What is high integrity carbon? Forest carbon programmes and conditions for success
Key messages
- With growing interest in ‘high integrity’ carbon, different definitions have been put forward, but few give social integrity as much attention as environmental integrity.
- Similar commitments should be made towards social integrity, including financial investments; specific guidelines, methods, tools, and capacities required to make it achievable; and monitoring and evaluation systems.
- Carbon programmes committed to high integrity must consider five key aspects relevant to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs) – free, prior, and informed consent, gender equality, land and resource rights, benefit sharing, and grievance mechanisms and safeguard compliance.
- Fundamentally, a shift is needed from ‘safeguarding’ to supporting IPs and LCs interested in participating in carbon actions, enabling their communities and organizations to be protagonists of their own self-determined well-being agendas.
- Although favoured by high integrity approaches, jurisdictional programmes are burdened by the historical relationships between governments and IPs and LCs: failing to place equal importance on social and environmental integrity may reify power imbalances and inequalities.
- The implementation of these recommendations will be challenged by governments treating jurisdictional programmes as if they were projects; programmes need to be fully integrated into jurisdictional governance.
Download :
This works is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors
Sarmiento Barletti, J.P.,Larson, A.M.,Naime, J.
Publication year
2025
