The Power of Community: Why Engagement Matters in Carbon Project Development
Engage local communities. Boost impact.
Project Development
Apr 21, 2025
Carolina Amu Trujillo
Nature restoration isn’t just about trees, carbon, or biodiversity. It’s about people.
When developing nature-based carbon projects, engaging with local communities isn’t a nice-to-have - it’s non-negotiable. With true partnership, engagement can unlock long-term success, boost environmental outcomes, reduce project risk, and make your project more attractive to investors and buyers alike.
But engagement must go beyond check boxes and late-stage consultations. It must empower people. Without local buy-in and self-determination, even the most well-intentioned reforestation effort can stumble.
What is Community Engagement, Really?
Community engagement means involving the people who live in, rely on, or are otherwise connected to your project site. It includes listening to their perspectives, co-creating solutions, and building partnerships that share benefits fairly. In other words, it’s about working with people, not just on their land.
This can take many forms—from public meetings and participatory mapping to citizen consultation and community ownership. What matters most is that it’s genuine, inclusive, and starts early (Recipe for Engagement).
What distinguishes truly effective engagement?
It hinges on the level of influence and self-determination communities hold within the project. Leading organisations recognise that assessing this is key. The aim should always be to move beyond simply informing or consulting communities, towards genuine partnership, shared leadership, and empowerment. Projects that fall short risk repeating top-down development patterns that often fail both communities and ecosystems in the long run.
Why It Matters
Projects that skip or delay community engagement often hit roadblocks later: opposition, mistrust, delays, or even legal challenges. On the flip side, engagement done right can:
- Build trust and social licence to operate
- Reveal invaluable local knowledge that improves ecological design
- Enhance carbon and biodiversity outcomes through community stewardship
- Strengthen funding potential by meeting social co-benefit requirements
- Make your project stand out to buyers who are seeking credible, durable, people-positive projects
Golden Rules to Guide Your Approach
- Protect existing forests first, and
- Work with local people.
Failing to include local communities is one of the most common causes of project failure. Success depends on meaningful partnerships that share decision-making, generate jobs, and support long-term community benefit—exactly what Treeconomy helps our partners deliver.
A Real World Example: The Papariko Project
Strong community engagement isn't just theory; it's practice. Look at the Papariko Mangrove Restoration Project in Kenya, developed by our partner Vlinder. This community-driven initiative recently became Kenya's first blue carbon project registered under Verra's VCS standard, also achieving the rigorous CCB (Climate, Community & Biodiversity) and SD VISta certifications – a testament to its holistic design and local integration.
Placing Papariko among only a handful of global blue carbon projects with CCB status, this validation underscores the power of embedding community benefit from the start. As the project moves towards verification, the plan includes sharing at least 40% of carbon revenue directly with local communities, demonstrating a tangible commitment to partnership and shared success.
Frameworks That Reinforce Good Practice
Several leading standards are raising the bar for what good engagement looks like:
🌱 Plan Vivo's PV Nature promotes landscape-scale projects rooted in local governance and long-term co-benefit delivery.
🌿 Social Carbon provides a framework to assess six dimensions of co-benefits: social, human, financial, natural, biodiversity, and carbon—reminding us that true impact spans far beyond tonnes of CO₂ removed.
🌎 The CCB (Climate, Community & Biodiversity) Standards, managed by Verra, verify projects delivering simultaneous climate, community, and biodiversity benefits, helping to mitigate risks and boost funding prospects.
While developers lead the engagement strategy, Treeconomy supports this critical work. We help you evaluate your plan and provide tools—like stakeholder mapping support and social baseline data—to ensure your approach is robust. This isn't just about ticking boxes; it’s foundational for building trust, strengthening your project's integrity, and verifying holistic impact beyond carbon.
Engagement Drives Investment-Ready Projects
At Treeconomy, we know that serious buyers and investors are looking for more than glossy brochures. They want social integrity, transparency, and assurance that projects are both ecologically and ethically sound.
That’s why Treeconomy focuses on making your project investor- and buyer-ready. Alongside our cutting-edge MRV technology and due diligence tools, we help you ensure your community engagement plan is comprehensive and addresses potential risks. Demonstrating strong, well-documented community partnerships is vital for securing investment and appealing to discerning buyers.
Your Next Step
Whether you're just getting started or refining your stakeholder strategy, we’re here to help. Our team has experience supporting community engagement in diverse contexts—from UK rewilding and reforestation to mangrove reforestation in Kenya and more.
We bring together data, people, and practical insight to help you build projects that work for both nature and people.
Get in touch to learn how we can support you in building projects that drive real climate impact—and bring communities along for the journey.
