Events during the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 30) in Belém, Brazil, focused on nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and inclusion of Indigenous Peoples’ rights and land tenure issues.

Aligning with Brazil’s proposed global mutirão, a collective mobilization based on Indigenous values, panel discussions at an event on Indigenous Peoples and NDCs 3.0 showcased community-level experiences and offered guidance on how to strengthen NDCs through the recognition and protection of land tenure rights. Held on 12 November, the event themed, ‘Indigenous Peoples and NDCs 3.0: Rights, Recognition, and Way Forward,’ included mention of the latest Land Gap Report, which shows that developing countries are relying on land to meet their climate ambitions, but NDCs are failing to halt deforestation and land degradation, necessitating an approach to climate ambition that secures the territorial rights of communities caring for Indigenous lands. 

During a panel on bringing a land rights-based perspective to NDCs, speakers:

• Called for NDCs to recognize, inter alia: collective tenure, direct access to financing, and the need to prevent conflict related to minerals;
• Highlighted a rights-based NDC model to help countries include Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities in their NDCs; and
• Pointed to a review of 170 NDCs, which showed that less than 28% mention land tenure and less than 30% commit to strengthening land rights, despite relying on land-based action to meet climate goals.

A second panel focused on sharing experiences that prioritize land rights in climate action, with speakers: sharing a case study of a woman in Bangladesh who organized help to get elderly residents, children, and women to shelter as Cyclone Raymond threatened their community; welcoming the endorsement by Brazil and eight other countries of the Intergovernmental Commitment on Land Tenure at COP 30; highlighted the launch of an “Indigenous NDC,” demanding demarcation and protection of Indigenous territories; and calling for connecting proposals and solutions from Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon with Indigenous communities in Colombia. 

Another event, ‘NDCs and Territorial Rights: Strengthening National Climate Ambition Through Community Action,’ launched a global mapping of NDCs 3.0 that tracks progress and gaps in integrating Indigenous rights and worldviews into national climate commitments. The event brought together Indigenous leaders and representatives from the NDC Partnership to discuss how Indigenous participation can be strengthened throughout the design process, implementation, and monitoring of NDCs.

Speakers also highlighted a 2022 baseline report that examined how national commitments refer to Indigenous Peoples, their rights, and their knowledge systems, and lamented that only a minority of NDCs explicitly address rights, effective participation, or jurisdictional authority.

Reflecting on lessons from past experiences, participants spoke about:

• An online consultation with Indigenous youth and children to identify barriers to participation, which was characterized by limited access to information and a lack of funding for capacity building;
• The difficulty of being recognized as Indigenous within the formal NDC process and of explaining collective rights and customary relationships with land in the highly technical language of climate policy;
• The need for Indigenous women’s ancestral knowledge and science to be fully recognized;
• How Indigenous Peoples are entirely absent from the Russian Federation’s NDC, despite their lands being central to the country’s climate strategy; and
• Community mapping, where women identified grazing routes, water sources, and biodiversity corridors, which link pastoralists, fishers, and hunters.

On lessons for future NDC cycles, one speaker noted that that while many NDCs refer to forests and Indigenous participation, these references are often superficial or misplaced – a form of “Indigenous-washing” that fails to acknowledge real relationships with land and livelihoods.