Dear Members of the Loss and Damage Fund Board,
The decision to establish the Loss and Damage Fund was welcomed around the world as a recognition that we are in the age of loss and damage, with those least responsible for human-caused climate change already suffering the worst impacts, beyond their ability to adapt. To be effective and to deliver climate justice, the new Fund must be bold in the way it funds and who can access its support.
As the Board in its upcoming second meeting will start discussing a range of possible access modalities, we are writing to you to express our strong expectation and demand to have a dedicated community access window established within the Loss and Damage Fund that realizes direct access for people most affected by compounding and cascading climate impacts, in particular frontline communities, Indigenous Peoples, and people experiencing marginalization1. Such a dedicated window should ensure simplified and enhanced direct access to adequate funding support in the form of small grants that addresses the needs and priorities of those affected, and that their leadership and knowledge is recognized and fostered.
The Governing Instrument of the Loss and Damage Fund, which provides the mandates for the Board’s work, makes it very clear that “access to small grants that support communities, Indigenous Peoples and vulnerable groups and their livelihoods, including with respect to recovery after climate-related events” must be a central feature of the Fund. Anchoring a small-grants funding approach in the Governing Instrument was the result of consistent demands from a wide range of Parties and observers during the design process by the Transitional Committee to ensure that the new Fund is fit-for-purpose for affected communities to address loss and damage, and applies lessons learned from the shortcomings of existing climate funds.
While there may be many ways in which community access can be guaranteed, showcasing it as a distinct access modality at Fund level and ensuring that a significant and growing share of the Fund’s resources is dedicated to communities direct access is necessary to confirm the Fund’s intention and ambition to not just talk about priority support for vulnerable communities, but to make it a central tenet of its funding mission.
This is crucial to ensure resources to address losses and damages reach those who the Fund is supposed to serve. Indigenous Peoples, women’s rights groups and other national and local civil society organisations (CSOs) representing children and people experiencing marginalization encounter enormous challenges to access climate finance through existing funds, where small grant provision for communities is an afterthought and the expectation of benefits trickling down to the local level persist. This cannot be the funding model of the Loss and Damage Fund. Establishing a community access window for frontline communities, local CSOs, Indigenous Peoples and groups experiencing marginalization and allocating a substantial and progressively increasing part of the Fund’s resources to this window will guarantee people at the frontline of the climate crisis with a minimum level of access to funding. It would also strengthen their capacities and agency, promote innovation, respond to their needs in a way top-down funding approaches cannot, and ensure they can lead on decisions that affect them.
Guaranteeing that communities, local CSOs, Indigenous Peoples and groups facing marginalization have direct access to loss and damage grant support is not just a matter of climate justice and human rights, but also quintessential to ensure effectiveness and sustainability of loss and damage responses, as those who are most impacted by loss and damage are also the first responders in time of crises and know best what solutions are needed to redress the losses and damages they have suffered.
In light of this, we urge you to:
- Establish a community access window within the Loss and Damage Fund providing directly accessible small grants for communities, local CSOs, Indigenous Peoples and groups facing marginalization.
- Ensure that a substantial and progressively growing part of Fund’s resources is allocated to the community access window.
- Ensure the community access window has simplified procedures and systems to ensure easy access, transparency and accountability, based on community-led and human rights-based approaches.
The world has hailed the adoption of the Loss and Damage Fund and its operationalisation. Now it is your responsibility to ensure that the Fund is true to its promises and delivers climate justice to affected groups and communities.
- Including women in all their diversity, peoples of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, children and youth, older people, Indigenous Peoples, afrodescendant communities, migrants and refugees, persons with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, people living in conflict-affected areas (including situation of apartheid and occupation), individuals in communities facing impoverishment and dispossession.
Full the fill list of signatories, click here.