Stakeholder participation is key in the design, implementation, and evaluation of benefit sharing arrangements to ensure they respond to the needs and interests of the full range of stakeholders for the emission reductions program.
Stakeholder consultations are particularly important during the design of benefit sharing arrangements. For example, enabling beneficiaries to decide on the benefits they receive in a participatory manner is an efficient and effective approach for determining benefits that would incentivize stakeholders to participate in the emission reductions program.
A stakeholder analysis can be done to identify all groups that are critical to the success of the emission reductions program, to understand their needs, interests, capacities, rights, and any historical conflicts or alliances.
Consultations should be comprehensive and iterative, covering all elements of benefit sharing as relevant, including identification of beneficiaries and benefits, institutional arrangements, and monitoring and evaluation.
Effective stakeholder participation requires significant time and resources and is often underbudgeted. A stakeholder engagement plan should include the steps involved and the resources, time, and other inputs needed, as well as measures to ensure effective stakeholder participation. This includes advanced dissemination of information tailored to each stakeholder group in a format they understand – for example, using local languages, providing information through public meetings and stakeholder representatives, and paying special attention to provide information to women and vulnerable and/or marginalized people. These approaches are critical for obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples and other groups with collective rights to lands and resources.
Specific measures should be adopted to facilitate and ensure social inclusion through the participation of women, indigenous peoples, and marginalized and/or vulnerable groups that may otherwise be excluded—for example, through separate meetings or other approaches that address barriers for participation.
It is important to manage consultations in a way that does not unnecessarily raise stakeholders’ expectations through clear messaging on the stage of development of the emission reductions program and benefit sharing arrangements as well as expected results and associated risks for under-performance given the results-based nature of program financing.
Stakeholder consultations and their outcomes, including dates, locations, participants, and feedback provided, should be documented and publicly disclosed to promote transparency and build trust.
Benefits should outweigh opportunity costs and the efforts and inputs needed to participate in the program, so a cost-benefit analysis for different stakeholder groups can be helpful. However, this may not be easy, so participatory identification of benefits—enabling the beneficiaries themselves to decide on the benefits they receive—is often the most effective approach.
Approaches to consultations
Broad and inclusive stakeholder engagement in Brazil builds understanding and ownership of Acre’s system of incentives for environmental services.
In Acre, Brazil, the state system of incentives for environmental services (SISA) framework and legislation has benefited from a comprehensive, transparent, and long-term participatory consultation process over the course of 2009 and 2010, which included a public comment period, technical seminars, workshops, and one-on-one meetings with stakeholder groups (civil society, indigenous peoples, farmers, extractivists, government, international agencies, carbon companies, and others) that generated more than 300 comments and recommendations. Designing the program in a participatory manner—including having resources specifically allocated to ensure participation from all relevant stakeholders even those that are geographically remote—helped build understanding and ownership, which ultimately enabled greater participation and social support for SISA. This outreach highlights how deep stakeholder engagement is needed not only to design appropriate benefit sharing arrangements, but moreover to generate sufficient buy-in to support longevity and success of implementation.
In Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund, formal and informal outreach efforts ensure good participation and reduce conflicts.
Australia’s ERF was designed over several years through a series of formal consultations requesting written comments on documentation outlining the design of the program as it evolved. This meant that people were generally well informed about the design of the legislation and was successful in getting feedback from carbon service providers. To learn from landowners, the government visits areas with a lot of projects or where there are conflicts to meet with landowners informally to explain the rules and process and respond to questions. This multi-pronged approach enables feedback from different stakeholders depending on their needs.
Advantages of beneficiary participation in decision making about benefits
In Madagascar, a formal, tiered structure from the local to the national level helps to ensure effective participation of beneficiaries in decision making about carbon credit fund allocations.
A fixed allocation of 50 percent of revenues from the sale of carbon credits from Madagascar’s Makira Project is allocated to communities, which develop management plans (annexed to their forest management contracts) for the use of revenues to support forest protection and socioeconomic activities. Community management associations (VOI), including community representatives at different levels, make decisions about how to use the community carbon funds through a prioritization process.
A platform of VOIs for each of the six sectors around Makira Natural Park participate in a Local Technical Committee that reviews and prioritizes all proposals. Decisions are made based on the effort that each VOI has made to fulfill their forest protection responsibilities and how much support that community has received to date. The platforms elect a president of the VOI federation who, along with one representative from each of the three geographical regions in the Makira Natural Park, represents them in a Makira steering committee, chaired by the government, which makes the final decision about the use of funds by approving an annual work plan and budget for the community carbon funds.
Community participation in decision making has been important to ensure that local perceptions of equity are integrated into the allocation of funds and to facilitate sharing information with beneficiaries the about the rationale for decision making about allocations.
