Inuit want direct access to a global fund dedicated to addressing destruction caused by climate change, the president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council’s Canadian arm says.

Lisa Koperqualuk says loss and damage funding is needed in Inuit Nunangat, the homeland for Inuit, which is warming four times faster than the global average. Canada’s National Observer spoke with the ICC president last week while she was in New York City at the United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues, a UN body focused on the concerns and rights of global Indigenous Peoples.

The loss and damage fund Koperqualuk referred to is a major agreement to come out of COP27, last year’s UN climate conference. How exactly the fund will work is still being negotiated, but it’s expected wealthy developed countries will pay into its coffers and vulnerable developing countries can then tap the money to deal with loss and damages caused by climate change, like when heat waves destroy crops that farmers depend on for livelihoods.

The loss and damage fund comes after three decades of poor countries calling on their wealthy counterparts to help pay for the damage the latter has caused by fueling their economies with fossil fuels.

But Koperqualuk told Canada’s National Observer she is concerned the divide between developed and developing countries is taking precedence over inequity between settler communities and Indigenous nations within wealthy countries. Those nations are struggling with the impacts of the climate crisis and ongoing socioeconomic harms caused by colonization, she said, adding: “Us Inuit live in developed countries.”

Since Inuit live across the Arctic, in wealthy countries like the U.S., Canada, Greenland (part of Denmark), they can’t access the COP27 loss and damage fund to support their needs and rights as Indigenous nations, Koperqualuk said. That's because funding is expected to only be handed out to countries recognized as “developing” in the UN system, as opposed to Indigenous self-governments.

Read the full article about climate funding for Inuit people by Matteo Cimellaro and John Woodside at Vancouver Ecosocialists.