 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everybody. I hope you're doing well, wherever you are. Before I introduce myself, I do want to just let you know we have an interpretation service. This webinar is being interpreted into the Hasa, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. It's a little globe icon at the lower part of your Zoom window, so you can select the language that it's being interpreted into there. My name is Kitant Joshi. I'm a senior associate in the National Task Force at the Global Strategic Communications Council, or GSCC. Very warm welcome to you all to this webinar on when carbon markets go wrong, how to ensure access to remedy the land tenure violations. This is the fourth webinar, part of a series on advancing land-based investment governments of land-based investments, and it focuses on governance of land-based investments, global south. This series explores practical strategies and approaches adopted by rights defenders and practitioners to address common challenges surrounding these investments. Today's webinar explores what access to remedy might look like for communities in the global carbon market system. We're going to be focusing on issues of land and resources tenure, and we're going to hear from communities impacted by carbon markets and experts in grievance mechanism design, which is going to be very, very interesting. I'm looking forward to that, and we also aim for this discussion to offer some very critical input into the proposed grievance mechanism for markets established under Article 6 of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. I'm sure everybody remembers at COP28 last year, all of the debates and all of the news around Article 6, so this is going to be really very, very interesting. I think what we've seen over the past sort of two or three years is a mix of news on carbon markets. We've seen them continue to grow even in recent months. Volumes have been increasing, but what we're also finding is that the projections of a very large amount of sort of change and destabilization, I guess you could call it, in different systems of carbon markets around the world, that's becoming more and more prominent too. And so the much bigger piece of context as well is climate solutions all around the world are growing up. They're moving hopefully past a period of hyper-focusing on mitigation in early stages and beginning to consider issues of impacts and communities, and most importantly of all, of the way justice can be preserved in a fast transition. I think this is something we've seen other areas like renewables, electric vehicles, in mining and transition minerals. And of course, in carbon markets, this is a huge, huge issue. I just want to give you a few logistical notes before we continue as well. This webinar is being streamed live on multiple platforms. We have live tweeting as well. This is occurring from the LAN portal, Twitter account. The hashtag is hashtag align, A-L-I-G-N. And there's a social media kit as well, which I think will be shared in the chat. And if you have any questions, normal deal is the Q&A button on the bottom of the webinar screen. Please use that. And we're going to get to those later on the webinar at the top of the hour. I should also add this today's session is being recorded. So you'll get a link to the video afterwards. And there will also be an article with key messages on the LAN portal website. So I'm going to introduce the speakers. So I'm joined by a really terrific panel today. I'm very, very interested to hear everything they've got to say. Really, really great panel. The first speaker is Immaculata Casemero. She's an Indigenous woman who belongs to the Waipechan Nation in Guyana. She works as a communications officer at South Rupununi District Council. And she's the co-founder of the Waipechan Whitsi Women's Movement, which is WWWM. So looking forward to hearing from her. Eileen Wakesho is the director of the Community Land Protection Program at NMARTI. She's an expert in women's land rights and land and natural resource governance. Prior to joining NMARTI, Eileen served as the women's land rights advisor excuse me, advisor for Oxfam International. Welcome Eileen. Nicholas Galazza Sanchez is an affiliate researcher at the Marin Institute of New York University and an international consultant on sustainable development and urban development. Until recently, Nicholas was actually vice minister for environment in his country of Columbia. So he was in charge of climate policy, including regulations on carbon markets. I think that's going to be a really good position to provide some insights for us. Jonathan is here as well. Welcome Jonathan, policy expert on global carbon markets with Carbon Markets Watch. And they're an advocacy NGO based in Brussels. Jonathan focuses on carbon credits and compliance in the voluntary carbon market. And also Article 6 in the Paris Climate Agreement. I've watched a few of Carbon Market Watch's videos on their website and social media. They really explain all this Article 6 stuff quite well. So I highly recommend that if you're a little bit confused like I am. Stephanie Amwaku is a senior policy associate in the Accountability Council. She engages in efforts to protect human and environmental rights in international finance projects. Again, very, very relevant to this issue. Stephanie has extensive experience in international human rights advocacy around the world. So I'm actually going to get right into it. So Eileen, I'm going to start with you. Can you describe some of the community work that you've done and their experience with carbon markets projects? Thank you. Thanks, Ketan and good afternoon everyone. I hope my voice is clear for everyone. Okay, great. So Namati works with largely Indigenous and local communities in Kenya, most of whom practice pastoralism as a form of livelihood. And I think for me the best way to kind of define or describe the experience of communities that we've worked and continue to work with as far as carbon markets is concerned is to share a story of Mama Sofia. Mama Sofia comes from a community in Likipia and because a lot of the work that Namati does in Kenya is focused on supporting communities to secure the tenorites with a strong focus on strengthening local land governance because that's at the heart of ensuring that communities are in a good place to be able to negotiate with external parties. And so in one of the meetings Mama Sofia is elected in the Community Land Management Committee which is a government structure within the community provided under the Community Land Act. And so Mama Sofia says, you know we've experienced the worst drought we've seen in many years and for those that have interacted with the region you appreciate that the last two years Kenya and most of the countries in the region have experienced the worst drought seen in many years. And this is how Mama Sofia defines the cause of the drought that they've seen in their community but also across the country. And she says, you know we've been receiving moneys 36 Mekanian shillings to be precise and this money is moneys from the cell of our air and so they are people that are taking our air and going with it to countries largely abroad and as we take our air the result is extended drought so we've lost our animals, our cows, god ship and many other animals. And we also feel that it's becoming very difficult for us to breathe because people are taking our air and our worry now is that they will get to a place where we'll have nothing to breathe because all the air is taken. Now even though Mama Sofia's explanation of really what is carbon markets, you know, later on we've got to understand that's what she's trying to explain. Her explanation would sound ridiculous but highlights the complexity of carbon markets and the ecosystem for communities that have a front seat in some of these projects. Now Mama Sofia and her community are part of one of the largest carbon markets project in the world, not just in Kenya. It covers about 2.2 million acres of land which is about 4.4 million acres of land. And yet even though the project started in 2012 or was conceptualized in 2012 this conversation was happening in 2023 many years down the line and Mama Sofia couldn't really clarify what exactly this project is about. And that started a journey for Mama Sofia and her community with other communities about 27 of them to try and understand what this project is about but also find a space to be able to have meaningful engagement with the project. Now if you look at FPEC there's an I that comes before C and the essence of the I is informed and so for Mama Sofia's community and other communities for them to be able to give consent which is the last C in FPEC they definitely needed to have some information. And Mama Sofia together with the other 27 communities started a journey to draft a request for documents on the project and among the documents they asked for was the project implementation agreement. Now as I said the project started was conceptualized in 2012 and this is 2023 and Mama Sofia who's a community leader and other community leaders specifically the community and management committees had never seen this project implementation document and after a number of letters I think they did write three letters that were signed by the 27 communities across that landscape to the project proponent they for the first time in October of last year got hold of the project implementation agreement. Now that started a journey for Mama Sofia to first understand what the carbon market project is about but also understand and demand for some key things that she thinks are important for her and her community and the other communities. I'll pause there and I'll talk more about the project and the continuous engagement the community has had. Thanks Kevin. