Decolonizing Climate Action and Finance: Empowering Local Communities As Our First Line of Defense

In September 2025, I participated in the Green Finance Kenya Roundtable hosted by Financial Sector Deepening Kenya (FSD Kenya). The forum brought together public and private sector players to explore ways of accelerating green and sustainable investments for a resilient future.

During a panel session, Lisa Omingo, technical advisor for biodiversity conservation at GIZ Kenya, posed a thought-provoking question to the audience: “As we sit here, who is the most important stakeholder in this conversation? Do we have anyone from the community level – the farmers we ask to conserve, the fishers we urge to protect mangroves, or members of forest associations? We are all representing institutions – finance, donors, government – but where are they?”

The responses revealed a clear consensus that communities are the most critical stakeholders. Lisa’s question mirrors a broader reality – the underrepresentation of community voices in climate forums, despite their deep environmental knowledge that could enrich global discussions.

Those living closest to threatened lands, forests, and waters face the harshest consequences of climate change, as their lives and traditions are deeply intertwined with nature. As the crisis deepens, their knowledge and lived experiences must guide our climate action. Lisa’s parting shot, “Let’s make communities the forefront of our discussions”, should serve as a rallying call for an all-inclusive climate response.

A Global Climate Response Too Far from the Ground

The global climate response remains centralized mainly and top-down. Significant decisions are shaped at high-level forums such as the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP), informed by scientific panels and complex financial frameworks. While essential, these frameworks and systems often fail to translate into inclusive grassroots action.

The current Climate Finance Architecture (CFA) has been widely criticized for its limited grasp of local realities. Studies show that less than ten percent of global climate finance reaches local levels directly. Most is absorbed by intermediaries and national programs long before reaching communities, creating an implementation gap where global climate ambitions struggle to find life on the ground.

The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) argues that the current Climate Finance Architecture prioritizes investor returns over community ownership, creating a “smokescreen of climate justice in an emissions-intensive, top-down and technocratic adaptation governance model.”

At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan (2024), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) introduced a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) to guide global climate financing for developing countries. It called for support to vulnerable groups, including youth, indigenous people, persons living with disabilities, and communities in fragile settings, while championing the integration of traditional and local knowledge. Yet, despite these progressive commitments, the resolution lacked measurable targets, accountability mechanisms, and clear funding channels to ensure that resources genuinely reach the vulnerable groups mentioned.

The principles for Locally Led Adaptation (LLA), introduced in 2021 by the Global Commission on Adaptation, provide a transformative pathway for community inclusion. They advocate devolving decision-making to the local level, embedding equity, and ensuring predictable and long-term financing. However, despite widespread endorsement, adoption of these principles into global and national finance systems remains slow.

It is becoming increasingly clear that top-down finance models can hardly sustain bottom-up resilience. Designing programs in distant ‘boardrooms’ without sustained participation of vulnerable communities, while expecting maximum local impact, is unrealistic. Until power and resources are devolved, communities will continue to shoulder the greatest risks with insufficient means to respond.

When Community Voices are Amplified and When They are Undermined

 Across Africa, communities stand at the frontlines of the climate crisis, drawing on generations of knowledge, traditions, and stewardship that sustain both people and ecosystems. When their leadership is empowered, climate action becomes more resilient and lasting. When ignored, interventions risk deepening inequalities.

A positive example is Mikoko Pamoja, the world’s first community-led mangrove conservation and blue carbon project in Gazi Bay, Kwale County, Kenya. This project is managed by the Mikoko Pamoja Community Organization, with support from scientists at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute. The project protects over 100 hectares of mangroves and sequesters (removes) about 3,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. Decisions are made locally, and revenues from carbon credits are reinvested into clean water, education, and health projects in Gazi and Makongeni villages. This model illustrates how community ownership benefits both people and the environment.

In northern Tanzania, the Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT) works with indigenous communities such as the Sonjo et Akie to secure communal land rights and revive rotational grazing systems. They manage about 400,000 hectares of rangelands. By combining traditional knowledge with modern conservation, they have improved soil retention, water conservation and biodiversity. When local voices shape climate solutions, adaptation turns into innovation that conserves the environment and safeguards livelihoods.

