Leading the Charge for Genuine Community Engagement in Climate Action at ICR24 

With Earth Day just around the corner, we at OneNature are thrilled to have been invited to present at the third Annual Innovations in Climate Resilience Conference (ICR24) from April 22 to 24, 2024, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. This conference, hosted by Battelle and the Wilson Center, bridges the gap between innovative climate solutions and policy action.

In my upcoming presentation, “Ensuring Community Benefit in Carbon Offset Schemes,” I will address the challenge of establishing genuine community support for carbon offset projects amidst widespread skepticism regarding their legitimacy and impact. Drawing attention to the pressing need for projects to go beyond merely obtaining Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), this presentation will emphasize the critical role of ongoing community engagement and the development of lasting relationships to ensure that carbon credit schemes are both beneficial and sustainable. By introducing a data-driven approach for comprehensively assessing community well-being, OneNature advocates using measurable benchmarks and metrics to guide project proponents in co-creating transformational solutions with communities. This methodology promises enhanced monitoring and evaluation of project impacts and serves as a foundation for certification systems to require thorough, bottom-up assessments of progress toward achieving social goals. This presentation will underscore the importance of embedding community-centered frameworks in the execution of nature-based carbon credit projects to maximize their potential for positive, equitable, and sustainable impact.

You can read more about this approach in our commentary published by Mongabay in January.

I would love to connect with you at the conference! Our session is scheduled for April 24, at 9:15 AM – 10:00 AM.

Click here to find out more about the conference and to register. Hope to see some of you there! 

Image by NOAA via Unsplash