Last year, I was lucky to work with Peggy Shepard and Johanna Lovecchio to take a risk and get a group of people together during New York Climate Week( #NYCW) who don’t usually talk with each other. We brought communities impacted by carbon markets, industry experts, big green organizations, and market influencers into one room to confront how communities are being impacted by carbon projects. Moderated by Sheila Foster, the roundtable discussion was a great success in finding common ground and surfacing a shared commitment to community rights.
Over the last year, that roundtable discussion has iterated through network members around the world and led to our #CarbonJustice Principles. These principles are the heart of a campaign to have communities’ rights protected amid carbon projects through advocacy at the community, national, and global levels.
New York Climate Week 2024 was an exciting moment to witness our network members breathe life into this campaign as they advocated for these commitments to take root in community agreements, article 6.4 policy, and funding for legal and technical support.
During the week, we were able to co-organize four events:
Over the course of three hours, an engaged group of 33 frontline defenders, donors, civil society advocates, carbon market project developers and standard setters discussed how to build a pooled fund that would provide legal and technical support for communities responding to carbon projects. Building off of the wisdom captured in this advocacy brief, the discussions dug into the details about where to distribute funds, how to require their collection, and what collaboration is necessary to move this idea forward. We left the room with clear commitments from multiple actors and a goal of realizing a new fund by COP30. Co-organized by Namati, Grassroots Justice Network, Rights Resources Initiative, Rights Co-Lab, and Just Ground.
In the ornate rooms of the New York City Bar Association, twenty people came together to surface negotiating challenges faced by frontline defenders responding to carbon markets and hear about lessons negotiating benefit sharing agreements from other fields. We heard remarkable synergies in the lessons across fields and strong opportunities for communities to draw strength from other experiences. The Vance Center, Namati, and the Grassroots Justice Network will fold these lessons into research they are conducting to create a model benefit sharing agreement, and continue to bring these experts together to build a community of practice about compensation agreements in carbon projects.
With a view of New York Harbor, this hybrid meeting brought together a diverse group of actors committed to ensuring that human rights are protected in carbon projects. With inputs from two UN Special Rapporteurs, numerous impacted communities, and industry leaders, we discussed how the UNFCCC Article 6.4 Sustainable Development Tool could be improved to protect human rights. Immediately after the meeting, many from this discussion submitted official comments to the UNFCCC and directly influenced the text of the Sustainable Development Tool the week after.
This closed-door discussion brought together communities responding to carbon projects to share their reflections on New York Climate Week, the resources they encountered, and the questions that remain. This less formal space allowed for discussions across regions and brainstorming of new advocacy pathways forward. It was co-organized by Forest People Program, Asia Indigenous People Pact, International Land Coalition, Grassroots Justice Network, and NYU Global Justice Clinic.
There was huge momentum leading from each of these discussions. What’s most exciting is that there are numerous ways that those who were not directly in the rooms can continue to be involved: