The session Energy and Climate Justice: A Community aimed to cover discussions onglobal trends around renewable energy and climate finance by adopting a nexus approach connecting land tenure, community, and justice. The following aspects were drawn from comparative experiences from global south reflected on land conflicts and contestations in the context of mega solar park projects, community stewardship as a potential carbon solution, netzero triggered land use changes for carbon offset and implications on community & commons.

Chair: Pranab R Choudhury, Center for Land and Governance, NRMC

Presentation 1

Carbon Markets and Commons: Opportunities and Challenges

Ishan Agrawal, General Manager-Programs (Foundation for Ecological Security)

“As an honest intermediary, the civil societies need to- Catalyse coalitions to improve ethical practices in carbon market & supporting policies, build awareness & capacities of community and investors, improve data and evidence and overall narrative and lastly, develop pilot projects that are based on community’s interests”

Civil Society organisations (CSOs) have been instrumental in supporting and mainstreaming community conservation from a very long time. Typically, CSOs have been facilitating and strengthening local governance institutions, leveraging resources for eco-restoration and nature conservation, and investing in sustainable livelihoods. They enjoy the “trust” of communities and have been drawing attention to the multiple benefits of forests considered important by communities, especially provisioning services like food, fodder, firewood--the tangible livelihood benefits of conservation. Carbon sequestration as a regulatory ecosystem service is less understood by communities. The incentive mechanisms and monitoring protocols are largely alien to communities. This makes carbon projects very reliant on expert knowledge and advice. It reduces the scope for communities to participate directly in negotiating rules and payment terms. CSOs will increasingly be expected to play the role of “honest broker” on behalf of communities in negotiating with markets. Their challenge lies in retaining the trust of the communities they serve while simultaneously helping mitigate climate change. Opportunities in terms of packaging the eco-restoration and conservation projects as nature-based solutions for climate change or reaching carbon markets through favourable mechanisms like Plan Vivo seem to be more logical choices available for CSOs and communities. However, CSOs also need to push for larger accountability by markets and governments in meeting their obligations to communities and the environment. CSOs are in a position to bring legitimacy to carbon market and PES arrangements by fostering transparency and trust among all parties.

Presentation 2

Community Stewardship, Carbon Mitigation and Climate Change

Dr. Steven Lawry, Senior Associate, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

“Forest communities—not governments, the private sector, or NGOs—do the hard work, day after day, of forest stewardship for carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and other environmental services. Community stewardship of forests is lauded rhetorically, but there is a lack of knowledge about how communities manage forests and hence little basis for understanding how policy, programs or incentives could help amplify their contributions to better climate outcomes.”

Forest-based communities are increasingly recognized for their stewardship of complex socioecological systems that sustain forests and provide important watershed services, sequester carbon in trees, grasslands, and soils, while conserving biodiversity and providing food and livelihoods to residents and others. While participation by forest communities in carbon markets is not entirely uncharted territory, the globally fixed price of carbon raises questions about the degree to which carbon payments can fairly compensate communities for the carbon sequestration and other services they provide. Payment for Environmental Services (PES) programs by design come closer to fully compensating communities for services rendered, but pervasive gaps in institutional preconditions and implementation arrangements may severely limit the reach of PES programs.

Even if carbon and PES market shortcomings can be overcome, important ethical questions remain. Incorporation by communities into managerialist, incentive-based schemes such as PES and carbon trading may erode or further weaken community autonomy. We argue for a global bottom-up approach that empowers forest communities to realize their stewardship potential more fully by, for instance, strengthening their land and forest rights and investing in development of a ‘stewardship economy’ providing social, technical, and economic services identified and prioritized in large part by communities themselves.

Presentation 3

The implications of the ‘Just Transition’ for Scottish land ownership and rural community

sustainability.

Dr Annie McKee, The James Hutton Institute (Aberdeen, Scotland)

“What’s the relationship between the bigger landowners and the community? So long as there are still family farms, that relationship still stands. If they are forestry companies or big corporate renewable companies, there is no relationship between the landowner and the community.” [Quote from Community Representative, South of Scotland] The Scottish Government has committed to becoming a net-zero society by 2045, and that the transition to a low carbon economy is ‘just’, conducted fairly and inclusively. Critically, the Scottish Government’s target will require significant change in land use and land management practices. There has been a rise in companies and individuals seeking to buy land in Scotland, and whilst the developing carbon market could bring opportunities to rural Scotland, risks can be seen in parallels to international contexts of land financialization and arguably ‘land-grabbing’. Such large-scale private acquisitions of land will concentrate the distribution of benefits associated with natural capital, and it conflicts with wider policy ambitions around diversifying landownership and increasing opportunities for communities to influence decisions around land use. This paper presents findings from qualitative interviews with rural community representatives from the south of Scotland, detailing the impact of the pace and scale of land use change in their locality (typically the afforestation of agricultural land, and development of windfarms) on rural community sustainability, critically the link to depopulation. The findings highlight the complex interrelationship between landownership and land use, and for communities to be empowered within land use decision-making, to ensure the ‘just transition’.

Presentation 4

Media Coverage of Land conflicts for Energy in India

Namrata Acharya, Freelance Journalist, Denmark, India.

The presentation will deal with the media coverage of issues related to land and energy in India. It will delve into how media coverage of issues related to land and energy has evolved over time in India. In particular, it will look into how the media coverage of India’s transition to energy selfsufficiency has panned out with respect to renewable energy.

Presentation 5

Green Hydrogen, Renewable Energy and Land- Water Nexus

Dr Prerna Prabhakar, Program Associate, Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW)

“Scaling up green energy production on the back of a non-scalable asset “Land” is a classic climate conundrum”

Recently, India has set a target of reaching net zero by 2070 and move towards this goal would require adequate efforts to transition from the conventional sources of energy to greener sources.

In this regard, green hydrogen has emerged as a promising alternative. Green hydrogen production would involve scaling up renewable energy capacity and identifying adequate water resources for the electrolysis process. In this way, it can be said that green hydrogen production is largely dependent on two key resources- land and water. In this context, it is important to explore the hydrogen-renewable energy-water-land nexus so that the stakeholders are aware of the operational and social implications arising from a transition to a green hydrogen economy in India.

Against this backdrop, this study aims to identify suitable locations in the country for setting up renewable energy plants for facilitating green hydrogen production. The approach undertaken for this work involves GIS modelling to incorporate multiple layers that determine suitability of land (at tehsil level) for RE adoption. These layers would cover multiple aspects like social, economic, ecological, technical, topographical etc. Different combinations of these layers would be used to arrive at the locations in India that are most suitable for setting up RE plants for green hydrogen production. Finally, this would then be compared with targeted levels green hydrogen capacity to the impact on land resources.