In April 2024, Pollination Foundation brought together Indigenous leaders and experts leading best practices, community leaders beginning their carbon journey, and technical experts in carbon project design to exchange their experiences and explore new opportunities in the design and governance of Carbon initiatives.

Our goal was to create an environment where experts, technical specialists, and local hosts could cross-pollinate ideas and facilitate a dynamic exchange of insights.

The program was designed to provide participants with tangible, firsthand experiences of different operational environments. It included field trips to Awajun project sites and linguistic support from translators (in English and Spanish) to ensure seamless communication and engagement throughout the workshop.

Key outcomes from our conversations highlighted the following Culture-First principles :

• Indigenous-led solutions, drawing on deep-rooted, sustainable land management practices honed over generations, can contribute much to combating climate change and biodiversity loss.
• It’s essential to design a stewardship approach with practices that support the health of the environment and the community.
• Carbon is not the goal; it is a tool, one of multiple alternative economic approaches to achieving a ‘good life’, i.e., taking care of nature and people.
• We want the process of developing and implementing a carbon project to work to achieve Indigenous values – not replicate the colonial model.

Further reading:

Download the full report and watch the video below.

Culture First – An Approach to Indigenous Carbon Projects (English Report)

Culture First – An Approach to Indigenous Carbon Projects (Spanish Report)

Indigenous Carbon Exchange – Reflections Report (PDF)