We are so excited to announce that Written Progress’ own Megan Mayzelle recently joined the second cohort of Climatebase Fellows to focus on the development and launch of Written Progress’ socio-ecological responsibility tool for carbon management projects! The tool will focus on identifying and maximizing the co-benefits of carbon projects and understanding and minimizing the co-hazards.

Here’s a sneak peek information on the product and how it might help advance your next project:

CONTEXT

Carbon management projects are well funded, have attracted talent from a variety of sectors, and are laser-focused on complying with impending regulation and delivering a product (carbon credits, reputational points) to corporate clients. They are very aware of the carbon-oriented benefits and hazards, but potential social and ecological co-benefits and co-hazards are often non-intuitive and may be overlooked.

There are massive benefits to identifying socio-ecological co-benefits and co-hazards as early as possible. A project that is able to identify additional benefits that it brings to the area beyond carbon reduction can amplify those to maximize the benefit that they bring to the natural space and/ or the communities, and employ that to broaden their funder base, to engage more diverse stakeholders, to increase their reputational potential. By identifying their co-hazards as early as they can, they’re able to minimize those, to offset them or mitigate them.

This is also extraordinarily important for potential funders or buyers of carbon management initiatives. By understanding the co-benefits and co-hazards of an initiative, they can more consciously select according to their organizational goals which co-benefits may be more important to them to support, and which hazards may be more important for them to avoid.

SOLUTION

Our product will provide a visual overview of potential social and ecological co-benefits and co-hazards given some basic characteristics of the project, as well as some rule-of-thumb guidance for minimizing hazards and fully leveraging co-benefits. 

The primary focus of the product will be supporting the rapidly burgeoning carbon mitigation sector, but the product will be equally useful for any project focused on socioeconomic, ecological, or climate justice.

The output will be visually intuitive and compelling. In addition to informing project funders, planners, and implementors, it will serve as a fantastic addition to a pitch deck, project proposal, or other informative document.

VERSIONING

The early-access version of the product will likely be a technology-enabled service. Later versions will iteratively employ learning from previous results and will available through a website, with an option to dive deeper into specific recommendations if the user so desires.

METHODOLOGY

The co-benefits and co-hazards considered will employ current best-known practices such as the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, Sustainable Development Goals, and other robust multilateral organizational indices to account for the major categories of socioeconomic and ecological factors.

Want to stay in the loop on our carbon co-benefits and co-hazards tool? Follow us on LinkedIn to learn more, or sign up for our email newsletter to be the first in line for early access!

This article was originally published at Scriptorium on 22 August 2022.