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I mean you know transparency and information has really just been central to so many of those articles that we've seen coming out last year around a large variety of projects not just in Africa but like many other parts of the world too like it's quite astonishing. So thank you for those insights. Immaculata, I think you've joined. I want to pose the same question to you. So can you tell us about the community you work with and in particular tell us about your experience with carbon market projects? Immaculata, please go for it. Hello, good morning. I'm Anu Nao. I'm joining you from the Wapchan Territory in Guyana and thanks for having me here today. Can you hear me? Yes. Are you hearing me? Yeah, sounds good. Thank you. Okay, well I work with the Southrop District Council which is the representative of 21 communities in southern Rupununi, Guyana. And as the Wapchan people we have a long struggle to have legal recognition of our territory especially our customary land rights and we have been working with the communities over the years to see how we can secure land tenure. And as the Wapchan people we had an experience with the carbon markets which is something relatively new to us as indigenous peoples in Guyana. And one of the experiences that we have faced as well as the first speaker says first panelist has said is that our rights to free prior and informed consent was violated because there were no consultations being done on the ground at the community level as it relates to carbon markets. So in December of 2022 the carbon markets Guyana had placed carbon markets has sold credits on the carbon market and that was an issue that we have here in Guyana because that is something that we have not really been able to know about. We have been following as the organization we have been following via social media, via news what is happening at the global level what is happening at the national level. So this was a very concerning for us because we have been struggling to have long tenure security for since Guyana became independent and there were no inputs into the policy which is the low carbon development strategy that was developed by Guyana as part of their national determined contributions and we having not an input into that is into a technical document is also a concern because our people on the ground speak a different language as well which is the Wapichan language. So we had that concern and which we try to issue statements we worked with different people trying to realize and to understand what is really happening at the global level. So this is what I have to share with you today as it relates to carbon markets from the ground level I speak more for at the grassroots level because we work with communities that are in our territory and we try to bring information to them so that they can understand what is happening at the national and global level when it comes to carbon markets. Great thank you Immaculata it's not an unusual thing to see technical language become a sort of barrier for access right you know I've seen this in many contexts where it's sometimes it's not even really a technical issue it just gets presented in a very inaccessible technical language sometimes even to discourage participation so great thank you for those comments Eileen I'm going to go back to you in terms of navigating access to remedy what challenges did you face and I'm sort of asking particularly around the context of access to information and also understanding the rules Thanks Keitan so once Mama Sofia's community came together the other communities about 27 communities across that landscape and this was the first time that they've come together to be able to understand the project and then agree on what are some of the key issues and demands for the project now I mentioned the first hurdle was they never had access to the project implementation agreement which is then the agreement that would set out you know what the project is about what benefits accrued to them and so on and so forth and so the first demand that they I mean the first thing they did is they came together and asked and wrote a letter to the project component with four key asks one of the asks was around just accountability and transparency so they demanded for a copy of the project implementation agreement and then the second one that they asked for was meaningful engagement with the leadership so what happened for this particular project is as I mentioned we have the community land management committees that are elected leaders and then for the project the structure that they used was a parallel structure which is the conservation body and so a lot of the communications was done with the conservancy boards and not the elected community land management committees as is replied in the community land act and so they asked that going forward that the project proponent should engage the elected community land management committees and under still the transparency and accountability they asked was can we get a sense of what is the total gross revenue since the credits verified so which means from I think the first bunch was ending on 2016 how much gross revenue has been received with the acknowledgement that there's gross revenue but then the project does in car costs but let us know what is the total gross revenue and then let us know also what are other costs of the project and so once the communities I think they had to do like two three letters which is like just being able to mobilize those communities across such huge landscape communities coming together time intense resource intense and so on and so forth but then the communities are really committed to be able to do this because so far in their own explanation is they've been receiving some resources that have been helpful but then they want to know what is the total share so that they can be able to get a sense of what is coming to them and so once they had the project implementation agreement which was really helpful that the project the project proponent did share the agreement after a number of you know email requests from the community then the community looked at what is in that document and started a journey of understanding now under just the complexity of being able to access information and knowing the channels of seeking remedy the project implementation I mean the project proponent does have a grievance mechanism but they you know they've indicated that from 2012 to date that there's never been filed any complain on the projects because nobody knows communities do not know about the mechanisms themselves and then beyond just the project proponent the verify in this case Vera does have you know does seek for public comments and opinions at different stages of the project you know before the the credits are verified yeah the project inception for the credits are verified but still I think until last year there were only three comments and most of them came from organizations because equally communities have never known about this grievance mechanisms but throughout this journey communities have started to understand about some options that exist for them and are in active engagement with the project proponent with the hope that among their demands so that at least they got the project implementation document they are still asking for details over gross revenue to be able to get a sense of whether the benefit sharing agreement is just is fair to them and and all the communities in the under the project yeah fascinating I mean I used to work in renewable energy back in the day and we had us we had very similar issues around like transparency and fairness when it came to benefit sharing for these things and I think people often didn't realize that they had forms of redress simply because information wasn't transferred it was not a good situation okay great thank you thank you for the comments Immaculata I might go back to you that's okay I'm curious in navigating access to remedy do you can you get information and are there rules centered around that Immaculata do you want to comment okay well first when the the conversation about carbon markets it was circulating around you're seeing what is happening on the in the media our leaders some of our leaders travel to the capital city so they can have conversations and speak with the officials from the climate change office so they can understand more what is really happening they had requested that these officers visit our communities so they can so they can inform on proper have proper consultations in the communities the leaders even invited them to one of our our assemblies where all the representatives from the 21 communities gather and it was introductory meeting where you're now being introduced to the low carbon development strategy 