June Rubis is a steering group committee member for the Cali Fund, from Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo.

At COP16 in Cali, governments made a significant commitment: at least half of the funding from the new Cali Fund should support the self-identified needs of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including women and youth. It was a watershed moment for multilateral benefit-sharing.

The challenge now is to translate that commitment into access arrangements that recognise the different institutions, priorities and decision-making processes of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

For generations, biodiversity and traditional Indigenous knowledge have provided significant value to companies who depend on nature’s genetic diversity to discover new drugs that fight diseases, create products that improve health, and grow crops resilient to extreme heat and flooding events. While some compounds are sampled directly from the source country, increasingly the digital blueprints are held in online public databases which are freely accessible to use for innovation and research.

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The Cali Fund was established at COP16 to encourage commercial users of Digital Sequence Information, or DSI, to share benefits arising from its use. Estimates suggest it could generate over $3.5 billion a year – a stark contrast to the modest $10,656 currently committed to the fund from just five SMEs, underlining how much progress must be made at COP17 over the next two weeks.

The COP16 decision that set up the fund offers two routes for money to reach Indigenous Peoples and local communities: through government authorities, and through direct payments to institutions identified by Indigenous Peoples and local communities themselves.

Varied ways of organising

Indigenous Peoples and local communities organise through a wide range of institutions. Some have national or regional organisations experienced in managing international grants. Others work through territorial organisations, customary institutions, community associations, cooperatives or networks. Some have professional finance teams and audited accounts; others have extensive experience governing territories, collective resources or conservation work without having been organised around international funding requirements.

For direct access, some questions are already apparent. Which institutions should be able to receive funds? How should they be identified? What fiduciary standards should apply? How should safeguards and accountability work where institutional capacities differ? What support may be needed where institutions have strong community mandates but less experience with international finance?

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If access is designed mainly around institutions that already meet the expectations of large international finance mechanisms, early funding will tend to favour those already familiar to funders. They will gain further experience and become better positioned for future funding, while institutions with less administrative capacity may remain outside the system despite strong community mandates and long histories of stewardship.

These first decisions matter most, because they set the terms for everyone who follows.

The role of intermediaries requires care. Some Indigenous organisations may want a fiscal host to hold and manage funds on their behalf. Communities may choose to work through an NGO they trust. Government-facilitated arrangements may work well in particular national contexts.

What matters is the function an intermediary performs and the authority that comes with it. Providing administrative support is different from deciding which Indigenous organisations qualify, which priorities can receive support, or how success will be assessed. Direct access means communities keep that decision-making authority.

Decision-making power

The COP16 decision refers to institutions that Indigenous Peoples and local communities identify. But authority among Indigenous Peoples does not sit in one kind of body. It may sit with territorial organisations, customary institutions, community associations or combinations of these. Legal recognition and customary authority do not always align neatly.

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An important feature of the Cali Fund’s governance is that Indigenous Peoples and local communities participate as full members of the Steering Committee, rather than as observers. Seven Indigenous Peoples and local community representatives, one from each of the seven socio-cultural regions, participate in consensus-based decision-making alongside representatives of governments and UN entities. Six additional representatives from civil society, scientific institutions and the private sector participate as observers.

That representation carries responsibility. Institutional legitimacy, access and representation take different forms across the seven socio-cultural regions. Indigenous Peoples and local communities members therefore have an important role in bringing those differences into the Fund’s governance and in ensuring that arrangements developed for one context do not become the assumed model for everyone else. 

Safeguards and clear responsibilities

COP17 can establish the core principles and direction, while allowing operational pathways to develop in ways that respond to different regional contexts. The decisions countries take in Yerevan will shape how that flexibility is realised in practice. 

The choices made around access will influence which institutions are able to participate, which routes become established and which forms of authority are recognised within the funding architecture. The aim should be an architecture with enough structure to maintain confidence while allowing for different forms of Indigenous and community governance.

A credible direct-access pathway will need safeguards, financial oversight and clear responsibilities. This would give the 50% commitment a stronger institutional foundation.

The Cali Fund’s importance will ultimately depend not only on how much funding reaches Indigenous Peoples and local communities, but on whether they are able to determine how the money is accessed, governed and used. This requires access pathways that recognise their institutions, priorities and decision-making processes, rather than requiring them to conform to a single predetermined model.

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COP17 must settle who decides how Cali Fund money is disbursed