The Nusantara Fund -- the first direct funding mechanism for indigenous and local communities in the country -- was launched by the environmental group Walhi, the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA) and Indigenous people's NGO AMAN.
It received $3 million in initial support from international philanthropic organisations such as the Ford Foundation and Packard Foundation.
It is part of a $1.7 billion Forest Tenure Pledge that was first announced at COP26 in Glasgow, which recognised the important role of Indigenous and local communities in protecting tropical forests and their contribution to mitigate climate change.
Indonesia, home to the world's third-largest rainforest area, claims to have made some progress by reducing the rate of primary forest loss for five straight years up to 2021, but total forest cover keeps receding.
A study by Rainforest Foundation Norway found that Indigenous communities received about $2.7 billion of climate funds in forest management between 2011 and 2020 from donors and philanthropies, equivalent to less than 1 percent of official development assistance for climate change mitigation and adaptation over the same period.
The Nusantara Fund was launched to help correct such an imbalance in climate fund distribution, said Ford Foundation president Darren Walker.
"This fund has been designed in part to respond to that imbalance and to demonstrate the efficacy of the idea that when you provide resources to local communities, you are more likely to have the impacts that we need to address the climate challenge," Walker told AFP Monday.
The fund seeks to address the needs of the communities in a bottom-up approach, looking to them to identify challenges that they face and solutions, said WALHI director Zenzi Suhadi.
"We create the mechanism of the Nusantara Fund directly to the local community and indigenous people," said Suhadi.
AMAN secretary-general Rukka Sombolinggi added that villagers "know best" the challenges they face and how they want to tackle them.
The founders of the fund seek to attract up to $20 million in investment in the next 10 years to help map more than 20 million hectares of Indigenous territories, and increase the protection and registration of 7.8 million hectares on top of the recognised land, among other targets.
US, UAE announced climate farming fund has grown to $13 bn
Washington (AFP) May 8, 2023 -
Funding for a global initiative aimed at creating more environmentally friendly and climate-resilient farming has grown to $13 billion, co-leaders the United States and the United Arab Emirates said Monday.
That money means the Agriculture Innovation Mission (AIM) for Climate, launched in 2021, now exceeds its $10 billion target for the COP28 climate talks, to be hosted by the UAE in November and December.
"Climate change continues to impact longstanding agricultural practices in every country and a strong global commitment is necessary to face the challenges of climate change head-on," US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in a statement.
Vilsack and his Emirati counterpart Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, the UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment, are co-hosting an AIM for Climate Summit in Washington this week.
"I think the beauty of this is that of the $13 billion, $10 billion comes from government and three billion is coming from the private sector," said Almheiri.
Between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse emissions come from food systems, from factors like deforestation to make way for agricultural land, methane emissions from livestock, the energy costs associated with supply chains and energy used by consumers to store and prepare food.
At the same time, the changing climate is threatening food security across the world, as global warming increases the frequency of punishing heat waves, droughts and extreme weather events.
Projects underway include developing newer, greener fertilizers that use less fossil fuels to create, and returning to so-called "regenerative agriculture" practices that restore soil biodiversity, thus improving both yield and carbon sequestration while reducing the need for fertilization.
Artificial intelligence-enhanced tools meanwhile are being developed to take data from sources including satellites and ground sensors to then accurately estimate how carbon-rich any given plot of land is, which could help farmers boost soil health or enable the creation of a viable carbon offset market.
Also on the group's agenda are efforts to adopt more efficient farming techniques and to switch to growing crops that require less water in some climate-impacted areas.
"Black farmers, Indigenous farmers, low-income farmers, they need access to this innovation as well," former US vice president Al Gore and climate activist told the summit's opening meeting.
US climate envoy John Kerry, as well as ministers from Britain, the European Commission, Australia, Kenya, Mexico and Panama are all set to address the conference.
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