Catalyzing a just transition to net zero with nature-based solutions

The science is clear: to avert the worst impacts of climate change, we must achieve major gains in decarbonization, retool extractive economies and global supply chains, and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In short, we need to get to net zero. Companies must play a key role in implementing net-zero solutions including deep decarbonization as well as purchasing carbon dioxide removal to address residual emissions and remove historical emissions. 

Alongside climate impact, social justice is an important component of a corporate net-zero strategy. As outlined below, high-quality nature-based projects can contain key elements that help carbon removal buyers catalyze a just transition to net zero.

What is a just transition to net zero?

A “just transition to net zero” is a place-based framework and process focused on developing a healthy, sustainable, and more equitable society by decarbonizing the economy and removing unsustainable amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a way that centers human rights, frontline communities, and climate and environmental justice. 

Advocates of a just transition believe that a healthy environment and a vibrant economy are not mutually exclusive. To achieve a just transition, communities further from the center of decision-making power must be prioritized in implementing the new green economy, otherwise known as the “green revolution.”  

The term “just transition” emerged in the 1970s from the U.S. labor movement, coinciding with the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Workers in now regulated environmentally hazardous industries, like farm workers exposed to toxic pesticides, demanded inclusion in the evolving labor force. As society shifted through political organizing, scientific progress, and technological innovation, just transition advocates emphasized that these workers should be at the forefront of implementing new solutions.

Today, the challenge of climate change and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) require similar considerations. A just transition to net zero means that decarbonization and carbon removal projects must positively benefit local communities and ensure they have a place in the new green economy.

Using nature-based solutions for a just net-zero plan 

While all carbon dioxide removal pathways can generate co-benefits and play an important role in a just transition to net zero, nature-based solutions are a key pathway that can provide multiple co-benefits. Nature-based solutions, or natural climate solutions, aim to mitigate climate change and promote sustainable land use. Nature-based projects include protecting, restoring, and managing natural ecosystems such as forests, mangroves, croplands, grasslands, and peatlands. Most importantly, nature-based solutions result from human stewardship of the landscape. 

By harnessing local labor and stewardship, developers of nature-based solutions can encourage valuable social co-benefits that drive meaningful impact beyond carbon removal and sequestration. As companies build-out their net zero plans, they should prioritize nature-based solutions for their wide range of “co-benefits" that help drive a just transition to net zero.

Learn more about the State of Corporate Commitment. -> 

How nature-based solutions help catalyze a just transition 

Each nature-based solution project must be carefully designed and implemented with co-benefits in mind, and rigorously analyzed and monitored to ensure project developers deliver real-world benefits. When done right, nature-based solutions can deliver co-benefits related to environmental justice, climate resilience, and alternative livelihoods, which are all important elements for a just transition to net zero. 

Facilitating environmental justice

In the context of nature-based solutions, which often have a global reach, environmental justice can mean many things. In the U.S. in the 1980s, environmental justice emerged as a social movement and political framework that coined the term “environmental racism,” which recognizes the systematic, uneven exposure to environmental pollution for communities of color, low income communities, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalized groups. 

Alongside identifying the disproportionate impacts from environmental harm, environmental justice advocates also call for an equitable distribution of environmental benefits and amenities (distributive equity). To do so, environmental justice advocates and practitioners draw on The Principles of Environmental Justice and the Jemez Principles to implement meaningful community engagement practices (procedural equity) that center frontline communities in the decision-making process for environmental rulemaking, regulation, permitting, construction, and project development and implementation.

For nature-based solutions, environmental justice considerations can manifest in a few ways. Take, for example, the projects run by the small Mexican nonprofit ICICO - Integrator of Indigenous and Campesino Communities of Oaxaca. Under the Climate Action Reserve (CAR) Mexico Forest Protocol Version 2.0 (CAR MFP v2.0), ICICO works to protect threatened forest ecosystems by uplifting local rural communities. Their projects work closely with Indigenous communities in the region to ensure that they inform and shape decision-making and governance processes, decisions are made locally as much as possible, and these projects employ a significant number of women and local non-rights holders. Moving beyond just addressing environmental harm, these projects work to ensure that the local communities are compensated for their traditional environmental management practices that benefit the global carbon market.

Enhancing climate resilience

Nature-based solutions can enhance community resilience to climate change by improving a community’s ability to respond to, withstand and thrive amid extreme climate impacts. Frontline communities face “double exposure” from the legacies of resource extraction and the compounding impacts of climate change. Many of these frontline communities live in ecosystems that are the most vulnerable to climate change yet also have significant carbon sequestration potential.

In the United States, for example, many coastal communities will be impacted by sea-level rise and climate-change induced flooding from more intense rainfall and changing precipitation patterns. Yet, these ecosystems are often home to wetlands and riparian systems that historically helped to protect communities from flood impacts. By restoring wetlands and coastal ecosystems, nature-based solution projects can enhance community resilience to climate change by reducing flood risk while also restoring the functions of these ecosystems to sequester carbon. 

Supporting alternative livelihoods

In the context of nature-based solutions, alternative livelihoods refer to the ability of a nature-based solution project to bolster and enhance the economic opportunities of a local workforce. Sometimes, alternative livelihoods look like helping farmers transition from subsistence crops to market-oriented crops that help to support carbon markets. However, some of the best projects that support alternative livelihoods follow the lead of local smallholders and ensure that their livelihoods are not completely erased by the emergence of a new carbon management project. 

Much like helping workers from industries whose business operations were environmentally harmful, these projects can catalyze a just transition by employing local community members in new, carbon-reducing jobs. Generating well-paying jobs that meet the standards and costs of living of those localities is just one possible outcome from nature-based solutions. Additionally, project developers can think critically about how to equitably share the profits from carbon credit procurement, and in some cases, there are national and regional laws and statutes that require these considerations, like ejido relations and land tenure in Mexico. 

Supporting a just transition with nature-based solutions 

While government regulation and policy have a major role to play in catalyzing a just transition to net zero, Carbon Direct believes market-based mechanisms are also essential to finance nature-based solutions. Companies are increasingly expanding and deepening their net-zero commitments, and looking for scientifically sound and socially just projects that help them meet those goals. As companies continue to deepen their net-zero commitments, it is essential that these strategies include investing in nature-based projects that help to catalyze a just transition. 

Learn more about Ecological Restoration Projects in the Voluntary Carbon Market. ->