- An absence of government legal and policy reforms is impacting the rights of Indigenous, Afro-descendant peoples and local communities associated with carbon programs in 33 countries, according to a recent report.
- More than half of the reviewed countries don’t have carbon trading regulations, and nearly half have no legal provision to recognize the communities’ right to free, prior and informed consent, the report found.
- It emphasizes safeguarding carbon rights to ensure the communities’ consent and rights over decision-making as countries prepare to comply with the Paris Agreement’s market mechanism for trading high-quality carbon credits.
- Although the voluntary carbon market is faring comparatively better in ensuring these rights, researchers say there still remains much to do in terms of addressing grievances and making sure people stay informed.
An absence of government legal and policy reforms is impacting the rights of Indigenous, Afro-descendant peoples and local communities associated with carbon programs in 33 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, according to a recent report.
The report, published by advocacy group Rights and Resources International (RRI), outlines the NGO’s findings on community rights to forest territories, land and resources in carbon trading regulations. This includes the associated benefit sharing, compensation and safeguards mechanisms of carbon market projects.
More than half of the reviewed countries don’t have carbon trading regulations, the report found, while nearly half have no legal provision to recognize the right to free, prior and informed consent of communities.
“For Indigenous peoples, the lack of legislation at the national level that fails to guarantee their carbon rights is a major threat which leads to further violation of territorial rights, land dispossession, and loss of food sovereignty,” says Onel Masardule, executive director of the Foundation for the Promotion of Indigenous Knowledge (FPCI), who wasn’t involved in developing the report.
The report defines carbon rights as communities’ legal rights and entitlements to the benefits generated by carbon sequestration activities (like payment for conserving forests from deforestation) and capability to consent to initiatives for nature-based solutions.
Despite more than a decade of funding and investments in programs like REDD+ (a framework to monetize and protect forests), progress toward an equitable and meaningful recognition of community rights remains slow, says Alain Frechette, author of the report and director of rights, climate and conservation at RRI.
“There’s minimal recognition of the community’s carbon rights that help ensure that they hold legal/technical knowledge, rights and authority over their consent and decision-making,” he tells Mongabay.
There’s growing interest in nature-based solutions, particularly in the form of carbon market transactions, either at the national level (known as jurisdictional REDD+, or JREDD+) or in a decentralized way (often called the voluntary carbon market). Studies suggest that while natural climate solutions potentially provide 37% of the cost-effective CO2 mitigation by 2030, they only receive around 3% of public climate finance. Some Indigenous and community-led groups voice support for REDD+ and carbon trading, especially for the associated financial benefits they could bring to materially poor regions.
At the moment, countries are preparing for the operationalization of Article 6.4, a market mechanism established under the Paris climate agreement to trade high-quality carbon credits.
Despite these interests, Frechette says most countries aren’t ready to effectively engage in carbon projects as they lack the legal frameworks and requirements for effective, inclusive and equitable transactions. These requirements can be complex and difficult for some communities to comprehend, he tells Mongabay.
“Yet communities are being forced to comply with these projects and make decisions with very little technical [and] legal support to ensure that they are fully informed and make decisions that are not forced on by private sector interests,” Frechette says.
While a number of countries have established or are setting up frameworks to coordinate national JREDD+ activities that observers say should fund socially inclusive development, “the regulation of the voluntary carbon market continues to lag across most countries reviewed,” the report says.
Translating regulations into local contexts
Masardule, who also leads Indigenous and community issues at the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), an independent governance body that monitors the market’s quality standards, says respecting free, prior and informed consent is key. This is particularly the case when countries are updating their legal frameworks to safeguard Indigenous people’s carbon rights in their lands and forests to achieve the expected outcome from the operationalization of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, he says.
But even when regulations are already in place, it’s difficult to translate high-level, top-down policies from the United Nations or other agreements into a local context, says Isa Mulder, policy expert at Carbon Market Watch, a research organization that monitors the climate policies of governments and corporations.
“These local contexts within the carbon market projects that take place across the world are different from each other, making it challenging to have rules that fit the diversity of these local communities,” says Mulder, who wasn’t involved in developing the report.
According to the report, one-third of nations recognize affected communities’ right to use, manage or benefit from carbon as an asset or service at the community level. More than half, however, have yet to design a mechanism for sharing benefits with affected communities, and no country has a mechanism that can provide these communities with a form of remedy when affected by carbon projects and sequestration initiatives, the RRI report says.
“It’s kind of a shame that we have to first see it go wrong before we can draw lessons and then say, maybe we should build better mechanisms to redress grievances,” Mulder says.
For the voluntary market, there have been improvements in implementing grievance mechanisms. However, Mulder says it’s important to note that Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, which facilitates voluntary cooperation between countries to achieve their respective emissions reductions, doesn’t have a grievance mechanism. This, she says, could pose a big risk to local communities.
Local civil society organizations are trying to bridge the gap between communities and technical processes under the carbon market initiatives. Frechette says his team at RRI, in collaboration with other NGOs, is trying to develop a pooled funding mechanism designed to provide technical legal counsel and support to communities so they can make informed decisions.
“For all private carbon conservation and sequestration initiatives, Indigenous peoples and affected communities should propose conditions to participate as partners and not only as beneficiaries,” Masardule says.
Banner image: Tsimi Judith harvests the Gnetum (okok) in Cameroon. Image by Ollivier Girard/CIFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
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