20-30 you are being told about a little bit about carbon credits and so on so we have tried from the very beginning you know to to try and speak with the government to try and reach out so we can we even offered from the from the district level to to assist the climate change office in carrying out these consultations in our own language that is something we have tried to do so you know the whatever is carbon markets can be clear our people can be can understand what is really happening but then this was never done so everything went ahead we saw the news again that carbon credits are being sold and we from the district level we had tried to to issue a statement and from the SRDC assembly which all 21 communities are involved you have women men elder representative leaders community leaders they would gather so at that meeting they all went to look at what really happened the communities had requested that as the organization that we we do something on carbon credits on carbon markets so our people can understand so what had happened is that through the organization from our at our own level we carried out carbon market workshops in 18 communities 17 sorry 17 communities so our people can understand what is carbon what is carbon markets what is an offset and all of these things we tried to do we have a team a paralegal team in our organization so that that group or that team was tasked to carry out these workshops other than that I would say that this is this is the only thing that we have done from the community level as our as our own I would say self-determined action that we took upon ourselves and it was very interesting because workshops in the communities where you're teaching people about the carbon market about carbon credit what is the carbon offset in a language that they can understand and they are say they said then oh you know what we understand that carbon market is about money and that is all what we're being told the advantages of a carbon market but what about the disadvantages of a carbon market so then we realized that our people really didn't understand and when they learned what is the carbon market what is the carbon credit we understand as indigenous people they they forest the our rivers our ecosystems are very important and we know it is life given so after that we we ask questions and say what is it you think can work for indigenous people and they're the majority all the community said if we are supposed to go into carbon market then we need to be properly informed is the first thing and our land rights need to be respected there should be free prior informed consent before any anything anything that has been sold from our lands and we need to have legal ownership we need our land titles and we don't want to be selling to polluters so these are some of the conditions that the people had said you know after we took it up on ourselves to do that but other than that we have never had no kind of community level consultation to really find ways of how we can remedy this situation when it comes you know to looking at ways and making sure that the information and understanding the rules of carbon market is there so we did that from the organization level within our communities okay great wow thank you that's a it seems like very bottom up grassroots effort I think in that context of you having to do that yourself I think it's it's actually a nice sort of opportunity to switch to the next section which is the other side which is national governments role before I do that I just quickly mentioned how many participants do we have now 469 thank you everybody for joining this is a big webinar and it's really nice to see you all here I really appreciate it and thank you for all the comments letting us know where you're from it's nice it's really nice to see such a strong diversity particularly you know from all of the different organizations and regions of the world so thank you and I'm going to move on to we're going to talk about the national governments role in this issue and in addressing remedy Nicholas I'd love to hear from you I want to talk about in the case of Columbia how do you see national governments role in responding to these rapidly emerging new carbon markets and also how to help communities access remedy sure hello everyone it's really encouraging to see so much interested worldwide it's very nice to see people from all over the world on the specific issue that you raise I guess something that I've seen is how rapidly the the markets are growing and that imposes a challenge we were hearing in Maculata in the different aspects from the grassroots communities how that imposes a number of challenges but these challenges are also applying to to governments at the different levels I think that in essence federal governments or national governments should provide an enabling environment for everyone to exercise their rights and access and get the actual benefits that carbon credits or carbon markets should be deriving but as you as you can see developing the institutional arrangements ends up being rather complex in um sector or in a market specifically as as carbon markets what we saw many in many stances in Colombia where there were projects that had some sort of complain or in some cases you know alleged violations of rights to the community it was actually remarkably hard to see where the uh authority lied in different stances because in some cases you know it was uh a felony that was was what was alleged so the attorney's office was there is certainly related to an environmental issue so the ministry of the environment should be also involved but it it involved directly indigenous peoples so on that end the ministry of interior also had a saying and then uh the lack of a clear mandate to start doing the investigation to solve some of these claims or alleged claims was um particularly particularly complicated now one thing that we we need to bear in mind is the fact that that uh carbon credits didn't necessarily emerge only as a as a tradeable commodity but the goal of carbon credits have an additional layer with not only a an economic mandate but an environmental mandate mainly and also a social mandate and you would expect and oftentimes you do like from from from the experience that I've seen although there are challenges and mistakes and in some cases of uses largely there is a clear benefit directly to communities that you that you do do see and having kind of that three layer mandate for carbon credits makes it particularly challenging for governments to develop either rules that enable or actual institutions that could oversee and provide guarantees to communities and on that note something specific to the axis of remedy we were hearing Aileen and Immaculata how the technical language of the sector itself is already challenging even for someone speaking whichever language you know in the case of Colombia we speak Spanish but when we are or where where different stakeholders related to to carbon credits come to communities they would come speaking Spanish which is not the the language of communities and then that that also permeates and makes it I guess harder for communities to engage and to understand the different legal tools and mechanisms for access to remedy one final thing that I think is important to mention is that let's say the the institutions where carbon markets have derived from particularly UNFCCC have made an effort on drafting the the cancun safeguards particularly for red plus projects but again on the institutional side even though in different countries and that is the case of Colombia we have included specific mentions of on the need of the projects to comply the developing the cancun safeguards stills an issue in terms of what that actually means because the safeguards and of our general principles there is a call for countries to do a local interpretation and adaptation to its given regulatory framework and their communities and even though in Colombia we have included that in some laws the specific regulations and kind of landing that and putting that to what a clear mechanism to say you know checking basic boxes on what complies and what knows what does not comply is certainly something something challenging so I guess summarizing what I would say is that the speeds to which carbon markets have been developing have been cutting off guard or in some stances not necessarily with the capacity to address these specific issues land tenure is is something that is really really important as Immaculato was saying in Colombia fortunately that was sorted particularly for indigenous communities and and Afro-Colombian communities where tenure of their territories was granted back in the 80s but we see in Brazil in some other cases it was mentioned by Immaculato in in in Guyana that that is not sorted and that is definitely kind of an underlying issue and an enabling mechanism that that I think would allow for for or grant the basic or the basis for a larger and more sophisticated a legal and regulatory framework I think tenure is certainly paramount that should happen I mean we know that the local communities have been safeguarding the tropical forest of the world for centuries in some cases millennia I think there there needs to be an important push to move to move on that on that direction great thank you so much I mean