Who Gets a Seat at the Table in Carbon Projects?

As part of Eco Sustainability’s participation in Verra’s Version 5 consultation on the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), we weighed in on one of the trickiest parts of carbon projects: who really counts as a stakeholder, and how do you prove you engaged them fairly?

At first glance, safeguards and stakeholder engagement sound like procedural checkboxes. But ask anyone working in forests or peatlands, and they’ll tell you the hard part isn’t measuring trees, it’s managing people. If a project developer skips over a local community, ignores customary landowners, or only listens to a handful of leaders, the entire project risks backlash. One angry village meeting can undo years of climate accounting.

Verra’s proposed safeguards framework is a welcome upgrade. We support its risk-based approach, which means projects with bigger impacts should face stricter scrutiny. But here’s the catch: it only works if there is clear, consistent proof of who was consulted, when, and how.

Eco Sustainability recommended that projects be required to carry out stakeholder mapping as a living document. Not just a one-off report filed at the start, but something that evolves as new players enter the picture. Power dynamics shift, leaders change, and new concerns emerge. If you don’t update the map, you risk talking to yesterday’s stakeholders while tomorrow’s critics are left outside the room.

Take a reforestation project. The developer might map out landowners, farmers, and local officials. But what if there’s a women’s cooperative that relies on the same land for firewood, or a fishing community that uses streams flowing through the project area? If they’re overlooked, conflict is almost guaranteed. Our suggestion is simple: projects must show evidence. That means records of consultations, signed agreements, even testimony from local leaders or NGOs. Promises are not enough.

The strengthened safeguards in Verra’s proposal are an important step toward climate justice. They help ensure that carbon projects do not just reduce emissions on paper but also deliver fair outcomes for the people living with the consequences. The goal is simple: no one should feel carbon projects are done to them, rather than with them.

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