COP 31 Side Event: Mountain Communities at the Crossroads: Finance, Justice, Resilience and the Choice to Stay

TERI, in collaboration with the Mountain Sentinels Collaborative Network / Instituto de Montaña, the Asian Indigenous International Network (AIIN), and the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, is hosting a side event titled “Mountain Communities at the Crossroads: Finance, Justice, Resilience and the Choice to Stay” at the COP31 Blue Zone in Antalya, Türkiye.

The session confronts an urgent question: Can mountain communities genuinely choose to stay when escalating climate impacts threaten the ecosystems, water resources, and livelihoods their survival depends on?

Across mountain regions, accelerating resource depletion and economic uncertainty are turning migration from an option into a necessity. Yet climate interventions frequently stall at documenting vulnerability rather than resourcing the conditions required to build resilient futures. Convening Indigenous leaders, community representatives, landscape practitioners, and climate finance experts, this dialogue explores how watershed restoration, climate-resilient agriculture, and sustainable livelihoods can convert into durable local security.

Crucially, the session tackles governance and equity: who controls adaptation investments, whose priorities steer action, and whether capital genuinely reaches frontline stewards. Moving past abstract commitments, the discussion focuses on financing resilience on the ground—safeguarding Indigenous rights, ensuring equitable benefit-sharing, and upholding communities’ autonomy to stay or migrate with dignity. Insights will directly inform practical investment priorities for the broader Climate Mobility Adaptation Agenda.

Objectives

• Examine how climate-driven shifts in water availability, ecosystem health, and economic stability constrain mountain communities' ability to choose whether to stay or migrate.
• Highlight community-led interventions—spanning watershed restoration, regenerative agriculture, and Indigenous knowledge systems—that bolster long-term resilience.
• Explore how adaptation, carbon, and blended finance mechanisms can be mobilized for locally controlled projects with guaranteed rights and equitable benefit-sharing.

Expected Outcomes

• A clear articulation of frontline priorities and sovereignty concerns in mountain adaptation.
• A portfolio of actionable, community-validated investments across water stewardship, ecosystem restoration, and resilient livelihoods.
• Practical policy and financing recommendations to make global adaptation and nature finance directly accessible to mountain and Indigenous communities.

Speaker details