it's you know regulation is coming up as a as a as a piece of context not just for carbon markets but for all sorts of corporate climate action around the world so I think this is an area of regulation that I think is maybe a little bit under discussed I guess in global climate discourse so it's really wonderful to be having this discussion and just keeping on the same theme on regulation Eileen I might I might just turn to you so obviously there are lots of new laws and policies around carbon markets emerging in your part of the world are there any opportunities or gaps in communities being able to access remedy and immaculata you feel for it feel free to comment as well sure they definitely are efforts to regulate carbon markets and Kenya has been trying to sort of lead the way by enacting a legal framework to provide for a mechanism for regulating the market and as you know last year Kenya hosted the Africa Climate Summit to kind of build a common settlement for Africa and what happened is just before the climate summit Kenya ensured that they enacted the you know the regulation which is ideally amended the Climate Act to make provisions for regulations now you know maybe I would start with the gaps and then come to some opportunities that exist within you know the I mean the framework as is of course gaps exist I think there's sort of a feel of kind of an emergency to be able to legislate or provide some legal framework the agency of course means that you know communities are left out in terms of providing feedback especially communities who have had you know real experience with engaging with the market are not able to provide that you know feedback and the feedback then informing the regulations the other one is you know it looks like it's everybody wants a share of the resources that come out of this market and so you'd find the national government wanting a share for Kenya that is a devolved you know a devolved has devolved systems of government the county government equally has a share and then of course communities who ideally are part of the project not necessarily beneficiaries they are you know key actors of ensuring that there's more absorption of carbon and and you know so you think of them more as stakeholders equally need you know need to be able to get a share of it and so if you think of it if everybody is to get something out of it you know that which remains could be smaller that then goes to communities and then in terms of like thinking through you know one last gap is a lot of these communities are grappling with Tenor insecurity and so you know I do not have any documentation to my land then I'm definitely not in in a good position to be able to push back negotiate in kind of an equal space and so you know the idea would have been that such projects prioritise securing Tenor rights for communities before then they you know roll out carbon offset projects but definitely we don't live in an ideal world but then looking you know being positive and looking at some of the opportunities I think for me one of the biggest opportunities is the power of people you know having seen for the first time 27 communities across this landscape come together and say we have many demands but these four are key to us you know let us have transparency of the project tell us how much is the total revenue that you're getting out of the project and how much you're giving us you know like they had such clear demands they put them down in writing collective signatures across the landscape to say this is not just about one community it's about all of us this is important for all of us and I see such great you know space for communities to kind of come together harness their voice and demand for the things that are important to them and then the current regulation in Kenya provides for like certain percentages and for land you know what they define as land-based projects the requirement is at least 40% and the word is the low users is at least which means there's space to go to go beyond the 40% and I experienced just looking at a number of the projects that are land based and what goes to communities at the end of the day it's way far less than 40% and so just having that you know set of at least gives communities space to be able to push beyond just the the 40% but I would say you know more and more just being able to create awareness I think the the space as is now there's a lot of people are asking questions and community leaders like Mama Sophia are moving from defining carbon credits to people taking our air and going with it to really understanding some important aspects of the market and getting space to be able to then make demands for accountability I also you know think that beyond just the internal legal mechanisms and frameworks there are spaces within as I mentioned just the verification borders that communities can go beyond just the project proponent in many cases if the project proponent is not cooperative there are spaces to be able to go beyond and demand for some form of accountability whether that at the end of the day results to you know fair benefit sharing is another thing I think communities communities that we are working with are not there yet but definitely this sounds like there's kind of some some light at the end of the tunnel but beyond that is just the deep end discourse so that people know that you cannot just run to consent without focusing on ensuring that there is information and on the hands of communities for them to be able to make informed decisions yeah yeah absolutely thank you Immaculata do you want to provide a short comment and then we better move on to the next section okay um for me I would just like to say that in Guyana there is no other than the low carbon development strategy the policy that governs carbon markets in Guyana there is no other no other Laura policy that we are aware of and there is nothing specific about carbon rights so we do not know who really owned the carbon because forests are an indigenous people's titled and customer lands but who who owns the carbon is a question that we we are asking and looking at the different laws that exist there is one that governs indigenous people in Guyana it's called the Amerindian Act and that in that also there are gaps needs to be in line with international standards and at present as indigenous people in Guyana we are trying to see how we can have that law that law the revised you know and we want to be part of the the policies that are being developed because often time policies policies laws are developed at the national level without without the input from indigenous peoples or people at the grassroots level all you know of is when laws are created there are new rules that exist so because of that it's a concern for indigenous people carbon markets are there now will that have restriction on our lands that we use traditionally for hunting fishing gathering etc so this is something that we are trying to work with and even work with the government to try and see how we can revise the Amerindian Act and you know that we can have our inputs and try and shape the law so that it works for us as indigenous peoples in Guyana so for me that is all I have to say thank you very much for this thing yeah thank you I think that's great that's actually a great point to move on to the next section which is kind of moving one level up from national regulation and into global frameworks of course we all remember the debates around COP 28 last year around Article 6 excuse me and then contain within that of course there are the grievance mechanisms in those texts so Nicholas I'd like to turn to you for a second I want to ask you about you've been part of the international declaration for fairness on carbon markets can you tell us about this initiative and why you thought it was necessary to move this debate forward sure you know often often times and I think in some cases without necessarily being entirely fair there is a cold kind of questioning broadly the integrity of carbon markets don't get me wrong there are certainly issues and there are certainly abuses but in my opinion at large the benefits having seen how that works when adequately implemented in communities outweigh those of the risk and again there is a call and a need for more regulation and all that stuff but once you hear and I was having a look at the comments everybody is talking about the need of transparency and integrity and we certainly we all can get behind that idea however one thing that we don't often hear is that in some cases the demands made for carbon markets and for for carbon projects are pretty significant so we're expecting that the carbon of course achieve the first issue which is protecting forests or generally speaking you know sequestering carbon depending on the type of project you do but we're talking about communities so certainly there's there is a focus for red plus projects but then we're asking for social benefits as well and we're asking every time more for additional types of co-benefits including in some cases access to education having a furnace with a a gender gap with biodiversity amongst other things so while we are demanding that from carbon projects we are still thinking that we should pay five dollars for credit let's say you know to give kind of a broad number and it turns out