Presentation short abstract

This paper explores how Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afrodescendant Peoples are responding to climate and biodiversity finance not only through resistance or withdrawal, but also by actively shaping emerging instruments to secure funding that protects land rights and livelihoods.

Presentation long abstract

This paper explores how Indigenous Peoples (IPs), local communities (LCs), and Afrodescendant Peoples (ADPs) are responding to the expansion of climate and biodiversity finance not only through resistance or withdrawal, but also by actively shaping emerging instruments to defend territorial rights and knowledge systems. Frontiers are conceptualized in two ways: as a physical place where conservation and production zones overlap, as well as through the making of ‘new’ commodity frontiers in nascent markets of biodiversity credits and other biodiversity finance regimes, which emerge as market responses to the biodiversity crisis. Drawing on empirical research, we examine how environmental governance interventions, often framed in normative assumptions of sustainability and participation, can reproduce territorial enclosures and control through technocratic forms of measurement and engagement.

IPs, LCs, and ADPs are engaging in diverse political strategies: from silences and protests to visible strategic mobilization such as in Indigenous or community-led funds. Certain groups engage with climate and biodiversity finance on their own terms through Indigenous-led funds that aim to leverage climate and biodiversity finance while pursuing customary governance, land tenure rights, and self-determined priorities. These efforts reflect a dual imperative: securing funding streams to protect lands and livelihoods, while resisting business-as-usual narratives that often accompany mainstream climate and biodiversity finance. Such engagement explores the binary framings of market versus resistance, and reveals the nuanced and often precarious ways IPs, LCs, and ADPs navigate global conservation finance.