Over the past years, Carbon Market Watch together with numerous dedicated organizations in India has worked to improve the social and environmental integrity of carbon market projects in India, and exposed weaknesses where they occurred. As the number of projects has increased, challenges faced by local communities to defend their rights to land, food, and shelter have increasingly been reported across India.
An increasing focus of climate mitigation activities in sectors that are typically dependent on common lands, such as forests and agricultural areas, adds further pressure to this challenge. Countries around the world are currently discussing how to combat climate change with the aim to adopt an international agreement in 2015.
Although the international carbon market does not allow projects in the agricultural and forestry sectors for a number of reasons, the voluntary carbon market is currently developing methodologies to account for emission savings in these sectors. However, experience with climate mitigation activities in India has shown that it is getting increasingly difficult for local communities to defend their individual as well as community rights to use common lands for their everyday survival.
This workshop will provide a platform to share information and discuss recent developments around the potential inclusion of these new sectors in carbon markets. While outlying potential strategies for collective action against illegal land grabbing, this workshop will also explore the political impacts of land based carbon market initiatives, including what effect the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and other mechanisms can have on land rights for marginalised groups & women.