say?
Nancy Lindborg: Yeah, I mean, I think there is actually good progress. I mean, in 2016 at the Istanbul Humanitarian Conference, everybody pledged 25% of funding going to local communities. That had, like four years of no action. And so now it’s back up and people have really grasped that pledge, as I said earlier. And some of the barriers that I know USAID is trying to work through are the congressional constraints. I mean, it’s not that USAID doesn’t want to do this. And so, this goes to my earlier comments, what happens with our elections and how Congress is organized will make a huge difference–
Solange Bandiaky Badji: Exactly.
Nancy Lindborg: on how the US is able to continue to make the progress towards a 25% pledge, which is heartfelt. I think the role of philanthropy is that we can help to de-risk some of that, proof of concept, work with partners, and create avenues for that more constrained bilateral funding to follow.
Peter Prengaman: Barbara?
Barbara Brakarz: Yeah, I think I wanted to say also I think it’s been changing. It has changed and I think the most critical change that needed to take place, which was the mindset, the actual change in how we are looking at and how donors are looking at funding. It has been improving, but it’s still not enough. So we have seen some progress, not enough. We actually need to really have a larger movement of organizations working together to make this, to prove that this is possible. That more faster resources, more agile resources at larger scale with less of the burden and more of the trust.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: I want to talk about two progress that I’m seeing around the pledges to support community tenure right. Like the one billion in 2021 that a collective set of donors, they came together and pledged that. It’s been very useful, but what we also realizing that only two plus percent is going directly to the communities. So how do we make that shift? It’s good to see those pledges, but the direct access is still limited. And the report we launched today, along with the dashboard actually is showing how the progress is happening, but where do we also need to do more?
Another one is the Forest, Peoples, Climate that Nancy mentioned. We need that kind of global initiative because it’s very hard, even for organizations who are in the US, to capture those funds. And myself, I’m spending maybe more than half of my time trying to fundraise, which is not easy at all. Then if we have initiatives like the FPC, then, they can capture it easily, maybe, and just deploy. That will help really make sure that funds go directly to the communities.
Another progress that we’re seeing is around reporting. We received funding recently for CLARIFI from the Home Planet Fund to support the pastoralist in East Africa: in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. And they said, “100% will go to the communities, 100%.” Even if it’s going through RRI because we have a fiscal sponsor line under CLARIFI, it’s just a pass through. Then when it gets there, they say, “Don’t ask them about reporting. Why did you ask them even for a concept note?” they said. “We don’t want you to bother them with concept note.” And when it come to reporting, we want them maybe to have a meeting and let’s hear from them because they’re very good at talking about the impact than writing it. Then we will capture those and that’s enough for reporting. I know also with Packard, I mean, you’re talking about people can use video or like WhatsApp to submit a proposal. I mean, these are very revolutionary.
Peter Prengaman: Interesting.
Nancy Lindborg: Yeah.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: How can we do more of that? And I think if we do that, that will help. It’s not easy, but these are the kind of systematic change that need to happen.
Peter Prengaman: To get it more direct.
Nancy Lindborg: Can I just add one quick thing?
Peter Prengaman: Sure.
Nancy Lindborg: Actually, I think in the world of philanthropy, COVID was actually an important progress accelerator in terms of reducing reporting, and just streamlined processes that have continued. So that’s a silver lining out of that disaster.
Peter Prengaman: Yeah, we learned how to do a lot of different things. Another question? Sure, how about you? Yeah, sorry. Maybe we’ll go to you if we can.
Natalie Shriber: Hi, Natalie Shriber from Heading for Change. I’ve been deeply moved by all of your shares, and especially Rukka. You had mentioned spirit and Mother Earth, and I would love for you to share a little bit more with us about this kind of separation. Because in my mind, so much of the financing system is still rooted in an old consciousness and we’re not going to solve any of these interconnected problems without elevating and expanding our consciousness.
So I’d love to hear your stories, your wisdom of what this separation is, how it’s impacting your communities, and how we can all open our hearts and minds to actually the true root cause of the problem. It’s not poverty or inequality, it’s this deep separation in the consciousness between ourselves, the planet, and each other.
Peter Prengaman: That’s a big question.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Ooh, it’s a big question, but let me tell you a story. When I was in junior high school, my father organized and talked with my teacher. So every Friday we went up to the mountain to plant the trees, but the parents are the one who prepare how to catch the water and everything. So every week. That’s why, I mean, my friend know that I hate walking because I had too much walking already. But those are the days, and I think I enjoy the most because that’s the time when we can run freely. We don’t have to study on the desk in our schools. And it’s really the time when we can exchange the stories and everything. And we eat together. People in the cities call it potluck, where we bring our own food. We also have that in Indigenous communities.
And for 10 years, my father was the one who leading that because my father was a chief. That’s why he can do that. But 10 years later, the water comes back in our rice field and I never knew that that’s what so called… So now when people talk about rewild, restorations and everything, I was like, “Oh, I’ve done that when I was a little girl.” But then, even in the many of Indigenous peoples, the communities, we have also shift the way we relate to our universe, our living space.
When we talk about rehabilitation, because in AMAN we say we need to rehabilitate the land that has been destroyed. But in the last 10 years, what I’ve witnessed that rehabilitation is not just about planting trees. It’s about realign all the connection and the way we see our environment, the way we see our resources, the way we see our forest, the way we see the connections with other beings. Because if we don’t heal that connections, the way our worldview, we will only plant trees that we will already think that in the next 10 years I will cut down and sell. So it’s not oh, we will plant the trees, it’s not in the dream of reviving the soil, reviving the ecosystem, but it’s just the matter of planting trees because that’s what the government wants to see. That’s what donor wants to see. You plant 1,000 trees.
