How will we know when local communities benefit from carbon offset schemes? (commentary)

Recently, carbon offset projects have been in the media, and not in the positive way that carbon market participants would like to see. Critics have raised concerns not only about the validity of carbon offsets but also about the costs and benefits to forest-dependent communities. The viability of carbon offsets over a 100-year timespan depends upon the integrity of the land set aside for carbon sequestration in the face of competing land uses.

Matters of law notwithstanding, the assent of the human occupants of the land on its use for carbon offsets, biodiversity, or any other public good is a practical precondition to a successful project. Additionally, long-maturing carbon offsets that do not enjoy the support of the communities that occupy the landscape appear a very poor investment for businesses, conservation organizations, and society.

Carbon credit schemes, in short, face a crisis of legitimacy. Setting aside for the moment significant issues of methodological rigor and overall effectiveness as a climate mitigation strategy, carbon offsets still need to demonstrate to investors that they enjoy the support of those communities who must forgo uses of the land not compatible with the production and retention of carbon or, at the very least, do not negatively impact affected communities. Community support is not a simple matter of obtaining free prior and informed consent (FPIC), as important as that is.  It is a matter of relationships, including assessing impacts on communities over the life of the project, which can span generations.

Carbon offset projects generally express benefit sharing with communities, if addressed at all, in quantitative and economic terms. Though easier to track, these metrics do not readily reveal the qualitative experiences of the individual members of the community and, therefore, can, as has been shown with projects already, fail to reveal power imbalances and inequality in the distribution of benefits expressed as sentiment.

In the 2022 book Blindspot, Jon Clifton, the CEO of the management consulting firm Gallup, writes about the importance of asking people how they feel about their lives. He demonstrates how the global rise of unhappiness and dissatisfaction is more predictive of political unrest, extremism, populism, and even war and revolution than economic measures alone. We can add failed conservation and development projects to Jon’s list.

Research has demonstrated that wildlife conservation projects incorporating community well-being are more likely to succeed. In our research on community well-being in conservation, we have found that:

• Objective (from the perspective of the observer) and subjective (from the perspective of the subject) well-being indicators are vital to establishing a holistic well-being baseline.
• A holistic well-being baseline can provide reliable information on community perceptions and early warning signs of unanticipated challenges
• A measurable holistic well-being approach can guide conservation projects towards greater sustainability by creating and maintaining them to benefit community well-being holistically.

We have proposed a framework for measuring, assessing, and improving community benefits and impacts from carbon projects (submitted for publication). Our recommended framework includes a subjective data collection survey instrument that measures holistic well-being as a critical measure of community well-being in climate projects.

This approach captures the perceptions of the community members as a critical impact measure. It includes and complements social indicators used in the Gold Standard (which uses the Sustainable Development Goals) and Verra’s Climate, Community, and Biodiversity (CCB) Standard Social and Biodiversity Impact Assessment (SBIA) Social Impact Assessment Toolbox. It is a comprehensive objective and subjective well-being framework that could be applied to existing and future voluntary carbon standards to better understand wellbeing in the community and measure how a climate project and benefit sharing from the project is impacting them.

See related: Carbon credits from award-winning Kenyan offset suspended by Verra

A data-driven community engagement approach assesses well-being holistically and engages communities at crucial inflection points. This kind of approach is the key to permanence in projects involving changes in land use. This kind of approach answers the essential need for a model that is data-driven, and thus provides measurable benchmarks and metrics for improved financial, programmatic, and community outcomes throughout the project lifetime.

The benefits of data-driven community engagement are extensive, including:

• Meaningful community engagement throughout the life of the project
• Enhanced monitoring and evaluation of project impact.
• An “early-warning system” to identify emerging dissatisfaction that could give rise to conflict.
• The ability to report on holistic social and community impacts from the project and a heightened understanding of the true impacts of the project on local communities.
• Investments that are demonstrably socially just.

Project proponents must work with communities to co-create transformational solutions to climate projects, using practical tools and approaches that measure and support this shift. Certification systems will help to advance this transformation if they require bottom-up assessments of progress in achieving social goals. Our proposed approach provides a means to answer these critical needs in nature-based carbon credit projects.