that protecting the forest and benefiting communities and building infrastructure and giving uh access to education to women just to kind of throw some example there examples there that costs more money than five dollars per ton and so one thing that we did when we were uh working when I was part of of the Colombian government is we got behind some governments from Latin America and West Africa in particular saying you know pointing out that point if you want transparency if you want integrity if you want social co-benefits there is a need for fairness in terms of compensation and I think communities in particular should be fairly compensated and I don't think the current prices reflect that a specific a specific issue so what we put out there was a call mainly from the global south to um to to call for more fair compensation and to bear in mind that if we want to protect the environment and to get large benefits to communities is not necessarily very fair to think that that's going to happen with low compensation that costs money and I think the project developers and a lot in many cases the companies behind the the projects should acknowledge that and we should necessarily push for for more fair and a higher compensation and of course to ensure that that higher compensation is getting directly to communities of course there is an institutional development that needs to happen but that was the spirit behind behind the call for fairness in carbon markets and I think is something that still hasn't necessarily be addressed you would expect that probably in the next co-discussions an issue of that sort is is is addressed in more more detail yeah that is an excellent point I it's um Jonathan I might bring you in here because it sort of relates to what to what Nicholas just said about the next cop so if you can just give us some context and I know you have to leave in about 11 minutes so I might spend a chunk of time pestering you if that's okay so first of all if you could just give us some some context if a community is trying to access a remedy within a global grievance mechanism what type of things are available to them and and sort of how does that relate to different types of markets like you can yeah so the short answer is that it depends on the carbon market project and the context of that because at heart carbon markets are fragmented so you have sort of the voluntary carbon market as it's broadly referred to where you have private standards so vera gold standard American carbon registry climate action reserve that have their own sets of rules and requirements including on grievance mechanisms in some contexts in some countries for instance voluntary carbon markets can be part of a compliance system so in Colombia or others you know there might be a carbon tax where part of the tax can be offset with credits so there's a mix of different kind of layers in which these markets can overlap if it's in a compliance system or not then you also have systems at the UN level so in Article 6 in particular and the clean development mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol which I can come to those doing a little bit but so the short answer is that there is no really single global regulatory oversight and so there's no one global grievance mechanism so on the voluntary market which is where most credits are issued today each standard has its own rules and in principle all standards should have a mechanism but there are some that don't the global carbon council for instance is one that doesn't have a grievance mechanism and just to note also that in the absence of grievance mechanisms there can still sometimes be state-based judicial remedies or going through court systems although that can be complex of course or non-judicial mechanisms so whether there's a mediation system or something of that nature so I mean to summarize a bit I mean in a sense grievance mechanisms are not technically mandatory in all you know carbon markets despite the fact that they're extremely necessary and important in case issues can arise and you know as we've heard today obviously when issues do arise there needs to be a right to redress that needs to be upheld and just to give an example so under the clean development mechanism under the Kyoto protocol there was never a grievance mechanism one was never set up and this led to a lot of problems because you know there were projects that were accused of human rights abuses and land tenure violations but those who were impacted did not have a formal way in which to flag their grievances and that was obviously a significant issue and you know since the CDM has essentially kind of you know diminished importance over time most of the market today is made up by voluntary carbon market standards and like I said there are different rules there so last year we had commissioned a study looking at assessing the grievance mechanisms on the voluntary markets according to different criteria including the UN's guiding principles on business and human rights and generally speaking the main findings was that for most BCM standards there were several shortcomings and many aspects to improve on so namely in terms of accessibility of the mechanism transparency around it and also independence of how the system actually functions so the main VCM standard is VARA which is issued by far the most credits and it's the main standard that certifies avoided deforestation projects so in this report last year it was found to have a limited grievance mechanism with several shortcomings at the time of publication so for example they charged a fee to file a grievance which is obviously exclusionary there was a lack of clarity on timelines for how grievances would be addressed and there was no grievance repository where you can see where you know how grievances have been resolved in the past when that information is public and there wasn't clarity in how the grievance was handled independently now since then they updated the grievance standard in December and they've taken on board some of the recommendations actually made in our report so now there's no more fee that's a good thing but of course definitely that should have been in place already for some time there's also better clarity on timelines but it's still not totally clear how the independence of the process will work and there are some other issues there and so generally speaking and there's more details in the report and I'll be very quick acting best practice tends to be outside of of carbon markets so the UN's Green Climate Fund has an independent redress mechanism which is actually found to have very key processes including having a proactive approach to engagement and awareness raising engaging with stakeholders having meetings and social media publications and also having a brochure that's translated in 14 languages and also they have a clear independent governance structure that's separate from staff from the Green Climate Fund Stephanie I'm going to come to you in a moment but I might just picture Jonathan's brain a little more just while we've got him I know he's got a head off in a few minutes so you know if you could just talk in that context particularly I'm very interested in what you just described around those sort of basically having to issue these reports and then get them to update and improve their processes but can you tell us a little bit about article six grievance mechanisms and also obviously considering the context of that whole process obviously they're going to be in a bit more of a draft stage can you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, sure so there are two carbon market mechanisms under the Paris Agreement there's article 6.2 which is a country to country system whereby countries can trade credits for another country to use towards its own climate targets and there's no overarching grievance mechanism in the system so countries could do it in a bilateral way or if they use a voluntary market standard they could resort to that one but there's no overarching system which is problematic in the 6.4 market mechanism which is what it's called this is kind of the replacement or the successor to the clean development mechanism from the Kyoto Protocol this is a centralized market mechanism that's overseen by a UN entity called the article 6.4 supervisory body they love having nice names and this sets the rules basically for this article 6.4 carbon market but a big difference with the clean development mechanism is that it will have a grievance mechanism but yeah it'll only cover projects under article 6.4 so not other ones more widely and the current status of this is essentially well first of all there's no projects or credits yet that exist under this market mechanism and the implementation is going to be delayed probably because partially because there was no agreement at last carbon article 6 and so there's unlikely to be any major huge project issuances until probably late 2025 or maybe early 2026 there's a chance that some CDM projects will transition but that depends on if countries will accept their transition and even there it's not clear how a grievance mechanism will apply to them because these are projects that did not have a grievance mechanism before so there's still a lack of clarity on how that will work but so essentially the supervisory body is working on