Cutting carbon: Benefits must flow to communities, not just businesses, panellists say
Michelle Quah
NATURE-BASED carbon projects must look beyond the financial value of emissions reductions and ensure that benefits are also shared with surrounding communities, panellists said at a recent discussion about the impact of offset projects.
“Unless projects are put on a sustainable development path, with local communities and indigenous people at the core, the long-term protection and conservation of natural carbon sinks” – like plants, the ocean and soil, for example – “is going to be very challenging, if not, in some cases, impossible,” said Nick Nuttall, former communications director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Nuttall was chairing a panel called “Going Beyond Carbon: Community Impact of High-Quality Offset Projects”, convened to discuss the issue ahead of the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (Cop27) that will take place in Egypt in November.
Community impact is particularly relevant and salient now, he added, because the price of carbon credits has increased and offset projects are generating excess revenue. There is therefore a greater need to determine how this should be shared with local communities so that they benefit fairly from the sale of credits from their area.
Benefits include sustainable jobs for the local people, contributions to their economy, improved health and livelihoods, and the empowerment of women and indigenous people.
Ben Scheelk is programme officer of The Ocean Foundation, which is dedicated to reversing the destruction of ocean environments around the world. He said that his organisation deliberately avoids thinking of their projects as carbon-credit projects: “These are community habitat restoration conservation projects, and projects centred around engaging the local community and providing support. And they are not just about climate mitigation — they’re about climate adaptation and climate resilience.”
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He said his foundation makes the extra effort to identify related ecotourism opportunities and other benefits such as coral reef restoration in its blue-carbon projects. Blue carbon refers to the carbon captured and sequestered in ocean and coastal ecosystems.
And they are working to ensure that, in projects currently being pursued in Puerto Rico and Mexico, the ownership of the credits will go to the local governments. “I want to drive the financing directly to them. I don’t necessarily want a return on investment per se, but rather a source of financing that is long-term and provides the resources needed to ensure the monitoring of these projects and other kinds of community benefits,” Scheelk said.
Leah Glass, technical advisor for mangroves and blue carbon at social enterprise Blue Ventures, said access to data is critical. Her firm focuses on nurturing and sustaining locally led marine conservation.
“The very foundation of ocean governance and high integrity carbon credits is transparency. Carbon credits require monitoring, evaluation, learning and reporting. So does adaptive resource management,” she said.
“So, if local people get engaged in its monitoring and have access to the data, they’re able to make decisions and more effectively manage their resources. I do think that kind of transparency in the carbon sector is one of the key kind of weapons that we have against the potential for poorly designed products that don’t safeguard the rights of communities.”
Natalia Arango, chief executive of Fondo Accion, a Colombian private fund focused on sustainable investments in the environment and children, added that it is also important that jurisdictions establish quality standards for such projects and ensure that they are enforced. “Colombia, for example, has a scheme of safeguards, but they’re not really enforcing it. Enforcement is really crucial to ensure the quality of the standards that are being used. “The other very important thing to effectively channel benefits to communities is to have transparent benefit-sharing mechanisms that have been built by the communities. And these have to be audited periodically.”
And the voice and views of local and indigenous communities have to be considered. “They are much more engaged and thoughtful than has been reported,” said Mike Korchinsky, founder of Wildlife Works, which aims to bring innovative market-based solutions to the challenges of conserving biodiversity.
“Many of them do understand that they are part of this global society, and that they do need help and investment. (But), there aren’t enough voices from these communities in (environmental) conversations.”
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