So that’s, I think for me and in AMAN we trying to go back and really think of rehabilitation has to start with the human being, the way we think and with our heart and the way we see the things around us. And I think we also try to come home as Indigenous in real terms. It’s not just that I wear my Indigenous accessories or everything, but it’s like the way I see things and the way I feel, and the failure is really from the way my ancestor failed at things.
Peter Prengaman: Thank you. I like that idea of coming home. I was going to go to you. Do you want to ask a question? And that might be our last question. Yeah, okay, yeah.
Desta Lakew: Do I need a mic?
Peter Prengaman: Yes, please. Just wait a second. Yeah, you have one coming.
Desta Lakew: Thank you so much. My name is Desta Lakew and I work with Amref Health Africa, which is an international NGO that is headquartered and based in Kenya. And it’s really amazing, first of all, to hear about the organizations here that are Indigenous organizations because we actually work with many community-based organizations and we provide capacity building and all of that. So it’s, on the funder side, it’s excellent that you are actually becoming closer to the Indigenous community and the trust factor.
And I know we’ve talked about USAID a little bit. I don’t know who from USAID is here, but it’s not just USAID, it’s actually other governments as well. And I think the biggest challenge for those of us who are working at the community level is the issue about indirect costs. You mentioned it earlier and it’s that whole issue of overhead. The lights have to stay on and the demands of many funders are, we get what, between seven and 15% overhead to do a tremendous heavy lift. And for some of us, we’re doing capacity building because we recognize the demands placed on Indigenous communities to provide all sorts of reports and the opportunity cost itself to look for funding is so high. You said earlier that you’re not even working on getting that kind of funding, correct? You’ve just given up because you have other funders who are willing to trust you.
So I think the key issue here is if we want Indigenous communities to survive and thrive and grow and save the planet, we have to also ensure that there is appropriate indirect costs. Even if you work with organizations such as ours, and I’m sure there are many, who will be the fiduciary, take the fiduciary responsibility and oversight. But I think from the funder’s perspective, it’d be interesting to know what is that level of leeway that you can give Indigenous organizations? And then from the community organizations or Indigenous organization, what do you need to be able to take that responsibility and the funds and how can we help you? Like you are in Africa, we work in Africa, happy to help you, but I’m sure there’s someone who works in Indonesia as well.
Peter Prengaman: Why don’t we have very quick answers to that if you want?
Nancy Lindborg: Yeah, so about a year ago we put into place a policy at the Packard Foundation of 15 to 25% indirect cost depending on the size of your organization. That is just automatically put onto the budget, because as somebody who’s spent some time in the NGO world, like how do we think these projects get done? I think the whole concept of indirect is crazy, but the way that we are dealing with it is, like you don’t have to calculate it, we just do it.
And I think that, actually USAID is pretty good with the negotiated indirect cost rates that they put together. I know that a lot of the other bilateral and even the UN agencies do ridiculously low costs. And all I can say is I’m happy to be an evangelist for that, because everybody who doesn’t pay the full cost of doing a program is free riding. And that doesn’t make sense. And so, this is a banner we should all walk under.
Peter Prengaman: Barbara?
Barbara Brakarz: Yeah, we actually say we are paying the donors to execute the projects.
Nancy Lindborg: Yeah.
Barbara Brakarz: It’s down to that.
Rukka Sombolinggi: No, the other donors pay the big donors. Because they paid.
Barbara Brakarz: Skoll is paying.
Rukka Sombolinggi: Yeah.
Peter Prengaman: The ecosystem. Solange, do you have anything on that, or?
Solange Bandiaky Badji: No, just not on that, but I wanted to bring in the equity aspect of climate financing. Two things, we have seen recently how government from the Global South are coming around loss and damage, and really talking about the need to really support that. And I was talking to Rukka and she was like, “Well, it’s time to think about it from an Indigenous perspective.”
Another thing that we’ve been facing also around climate financing is the focus on tropical forest countries versus the other type of landscapes. It’s great to double down on forests because really, we have the biggest bet there when it come to saving the planet. But let’s remember when it come to Indigenous communities, local communities, it’s about all lands and territories. You have pastoralist land, dry land, mangrove, like mountains, all of them they contribute to carbon sequestration and to biodiversity. And when it come to restoration, for example, the pastoralist communities, I mean, they’re doing it.
So the question we’re facing right now, they’re like, “Well, why are you just talking about the Congo Basin, the Amazon and Indonesia?” In Asia you have all the countries where you could really like invest. We work in the Congo Basin with REPALEAC, which is the largest Indigenous network and they are in nine countries. But we are doing work only in the DRC, in Gabon, and the Republic of Congo. Then the other members, they come to us and say, “Why not us? Why are we not receiving the funding to do? And we’re doing it already.” So I think there is a need for donors who are investing in climate finance to think about the other type of ecosystems and landscapes.
Peter Prengaman: I think that’s a–
Nancy Lindborg: Can I make a quick comment in there?
Peter Prengaman: Okay, all right.
Nancy Lindborg: Super-fast.
Peter Prengaman: Yeah, super-fast.
Nancy Lindborg: I think that, and to me that illustrates the necessity of getting out of these stovepipes and to think about the continuity of mitigation, adaptation, climate, development, finance. That these things need to exist in greater relationship to one another so that that kind of broader thinking can prevail.
Peter Prengaman: I think we’re going to leave it there. Thank you all, and thank you Solange–
Solange Bandiaky Badji: Thank you, Peter.
Peter Prengaman: Nancy, Rukka, and Barbara.
Solange Bandiaky Badji: Thank you, Peter. You’re welcome. Thank you.
Peter Prengaman: Thank you.
Nancy Lindborg: Thank you.
