Regional Statement for Latin America and the Caribbean
Heading to the Eighth Assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF)
“Post-2030 Environmental Challenges: Towards Democratic, Territorial and Intercultural Governance”
On 19 May 2026, civil society organizations from across Latin America and the Caribbean convened virtually for the 2nd Latin America Regional Meeting: Post-2030 Environmental Challenges – Co-building the Road to Samarkand. The meeting brought together organizations, Indigenous Peoples, women, youth representatives, and territorial actors to discuss priorities and recommendations ahead of the Eighth Assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF-8). The resulting regional statement calls for more democratic, decentralized, intercultural, and territorial approaches to global environmental governance and financing.
The civil society organizations participating in the “2nd Latin America Regional Meeting: Post-2030 Environmental Challenges. Co-building the road to Samarkand”, held on May 19, 2026, in virtual mode, reaffirm our commitment to building collective solutions to the climate crisis, the accelerated loss of biodiversity, the degradation of ecosystems, and the growing socio-environmental inequalities affecting our territories.
We recognize that post-2030 environmental challenges cannot be solved through financial increases or technical adjustments to existing multilateral mechanisms alone. The magnitude of the crisis requires a profound transformation of global environmental governance, oriented towards more democratic, decentralized, intercultural, and territorialized models, where communities and territories have a leading role in defining priorities, strategies, and financing mechanisms.
From Latin America, we maintain that civil society organizations (CSOs), Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, and local communities should not continue to be considered only beneficiaries or secondary executors of environmental projects. They are primary actors, bearers of territorial knowledge, organizational capacities, and innovative solutions built from the historical experience of defending life, ecosystems, and common goods.
The experiences shared during the meeting demonstrate that some of the most relevant responses to the global socio-environmental crisis are emerging from community and Indigenous-led processes that integrate ecological restoration, social justice, ancestral knowledge, community health, and territorial governance. These initiatives show that sustainability cannot be separated from collective rights, gender equity, cultural diversity, and the self-determination of peoples.
We express concern about the growing concentration of strategic decisions and financial resources in large international implementing agencies, a situation that often limits the effective participation of national and territorial organizations in project formulation and in defining environmental priorities.
We consider it essential to move towards democratic architectures of environmental and financial governance that deconcentrate decision-making power and strengthen regional mechanisms for cooperation, co-governance, and financing.
Free, Prior and Informed Consent must evolve towards permanent models of binding participation, where territories and communities are not only consulted, but actively participate in shaping global socio-environmental strategies.
We also call for the simplification of the technical and administrative processes linked to access to international environmental financing, recognizing that current bureaucratic barriers exclude many community and Indigenous organizations with broad territorial legitimacy but limited administrative capacities.
We reaffirm the need to strengthen capacities within Latin America by promoting national organizations and regional territorial networks capable of operating as direct implementers, generating their own knowledge management systems, and building more horizontal and supportive cooperation models. Historical experiences of regional articulation demonstrate that our territories possess sufficient scientific, organizational, and political capacity to contribute actively to global environmental governance.
Similarly, we recognize that the post-2030 period will require truly intercultural and intersectional forms of governance, where CSOs, Indigenous Peoples, women, and youth participate fully in international environmental decision-making. The global ecological transition will not be legitimate or sustainable if it continues to reproduce historical exclusions and unequal power relations.
Therefore, the participating organizations call on the Global Environment Facility (GEF), its implementing agencies, national governments, and multilateral actors to:
- Democratize the decision-making processes of the GEF system through open, transparent, and participatory mechanisms.
- Strengthen the effective participation of Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, and territorial organizations in international environmental governance.
- Promote more decentralized and collaborative regional models of environmental cooperation and financing.
- Reduce technical and bureaucratic barriers to accessing international funds for community organizations.
- Recognize and strengthen territorial and biocultural knowledge as a strategic basis for climate action and conservation.
- Promote environmental governance structures based on socio-environmental justice, cultural diversity, and territorial sustainability.
- Consolidate permanent mechanisms of articulation between organizations in Latin America to strengthen common advocacy towards the Samarkand Assembly and beyond.
Finally, we reaffirm that building sustainable futures requires not only new global goals, but also new forms of relationship between territories, communities, institutions, and international financial mechanisms. Civil societies in Latin America possess fundamental experiences, knowledge, and capacities to contribute to this transformation.
From our territories, we call for the construction of multilevel global environmental governance that is more democratic, supportive, territorial, and intercultural, capable of responding with justice and depth to the socio-environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.
