Document Type
Research Project
Publication Date
9-28-2025
Abstract
This policy paper highlights that Indigenous and marginalized communities who manage an estimated 80 % of world biodiversity have access to less than 1 % of climate funding and are sidelined in national level decision-making (Rights and Resources Initiative, 2021). At the same time, armed conflict contributes an estimated 5.5 % of global CO₂-equivalent emissions that affects Indigenous peoples in fragile rural areas. (IPCC, 2022). Unlike failure of REDD +program in the Amazon region of Colombia, which excluded Indigenous governance and permitted deforestation to increase exponentially, DRC has developed community forest concessions integrating Indigenous and community management into climate governance (FAO, 2024).The two interventions suggested in this paper to be mainly implemented by decision-makers in particular, the national ministers of justice, environment, and Indigenous affairs, the COP30 negotiators; and multilateral funders (e.g. GCF, FCPF, CAFI), are as follows (1) Climate Justice Courts that will be able to acknowledge ecocide and conflict emissions, ensures Indigenous legal standing, establish FPIC and tenure security, and at least 25% of chairs of oversight committees to be filled by Indigenous/community representatives; (2) Indigenous women in conflict zones led Gender-Responsive Climate Justice Hubs, managing adaptation grants, co-developing local climate tools, and conducting annual gender-equity audits. Such reforms bring legal requirements, technology, and finance into alignment to inscribe Indigenous agency into climate governance— ensuring climate justice and ecological accountability for conflict emissions.
Recommended Citation
Yasser, Mariem, "Conflict Emissions and Environmental Destruction: Exacerbating Insecurity and Exclusion Among Vulnerable and Indigenous Communities in the Absence of Inclusive Climate Governance" (2025). COP30. 95.
https://buescholar.bue.edu.eg/cop30/95