a grievance mechanism currently that's in a draft phase and so they're actually they have regular meetings throughout the year their next one is in a few weeks from 26th of February to March 1st it's a public meeting all their documents that they discuss are uploaded beforehand for a one-week comments period so that means that actually as of this Monday the 12th of February until the 19th of February if they're on time we should see a new version of this grievance mechanism documents obviously one week is a very short time period but it's you know important to track that if those who can do it and then ultimately this grievance mechanism is supposed to be finalized by another meeting at the end of April but we have some concerns here because the latest draft that was circulated had a lot of shortcomings so for example they were considering applying a fee to file a grievance which could amount to as much as $2,500 U.S. dollars which is obviously extraordinarily exclusionary there are also certain limits on who can file grievance that were being considered you know in terms of criteria and as we heard before right there might be you know one land rights are not officially recognized that could be a complication obviously and it seems like filing grievance would have to be through a UN form that might only be in English so these are all again none of this is finalized yet so it's important to call for to raise the bar but there are really some concerning issues here also the fact that decisions from a grievance panel might not be binding so that would also be really a problem so in any case this mechanism is not ready in a draft stage to be finalized and I think part of the problem here is that the supervisory body hasn't really taken a proactive approach and consultation especially with indigenous peoples and local communities rights holders and other land rights experts regarding the design of its mechanism so it's really important I would stress for CSOs especially indigenous peoples and local communities and associations that might represent them to really reach out to the supervisory body they have an email which I can put in the chat to first of all let them know that the grievance mechanism as it stands is really not fit to be adopted in the next months that their approach needs to be reworked in a more consultative manner and that they really need to raise the bar because the problem is that if a poor grievance mechanism is established this is a market that might have a lot of projects in the coming years and decades even potentially so we really the bar would need to be high here and there are concerns that it might not be it needs to be it needs to be done right from the outset it seems and it seems like also quite a process over the next sort of in the short term months and years to get it right so thank you Jonathan you're free to go if you if you need to if you have a moment to stick around for the Q&A also very welcome so thank you thank you for your comments Stephanie I'd really like to bring you in and get your comments on on this issue you know we've heard we've heard about land violations and issues communities issues around the sharing of benefits and equity and fairness and I'm very curious to know what have you seen as the most effective practice necessary in these global grievance mechanisms can you talk a bit about that yes sure and just apologies that have a cold so I'm not the clearest and I'll also try to speak a little slower as the interpreters have requested so Accountability Council we're a global civil society organization we've supported over 60 communities to navigate grievance mechanism or independent accountability mechanism processes at development finance institutions and other institutions and then we also engage in policy advocacy to strengthen these mechanisms and conduct research on what complaint mechanisms complaints tell us so we've also specifically have worked with communities harmed by so-called green initiatives and so we understand that these projects that can aim to address things like climate change or other global crises may not always meet the mark as we've already heard I think there's some particularities to carbon markets and what an appropriate grievance mechanism would be for for them and so those mechanisms may be more bespoke but I think that there are some good practices to learn from the development finance institutions space and other spaces that could help stakeholders as they're trying to to craft these mechanisms and so the mechanism that we use typically have two functions compliance review to investigate if the the environmental and social human rights other policies that are supposed to apply to the project have been properly implemented and then the street resolution which brings parties together to try to find a mutually agreeable solution and at accountability council we're looking at mechanisms we're evaluating them to see if they're meeting at a minimum the UN guiding principles for business and human rights their effectiveness criteria for non-judicial grievance mechanisms this includes legitimacy accessibility predictability equitability rights compatibility being a source of continuous learning and transparency so what does this mean in practice that won't go through all of those criterias but as we've already heard from Immaculata and Eileen that accessibility is a huge issue so much of the time we see that communities do not even know who's behind a project or an initiative and that there's a grievance mechanism available and so that's a key a key thing that grievance mechanisms and the institutions that house them need to address but beyond knowing that a mechanism is available we also believe that communities shouldn't have to encounter burdensome requirements for filing complaints like proving exactly which environmental and social standard was violated when the harm was caused sometimes we see that even though these are non-judicial bodies some mechanisms have very high burdens of proof for an initial entry into the process which we think is unfair throughout the process communities should have a clear understanding about what the process should be and should receive regular updates we don't want this to be like a black box where you file a complaint and then you don't hear anything that and importantly what we've seen is that mechanisms should also be in tune attuned to power and balances and work to address them and they should also understand the challenges that communities face to effectively engage in these processes just to give you an example we supported Haitian farmers who were displaced from their farmland by a project financed by the Inter-American Development Bank it was an industrial park project in the northeast of Haiti and we supported these communities to go through a dispute resolution process with the Haitian government and the Inter-American Development Bank and what we found from that process is that the accountability mechanism did a good job of ensuring that the farmers could engage in the process in their own language so meaning Haitian Creole and not French so they're you know in Haiti there's a perception that everyone speaks French but the mechanism understood that Haitian Creole was the language that needed to to be used it also covered transportation expenses for community members to participate in the meetings so it's really actually shocking to hear that some of the proposed mechanisms are requiring complainants to pay to complain when actually it should be the other way around there should be measures to facilitate access and then also during COVID when there was restrictions on meeting in person and other things the mechanism took steps to facilitate participation including through teleconferences and other measures another issue is that communities should feel safe to raise these complaints and shrinking civic space is a big issue and we've seen communities face retaliation for speaking out so mechanisms grievance mechanisms should have protocols of confidentiality on protecting information but then also the institution the carbon markets themselves should have policies on on pushing back against any threats of retaliation by private influencers and other actors and then importantly remedy is should be at the key part of these processes is not enough to confirm that harm has happened there has to be remedy and so institutions should ensure that resources are available to facilitate remediation and accountability council we have worked with several civil society partners on a guide to effective accountability mechanism policies again their focus more for the development finance space and and development space but I think that there are lessons that can be used by other actors as well so I'll drop that link in the chat great thank you we're going to get to the question and answer session in a moment and I've been watching the participant numbers through the webinar and they've stayed pretty much steady for the whole time which I think is a real testament to all of your comments panelists so thank you Stephanie I want to ask you one more question on this that are there any unique concerns about applying this system to carbon markets in particular thinking about information and transparency and also if we don't have a system like this in place like what are the