Indigenous Peoples and the Environment

About this grant

This grant will enable the Indian Law Resource Center to continue working to reform World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank policies and projects affecting indigenous peoples’ land and natural resources. The focus of the project is reforming the environmental and social policies of the international financial institutions to increase protection for indigenous peoples and increase their capacity to achieve sustainable development.Multiyear funding will support project objectives that include working with indigenous leaders and communities to advocate for international financial institution policy reform; and creating new standards to improve accountability.Recent accomplishments included creating a network of indigenous representatives with unprecedented access to World Bank officials; improving the World Bank’s Indigenous Peoples Policy; encouraging the creation of a new indigenous peoples policy at the Inter-American Development Bank; defining principles for consent of indigenous communities affected by proposed projects financed by international financial institutions; and contributing to the U.N. study on the rights of indigenous peoples to control their own natural resources.