In contrast,  where communities are excluded, injustice and policy failure persist. In Madagascar (one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations according to Oxfam), the Antandroy community faced drought-induced displacement after being overlooked in national and local adaptation plans, according to a report released in July 2025 by Amnesty International. Thousands remain without rights to safe relocation or livelihood recovery. Similarly, in Kenya, unethical practices in emerging carbon markets, including land grabbing, unfair benefit sharing and weak consent processes, have been flagged by indigenous communities such as the Maasai.

When projects are designed outside local contexts, they often reproduce extractive systems that undermine not only communities but also the very solutions and impacts they aim to achieve.

Decolonizing climate action goes beyond inclusion – it requires shifting power that has long marginalized communities, respecting indigenous and local knowledge, and ensuring benefits are shared equitably. When traditional knowledge meets science, outcomes become both effective and lasting. Communities must not be passive recipients of aid but co-authors of solutions. With the right tools and resources, they move from victims of climate change to architects of resilience.

 Breaking Barriers to Local and Community-Led Action

During the Green Finance Kenya Roundtable, Dr. Yvonne Maingey-Muriuki, a climate scientist with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, observed that there remains limited clarity on how mobilized green finance is applied at the local level.

Kenya’s Financing Locally-Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) program, launched in 2022, offers a promising model. Inspired by LLA principles, it channels climate funds directly to county governments and community-identified priorities such as water access, reforestation and climate-smart agriculture. Funded mainly by the National Treasury and the World Bank, FLLoCA’s national budget nearly doubled from KES 5.9 billion in FY 2024/25 to KES 11.5 billion in FY 2025/26 – a strong signal of national commitment to local climate action.

Through County Climate Change Funds (CCCFs) et Ward Climate Change Planning Committees (WCCPCs), communities are involved in identifying, implementing, and monitoring projects. This approach fosters local accountability and capacity while aligning with County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs), the five-year blueprints that guide county governments.

However, research shows that during implementation, county governments often retain primary control, leaving communities sidelined after their initial involvement in the planning phase. Political interference and limited coordination between civil society, communities, and local government hinder progress.

Decolonizing Climate Action by Decolonizing Climate Finance

Decolonizing climate finance is crucial for effective and transformative climate action. Kenya’s second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) for 2031–2035, submitted to UNFCCC in April 2025, outlines an ambitious climate response plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance adaptation. It targets $56 billion in funding, 81% of which relies on international support.

Selon le Climate Action Network (CAN), Kenya’s NDC lacks clear measures to protect community rights, including safeguards for Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), which ensures that indigenous people are informed and can freely approve or reject projects on their land. CAN notes that Kenya’s NDC lacks definite plans for community-level just transition and does not embed clear safeguards for gender, equity, and culturally appropriate benefit-sharing mechanisms.

Moreover, according to the Global Commission on Adaptation, over 70% of Africa’s total adaptation needs in NDCs remain unallocated to specific sectors, leaving critical local priorities underfunded.

A 2025 report by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), “Decolonial Climate Finance in Practice: Assessing Proposed Reforms”, recommends scaling up local climate finance by supporting Global South and locally-led climate institutions. It also recommends easing accreditation requirements for local organizations to access and distribute public climate finance, such as from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) – a fund established within the framework of the UNFCCC.  It also advocates shifting from loans to grants and cash transfers to reduce debt burdens and increase accessibility.

Integrating African Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS) into climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation, and early warning systems can bridge gaps between science and local experience. Community radios, traditional leaders, and local innovation hubs can play vital roles in spreading knowledge and fostering equal partnerships in climate response.

In many African contexts, land ownership can be complex, with overlapping legal and customary rights. Top-down climate interventions that ignore these realities risk triggering land conflicts, displacements, or other historical injustices. Programs must, therefore, carefully engage with local governance structures to ensure fairness and legitimacy.

Meaningful inclusion goes beyond inviting communities to the decision table. It demands empowering them as partners. Climate action and finance can only be truly decolonized when local communities lead the way, serving as our first line of defense. With their leadership, we can take a decisive step forward toward a just, sustainable, and net-zero future.

Article by Peter Wanyangi, Climate Finance Researcher & an alumnus of the Bachelor of Commerce (BCoM) Programme at Strathmore University