risks you know are there risks to industries or sectors when these grievance mechanisms don't really work I wonder if you can comment on that yeah so I think one of the big challenges that has already been surfaced is the issue of what are these carbon markets who's behind them maybe communities are interacting with a project at the local level but they're not aware of who's behind the initiatives and then also if a grievance mechanism process would be available so in that context there needs to be even more pushes for disclosure and transparency what we've recommended in the development finance space is that there be required disclosure of grievance grievance mechanism by project implementers and that this not be a one-time thing so that's one thing that can can be translated perhaps another thing that we also recommend is that and Eileen brought this up is that if communities do not know that the mechanisms there that doesn't mean that something's not happening that needs to be addressed and so some of the accountability mechanisms that we use have the ability to self-initiate an investigation and so that they can if they have you know kind of credible news that something may be happening with the project look into that themselves and that's a way to also reach out to affected community members and not relying on them to have to bring that issue so what happens when these grievance mechanisms fail as we can all imagine a check the box mechanism is worthless and only an effective mechanism that is predictable and provides fair remedies will will adequately govern these markets and so if they fail first we see harm to communities in the environment and that's the most important thing but then also the climate goals that these current markets are trying to achieve and I know that you know many would disagree if that's the the right approach to the climate crisis but those are undermined so how do you know if these initiatives are going off track if you do not hear from those who are most affected affected and negative impacts remain on surface and then you know this leads to greenwashing which we've already seen a lot of and so grievance mechanisms in address in addition to addressing local issues can really help stakeholders understand if carbon markets are the way to go to address the climate crisis and then also for those who are buying carbon credits there are reputational risk if the carbon credits are tied to harm which we've seen various news reports about so there's a lot of stake to getting this this right there is it's there is you know getting it wrong has impacts that flow through in many many different directions right so yeah fantastic thank you thank you so much for the comments Stephanie and everybody else you know this has been a really great dialogue well I I really do want to get to these questions because they're they're a bunch of really really good ones and what I'm going to do is for most of these I'm just going to sort of put them out please panelists unmute yourself jump in if you both jump in at the same time I'll let you figure it out you know who wants to answer the question but there's some really good ones and if if you're all too shy I'll pick someone and nominate to answer the question so the first question the first question we've got here comes from Raphael and it's a really interesting one essentially and apologies to the people who ask these questions that will paraphrase them slightly just in the interest of time we've got about 19 minutes left in our time slot so the question is do we have any good practices from anywhere regarding carbon trading and the and the sort of features cited are community rights are protected communities consulted they're involved from the outset basically are there any best case examples where this has gone right and I think that's going to be a tough question but I'm curious to know if anybody can think of any examples not even not even ones that fit all those goals but they're sort of getting there on the right direction does anybody have anything that comes to mind Nicholas did you did you have any can you think of an example of a project that fits along these lines I mean there are numerous projects that I visited and that I am aware of that managed to remarkably successfully engage the communities and to ensure that the benefits and the proceeds go to benefit the community there is one particularly in the Colombian Pacific called by Amalaga where communities and this is an Afro-Colombian community so communities traditionally lived of what they called corteria and I guess what that translates what that translates is cutting wood you know but it was not doing at an industrial scale so it was kind of a somewhat it incorporated a kind of sustainability practice although kind of in the span of maybe a century you can you can see the impact of degradation on those specific ecosystems but at the core of the activities of this community as part of the culture it was cutting wood and this project managed to shift the narrative to show that we're living in a different world that climate is changing and that certainly it is better for them for the community for the health of the ecosystem and for the well-being of the community to dedicate those efforts to preservation of those efforts and so that that project I think was particularly successful I met with other leaders that were acknowledging that thanks to adequately deployed projects of carbon markets they managed to survive COVID others because you know these are particularly communities located in remote areas and so the capacity of the state is was limited to reach out with different the health necessary and they claim that you know the steady inflow of cash from the carbon credits allowed them to to endure this very difficult time that was for everyone around the world and in some other cases one claim that I really liked again thinking about how they they went well in the cases that the project was built with the community that there is an agreement on how the resources are used I once heard an indigenous leader saying that thanks to carbon markets we they were finally experiencing adequate decentralization you know this this transition from the heavily centralized governments to more autonomous communities they they claim they claim that and in something related because I was seeing a question talking about age human rights abuses and how the inclusion of of articles or a specific content on bills to protect and safeguard community so again I was I was mentioning before that Colombia is a a bit of a an specific place because the land tenure for indigenous and local and indigenous and Afro-colonial communities was sorted some 30 years ago we do know that that is not the case in many in many places and so that certainly helps a lot but at the same time there is right now a suit that is being addressed by the constitution the supreme court here in Colombia because as I was mentioning on my opening statement the challenges of institutional development from the state have not allowed in some cases where there are problems to to address specific issues where the deals were not fair or or things of this nature and we are expecting the the supreme court of Colombia constitutional court we call it to provide some guidelines for institutional development we created we passed a climate action bill and we created a commission of experts worldwide to give recommendations for institutional development in Colombia and that one of the issues that we specifically asked was to include a mechanism for guarantees to communities because we at least I mean the government I work with we were firmly firm believers on the benefits of the markets about we were also firm believers that this was a mechanism that should benefit communities and of course we firmly believed that anyone taking advantage of communities and not sharing fairly the proceeds of the projects should be prosecuted and punished but that's what I would have yeah great thank you thank you yeah that's that's really good to hear I mean so I'll just move on to the next question Immaculata there's a question here for you from Alexandra and she says thank you so much for sharing your experience and expertise and she's asking if you or your community would consider sharing the learning tools that you're using to raise awareness at the community level on the technical aspects of carbon markets I think that's a really interesting question because that's you know a few of you mentioned how the technicality and information can actually become a bit of a barrier Immaculata are you able to comment on that question a bit she was having some connection problems earlier so she may not be there does anyone else want to comment on that element of it oh no she's back hi Immaculata hi can you just go that question over please of course so the question uh they they said thank you for sharing your experience and expertise this is from Alexandra and she's asking if you or your community would consider sharing the learning tools that you're using to raise awareness at the community level for any of the technical aspects of carbon markets um okay um yes I will I will have to consult with my my leaders and others within the organization to share that but there is a document that was developed by the Forest Peoples Program and the