Session 9. 8. A.

Fair access to climate finance remains an issue of heated arguments between developed and developing countries. While developed nations bear historical responsibility for emissions, industrializing countries have rapidly increased their fossil fuel consumption. Despite international commitments, critical agreements—such as the $100 billion annual climate finance pledge and Adaptation Fund replenishment—remain unrealized. In this context, the Paris Agreement’s "new collective quantified goal on climate finance" (NCQG) should be adopted in 2024 to secure resources for all actions, including loss and damage, with integrated tracking mechanisms.

Going beyond states, the international climate response has often neglected key actors for climate action. A decade-long analysis of Official Development Assistance (ODA) for climate change revealed that less than 1% of climate finance reached Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities, and Afro-descendants (IP, LC, & AD). Over half of that limited funding was channeled through intermediaries, leaving minimal resources for direct implementation. Large intermediaries like UN agencies and major NGOs dominate funding flows, with IP, LC, & AD groups receiving only small sub-grants.

To shift power dynamics in climate action, communities must be part of the decision-making process. Territorial Funds, emerging across tropical countries, aim to enable such shifts. Territorial Funds prioritize community-led approaches, leveraging strong relationships to create lasting impacts. Women are crucial in transforming climate finance, managing most of the analyzed cases.

Based on approximately 40 interviews with leaders, partners, and funders of Territorial Funds, this ongoing research is conducted in partnership with platforms of Indigenous Peoples Organizations. This paper focuses on women’s leadership within these new institutions. The discussion will also highlight women's barriers to protecting their rights and explore how Territorial Funds can help overcome these challenges. By placing women at the center of decision-making—allocating grants and directing resources—Territorial Funds can leverage strong, community-driven relationships to create lasting impact.

The escalating, increasingly frequent, and costly impacts of climate change have created an urgent need for effective solutions. Nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as a valuable strategy for carbon dioxide removal, biodiversity conservation, and local development. While NbS are gaining traction among environmental organizations, the private sector, and institutional actors, some local movements in Latin America resist what they view as "false solutions." These movements argue that a genuine NbS framework requires a holistic perspective that considers local realities, inequalities, and the intricate relationships between humans and nature. In this paper, we unpack the need to seek and develop local and pluralistic narratives of climate solutions that highlight the relationality and interdependence between humans and non-human agents when addressing complex environmental and developmental issues. Our theoretical framework focuses on three salient constructs that interact in global and local conversations about climate change mitigation and environmental conservation: the Anthropocene, Nature-based Solutions, and Indigenous narratives regarding the relationships that sustain life.By critically examining the concept of Nature-Based Solutions, we explore its connections to the Anthropocene framework. We also use Indigenous narratives as a contrasting lens to deepen our understanding of NbS. Drawing on document reviews and empirical data from Panama, Peru, and Bolivia, this analysis underscores the vital role of local and Indigenous perspectives as essential practical, theoretical, and analytical tools for transforming the relationship between humans and nature. This analysis contributes to the empirical discussion on why local and Indigenous narratives must be seriously considered as practical, theoretical, and analytical lenses to inform and transform the relationship between humans and nature in the context of the urgent action needed to address climate change.

Between 1988-2012, Mexico’s mining sector underwent a significant structural transition, which entailed a change from a joint-ownership model between the national government and domestic industry to a completely privatized model led by foreign exploration companies. In this process, mining production rose significantly, which weakened Indigenous community forms of agrarian organization and restructured the Ejido common land system. These reforms increased the relative power of investor rights in Mexico, despite the historically-significant political position of rural populations in the national government's power base throughout the 20th century. However, despite their marginalization, rural populations were able to block the total dismantling of the commons, which has led to a modern day scenario of widespread conflicts, where complex negotiations must occur between rural communities and mining companies that hold lease rights to the subsurface minerals on common lands. I refer to the endurance of the commons, and its enclosure by mining companies, as “parallel projects” of national land tenure.

Drawing on a combination of Historical Institutionalism and Political Ecology, I examine land reform processes and the introduction of new mining laws to help advance the sector's development. I explain the shifts in the influence of competing stakeholders as the sector began to dominate the countryside and create historically high profits in the country. The paper finds that, despite widely accepted narratives about land reform in Mexico during the democratic opening and the global diffusion of neoliberal economic policies of the 1990s, there are important institutional and policy legacies of the commons that have retained some power over the rise of mining capital throughout the country.

Coastal landscapes, especially those adjacent to seas and lakes, have seen increasing land acquisitions worldwide due to their strategic social, cultural, and economic benefits, which have negatively impacted marginalized communities. This paper highlights the pressing issues faced by marginalized riparian communities along the coast of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura, due to ongoing land acquisitions for commercial and residential developments. This growing practice has significantly impacted other users of the riparian landscape, such as fishers and farmers, who appear to be systematically forced out of their resource-based livelihoods. This raises concerns, as viable alternative survival strategies remain uncertain. Furthermore, it also limits access for visitors who rely on the lake and its catchment area for recreational purposes. This paper redefines the riparian zone as a shared space where social activities and cultural practices coexist with natural processes. There is limited ethnographic data from the East African Great Lakes region that captures the complexities of social and cultural dynamics, particularly in relation to changes in coastal land ownership, restricted resource accessibility, and shifts in local economies, from traditional agriculture and fisheries to settlement investments. To address this gap, this paper draws on people’s accounts and observations to examine how these multifaceted changes affect marginalized and ordinary members of the community. It frames the coastal landscape of Lake Tanganyika as a transitional space that generates a sense of belonging for both locals and visitors.