Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon ... - FAO

Chapter 7: Further help and advice
There is not one person or organization that can answer all these
questions. To answer any of them properly, local communities and
smallholders need to find help from organisations which are:
• Locally-informed: Understand their situation and needs; and
• Neutral: Do not benefit from any decisions made as a result of
their advice.
Independent, unbiased organizations may be hard to find. But there
are still steps that local people can take to help them make informed
decisions.
7.1.1 Using community networks and joint learning
As far as possible, project developers should work and learn together,
rather than independently. Even if ‘grouped projects’ (see box 1) are
not a viable option for practical reasons, smallholders and communities
engaged in the VCM should join forces for the purposes of capacity
building.
• Learn together with others interested in forest carbon
markets. Find others who share the same interests and build
a local network of interested people. Whenever possible, use
existing community groups of which you are already a member.
• Speak as a group Whether trying to get the attention of
government staff, civil society organizations, environmental
NGOs or private sector service providers, everybody will pay
more attention to those who speak as a group.
If the necessary services don’t exist, or aren’t adapted to forest carbon,
governments need to know that they are required. Services are not
usually created unless there is a demand for them. Project developers
must proactively inform the relevant service providers what additional
services are required for the forestry VCM, otherwise they will invest
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