Sub-theme 9. Conservation, environmental justice and the commons
Panel 9.6.
Promise of Commons - Community stewardship and Carbon Markets
There is skepticism about Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) markets, carbon credit markets included, and their utility in delivering benefits to local communities.
Needed is greater knowledge by all parties (communities, investors, civil society) on the value (environmentally, socially and economically) and feasibility (institutionally and operationally) of PES and carbon markets in fostering better ecological and social outcomes.
Communities that have invested in conservation are realizing benefits already, like water supplies, healthier soils, grazing, agricultural productivity, family food security and income. Community members are aware of these ‘local’ benefits, but likely less aware of how their actions, practices and investments have contributed to better environmental outcomes globally. The tenurial systems and laws also seldom recognise the benefits of community conservation flowing out to the global good.
This begs the question: How can communities be compensated more fully for the material environmental gains resulting from those investments?
The panel will deliberate on
- Why stewardship is central to success of conservation including PES programs?
- How is it possible to work with unclear tenure and multiple institutions playing role in conservation, to work together for sustainable carbon outcomes?
- What are the lessons, good and bad, of PES programs and carbon markets in particular, in rural India and elsewhere?
- What are the key barriers and opportunities and possible pathways for making carbon and other PES markets work for rural communities in India?
1. Stewardship as the ethical and practical foundation of community climate action
1CIFOR-ICRAF, USA, 2Foundation for Ecological Security, India
Commons, when properly understood as complex socio-ecological systems, complicate conventional approaches to conceptualizing and designing Payment for Environmental Services (PES) interventions. This is because Commons are not economic institutions in the neo-classical sense, but complex, socially inclusive but internally differentiated social institutions. PES schemes that attempt to incentivize or reward outcomes deemed socially and ecologically beneficial by the payer run up against what appear to be local differences that cast doubt on who (individuals, groups, institutions) should be rewarded for what actions. This is a familiar problem, but even more problematic is that values that may bind together in common cause a large majority of Commoners are usually invisible to the outside payer. An alternative approach to the question of how to recognize and reward desired outcomes might lay in the concept of Commons stewardship. Stewardship is a combination of qualities of care, ecological knowledge, and agency. Care is a sense of duty, shared widely, that compels people to “look after” the natural environment on which they depend. Knowledge is the information and know-how that informs stewardship action, and includes knowledge about ecological, social and governance processes. Agency denotes the abilities and capacities of individuals and groups to act. Exercising agency largely depends upon possessing rights to land and other natural resources. These qualities are not always present or when present in alignment. The paper explores how to recognize and reward effective stewardship, drawing insights from the experiences of communities in India that partner with the Foundation for Ecological Security.
2. Role of civil society in PES markets
Foundation for Ecological Security, India
The civil society, along with the rural communities they work with, have invested heavily in the conservation and management of natural landscapes. The benefits of conservation are already being realized by the communities in the form of improved water supplies, reduced soil erosion, better grazing, agricultural productivity, better food security, and enhanced incomes. The Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) markets including and majorly the carbon markets present a potential to compensate the communities more fully and in addition to the benefits listed above. Civil society actors are being reached out by different market players-aggregators, buyers, Governments, who are interested in reaching out to communities who have been conserving forests from a long time for buying carbon credits or other such market based mechanisms.
Civil society has a relationship of trust with the communities, which is key for its success. If the markets don’t work out for people, it will lead to erosion of goodwill that they have generated after years of work. There is a need for civil societies therefore to carefully design their own role in fast changing world of PES markets. It needs to build institutional capacities within communities to take on the markets for a level playing field. Civil society also needs to invest in mechanisms that led to recognition of indigenous knowledge and capacities in the market mechanisms which are otherwise agnostic to people’s intrinsic capacities. They also have an important role in creating a transparent environment in which the buyers and sellers feel safe. It needs enabling frameworks to ensure such an environment. Foundation for Ecological Security has developed an understanding of such a role that an NGO or a civil society should take.
3. Making Payment for Ecosystem Services Market work for Commons and Community : Can a Conceptual Information Framework help Informed Actions?
Center for Land Governance, India
In the North-Eastern hill region of India, indigenous land access spans communal, clan and private tenure regimes, governed under customary law. Administered at the village level, through diverse local institutions, the tenure typologies and land uses – Shifting cultivation, forest, homesteads, plantations and terraces – have evolved symbiotically. The region’s over 70 percent of forest cover, owe to practice of communities, traditionally, and increasingly more recently, reserving forest swathes for multiple ecosystem products and perceived services.
Known as Community conservation areas (CCAs), these are the potential sources to generate carbon and biodiversity credits, given their suitable legal, ecological and cultural contexts. The carbon rush unleashed in the global south, post COP-26, tends to colonize such geographies, for the easiness to ger bulk carbon at a perceived cheaper rate.
The volume, sustainability, integrity and co-benefits of the carbon from these indigenous abodes will be key parameters that would influence the carbon market resilience. These factors are shaped by the decentralised institutional mechanisms, the biophysical nature of the eastern Himalayan ecosystem, the legally pluralistic tenure environment and the tacit indigenous knowledge system as well as the community stewardship around the forest and nature.
As the market around payment for ecosystem services fast expands and colonises these indigenous abodes, it is imperative for the actors including local communities to be well informed of the cost, benefit and externalities. This paper presents a conceptual information framework that seeks to build safeguards for these communities in the fast expanding PES market.
