Building a High-Integrity Carbon Market: The Critical Role of Community Leadership

​This two-hour interactive session will explore why Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and local communities (LCs) are critical to the success and integrity of carbon markets, and what it will take to scale community-led carbon projects. The first hour will feature case studies from Latin America, Africa, Indonesia, and the US that demonstrate different models of community leadership while also surfacing the practical challenges communities face engaging with carbon markets as they currently operate. The session will also highlight emerging tools and approaches—including capacity building, project development frameworks, finance, and social integrity tools—that can help create the enabling conditions for community-led projects to succeed and scale.

​The second hour will shift from learning to action through a facilitated discussion led by The Nature Conservancy on what it looks like to equitably engage communities in carbon projects, including equitable benefit sharing, enabling conditions, and recognizing their distinct roles as investors, implementers, and partners. Insights from this discussion will inform concrete actions the market can take to strengthen community leadership, ownership, and decision-making, including upcoming publications and market advocacy on best practices for equitable benefit sharing.

​The goal of this session is to move community leadership from the margins of the carbon market to a core component of how high-integrity carbon projects are designed, financed, implemented, and scaled.