FIMI at COP31: From the Territories to Global Climate Decisions
Indigenous Women have sustained knowledge, defended territories, and built responses to the climate crisis for generations. Our experience is rooted in a deep relationship with the land, water, biodiversity, food systems, and community-based forms of organization.
This year, we will also be present at COP31, to be held in November 2026 in Antalya, Türkiye, one of the spaces where global climate decisions are shaped. We will bring our experiences, knowledge, proposals, and demands from the territories, with the conviction that our voices must be part of the decisions that affect our present and our future.
Indigenous Women participate as political actors, knowledge holders, and builders of solutions to the climate crisis. Our agenda connects the territories with debates on adaptation, climate finance, loss and damage, mitigation, just transition, and gender.
Our delegation brings together voices from the Americas, Africa, Asia, the Pacific, the Arctic, and Eastern Europe/Russia, united by one shared demand: to participate in climate decision-making with real power to influence outcomes.
Before COP31 opens, on 5–6 November, we will hold the Global Coordination Meeting of Indigenous Women in Antalya, a political space where at least 50 Indigenous Women from different sociocultural regions will share experiences and knowledge, define common priorities, and collectively develop a Political Declaration for COP31.
Our agenda begins with what we already sustain in our communities. Our knowledge is connected to water, seeds, biodiversity, food systems, territorial governance, and community-based approaches to adaptation. This knowledge enables us to preserve ecosystems, sustain communities, and respond to environmental change across generations.
For this reason, one of our priorities at COP31 is to position this knowledge as practical and political knowledge that is relevant to climate responses. It comes from deep relationships with the territory, accumulated experience, and our own forms of organization, and it must influence the policies that affect our territories.
Participation also means decision-making
Participation means having the real capacity to propose, negotiate, decide, and influence. We want to engage in the spaces where policies, commitments, and mechanisms that affect our territories are defined, because our presence has meaning when it can shape decisions.
During COP31, we will participate in the climate negotiations, the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP), the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus, bilateral meetings, side events, and other advocacy spaces.
Our position is clear: climate policies that affect our territories must be shaped with our participation and with our decision-making power.
The same principle applies to climate finance. The solutions we sustain from our territories require resources that strengthen our organizations, our priorities, and our autonomy. For us, direct access to resources means being able to define what we need, how we want to use those resources, and which processes we want to sustain over time.
Funding must recognize us as leaders, resource managers, and decision-makers. We also need mechanisms that respect our forms of organization, reduce barriers to access, strengthen our institutions, and recognize our knowledge and territorial narratives as valid evidence.
For FIMI, redistributing resources also means redistributing power: transforming who defines priorities, who manages resources, and who decides what each territory needs.
Three conversations, one shared political agenda
Our participation at COP31 is organized around three interconnected conversations: territory and knowledge, power and decision-making, and direct climate finance.
From our territories, we sustain knowledge and responses to the climate crisis; we demand real decision-making power over the policies that affect them; and we call for direct, flexible, and culturally appropriate access to the resources needed to strengthen our own solutions.
These three dimensions form one shared political agenda: knowledge, power, and resources must advance together to build just climate action.
Our participation at COP31 seeks to ensure that our perspectives and proposals become part of the conversations where policies, commitments, and financing mechanisms are shaped. We want our leaders to be recognized as political actors and sources of knowledge, our proposals to influence decisions, and the alliances and commitments built in Antalya to continue beyond the conference.
Indigenous Women sustain responses to the climate crisis from our territories, and we bring those experiences, knowledge, and proposals into the spaces where global climate decisions are made.
From the territories to global climate decisions.