Global Justice Clinic that is available online I can get that so she can learn because that clearly should how communities can understand the carbon market um what it is on all of that in in that document because they they used what we had used to develop that document so I can share that link maybe and you can get that link to her I do not have it at present but I can get that for you that's fine thank you so much um I think that I think that's much appreciated so just moving on to the next question this is a really interesting one and it relates to some news that occurred sort of spread out over the last border last year but around COP there was a lot of these news articles Blue Carbon is an organization that has purchased this is a United Arab Emirates company and they've purchased a very large amount of land in Liberia, Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe the question comes from Laura and basically the question is how do grievance mechanisms interrelate with these very large purchases from an organization like Blue Carbon it's an interesting question because of course you know this is a lot of purchases all in one go what would be grievance mechanisms for people involved in those very large you know a sequence of and very significant purchases does anyone want to volunteer to answer that question Eileen can I can I pass to you for this one sure interesting I mean there has been large carbon markets projects being set up across you know in some cases across different countries I know one here in Kenya but also in Tanzania and I'll relate that because I mean you're trying to answer that question I think there was a comment or a question from someone in the chat who says you know both like verification certification organizations like Vera do have what you know is thumbed as robust epic processes yet still it looks like epic and also grievance mechanism processes but it looks like still there is a lot of lack of awareness among communities in terms of the grievance mechanisms but also in ensuring that epic is truly meaningful or is done to a standard that makes sense to communities themselves and so I would think in terms of leveraging you know the existing mechanisms especially for such large projects where and Stephanie did mention a number of things that are at stake including the reputation of some of these organizations the project that I was talking about for instance has you know even the companies that buy the credits published and so I imagine in terms of like reaching trying to get redress using the existing mechanisms and of course those mechanisms have to be made known to communities and maybe with support of you know organizations that work with those communities and then communities can take advantage of those grievance mechanisms and in cases where are the same project is across different countries it might also make sense for some cross you know you know some sense of kind of coming together beyond just the boundaries of countries like we we we have like in the case of the project that I was talking about communities came together across you know the whole landscape so you're talking about you know over 27 communities which is like across really vast trench lands and so I think there's fine constantly coming together and so looking at how to be able to hold such companies across different countries and using the different mechanisms for the certification bodies but also for the those that are buying the credits you know the the Microsofts the you know the first books and so on and the Netflix just being able to see who's buying those credits and being able to see you know issues around are they okay with projects that are piling without necessarily upholding like basic principles around F peak you know that that caused human rights violations so I think maybe looking at sort of a multi approach that looks at different mechanisms and looking at how to be able to leverage on them across the different countries and projects yeah fantastic I mean it's you know those those a flurry of them right like all in quick succession so yeah I can imagine that's a that's a prominent question people may have had there's a really interesting question here from Jake Willis and I'm going to read out a few bits of it so Jake is asking about high integrity carbon markets which are now appearing in the space so do these provide stronger safeguards to communities in terms of benefit sharing and remedy to national and subnational governments have the capacity to monitor compliance with safeguards and this is an interesting part of the question can it actually keep pace with the carbon market as it's as it's growing in its current state I wonder Stephanie do you want to do you want to comment on that at all yeah I may pass on that because I'm not as familiar with carbon markets space sure any other but maybe I guess I would just add like any principle that we would see is that if you're calling yourself a higher standard market you have to have some way to keep yourself accountable to that so that's why I give you some mechanisms that are all the more important of course yeah great and Nicholas or Eileen do you want to say anything on that issue and you say the question again you got good choppy yeah sure sorry the so the question relates to high integrity carbon markets which is essentially these new forms of carbon offsets that sort of are branded or labeled with a sort of high integrity stamp the Voluntary Carbon Markets Initiative is a good recent example but they sort of offered as a higher guarantee of effectiveness and the question is basically how does that relate to what we've been discussing which is grievance mechanisms and remedy and beneficiary do you have any thoughts about how well those new projects are doing addressing these issues we're talking about today yeah I mean there is there there are a couple I know there was like some talk about blue carbon recently and it has been mentioned and the reason I mentioned it is because the first blue carbon project I think credited by Vera was successfully implemented here in Colombia and is I think branded here is known as they at the crown jewel is you know a project that was heavily vetted and and that's I think recently Apple mentioned during the recent product launch that they were committed to offsetting the the carbon footprint and they mentioned one of the projects that they were investing was was this specific project in Colombia that is actually paying roughly 30 dollars per ton which is significantly higher than what you normally see particularly for for the international period price on red and red plus projects and and I mean that's I would gather a market reply on on those other issues when we've seen that communities have not been receiving the the projects of the projects and in principle I think that is positive one issue though and you know what that that I would say is that it shouldn't be an exclusionary mechanism or that shouldn't then impose boundaries to communities to then get kind of the actual branding because of course the additional vetting that this this this type of things need then cannot become or should not become an obstacle for communities because I mean on my experience the work done by communities is really grade A in terms of preservation and I think that that should be an accessible mechanism to communities and not a mechanism kind of of only an elite than a specific group of people and I think we should we should careful and then make it accessible that's that's kind of my thinking absolutely thank you look I'm going to cram one more question in and it's a quick one because we we only have a couple of minutes left and it's sort of a yes or no question but I find it very very interesting so this question comes from Anthony Marzan and Anthony is asking do we know of a case of a registered carbon credit project in the voluntary carbon market that was actually revoked because of rights violations committed against the community I don't know the answer but I'm curious if anybody does have an example if you can if you can discuss what happened does doesn't do any examples come to mind um I think for this one the project wasn't necessarily revoked but I know of two here in Kenya that were put on post to be reviewed and after the review the project continued and I know I've seen comments you know asking whether you know when a certification body poses a project to review how robust the review process is to guarantee that indeed you know they are violations or not and so for both cases the project was not discontinued but it was posed for a period of time and then continued based on complaints filed on the project that is yep that is very very interesting great okay look I'm going to wrap it up thank you so much to all of the panelists thank you a lot for joining today there's a there's a survey linked in the in the chat so Neil is Neil has posted that in the chat please fill that out thank you so much to the panelists this has been really really enriching and interesting I very much appreciate your time and of course to all of the attendees thank you someone in the comments earlier gave the panelists a hug so I think we can probably send that back to the audience big hug to the audience thank you for thank you for joining really appreciate it and thank you everybody goodbye