There’s a quiet divide among Indigenous and traditional community advocates on the topic of carbon markets. On one hand, some believe carbon credit projects operating on their lands should be suspended or stopped. They say the projects perpetuate land rights violations, offer low benefits, and often breach Indigenous people’s free, prior and informed consent. Others say carbon projects create important jobs in materially poor communities and compensate them for conservation work they’ve been doing for generations. Like most debates, there are overlaps: both sides tend to believe more stringent land rights and human rights protections should be implemented in the market through regulations and the law. But there’s no agreement on the way forward, either in the form of a temporary moratorium, renouncing the markets as greenwashing altogether, or buckling down to flesh out and enforce regulations. Even within factions, there are differences and nuances in the approach. But one topic in the debate around carbon markets that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention is the commodification of community lands, especially those of Indigenous peoples — and what it means about how people relate to nature, wildlife and their ancestral territories. Indigenous peoples and traditional communities often hold deep cultural and spiritual connections to their lands and ecosystems. But carbon credit projects seemingly introduce a different, transactional relationship. Managed by NGOs, the state or a community itself, they put a price tag on protecting a forest or ecosystem on community land to offset greenhouse gas emissions from elsewhere. Does this…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Are carbon credits another resource-for-cash grab? Interview with Alondra Cerdes Morales & Samuel Nguiffo first appeared on EnviroLink Network.