ID: 1662
Presenting Author: Manishankar Prasad
Session: 729 - FPIC - How prior is prior?
Status: pending
The paper will delve into the stakeholder engagement mechanisms that would ensure credibility at the community scale in Malaysia, as the buy-in is local
There are a plethora of issues undermining the carbon markets globally, that has caused a reset through the Verra scandal. Carbon markets have received renewed attention post-Paris Agreement and have given the focus on reducing emissions through an enlarged suite of options from cookstove projects to renewable energy projects which have been traditional registers to forest conservation projects, building on the foundations of REDD+. A significant loophole in the integrity and transparency mechanisms undergirding nature-based credits has been the fuzziness in defining the ‘gold standard’ (pun intended) in community engagement. The performance and performativity of Free and Informed Consent in Forestry projects and Infrastructure Planning through the Environmental & Social Impact Assessment (ESIA henceforth) Process has been a mainstay for a while. Yet it is inadequate, as the stakeholder engagement process in ESIAs is a tick box measure, with hardly any transparency in the process of the consultation process, and we never know which voices were erased or muted.
Manishankar Prasad is a PhD Candidate in Southeast Asian Studies at Universiti Malaya writing a PhD thesis on Climate Transition in SE Asia. He is a FPIC Practitioner as well.