Restoration projects bring benefits that go beyond planting trees. At Biomas, our initiative’s goals include reestablishing ecosystem services for biodiversity, the climate, and the people. From a social perspective, this means contributing to the well-being and strengthening of local communities, promoting access to services, and creating opportunities.
To us, restoring ecosystems also means repairing relationships, building trust, and strengthening the territories’ autonomy. Because of this, our projects go beyond the criteria required for high quality carbon credit certifications: they incorporate the local territories’ expectations and necessities, including those that are not business related, as a fundamental part of value creation and positive impact.
Nina Fassarella, our Social Relations Manager, explains that the human sphere is central to Biomas’ vision and permeates all steps of our business processes. Each project offers unique opportunities to transform restoration into an asset for all. We understand that our initiatives' success and the continued health of the forests are only guaranteed if the importance of the connections and interdependence between people and territories is understood.
In order for our collaboration with local communities to be robust and adequate for these objectives, we have a department with a team and specialized consultant dedicated to managing the social component of our work. This includes permanent roles for Social Relations analysts in each territory and the establishment of different, clear channels of communication to guarantee we can reach them.
In this article, you will learn about how we build our relationships with the local communities where we use dialogue to develop initiatives so the effects of our projects can be felt long term. The process consists of four steps that demand in depth immersion in the territory: Learn, Consult, Implement, and Monitor.
LEARN: “Without understanding who we are dialoguing with, any solution will be incomplete. Let’s get to know one another to build together? – Nina Fassarella
This phase’s starting point is an in depth socioeconomic analysis that shapes the relationship we build with the territory and significantly influences the perception that the community will have of us and our project. In addition to the collection of technical information, the process seeks to comprehend the social logic, types of organization, historical conflicts, economic fluxes, community desires, and organizations being collaborated with.
The work begins with the socioeconomic data research using information available on public data records like IBGE and state and municipal statistical organizations. After this, visits, observations, and in-person interviews help us complete our in depth mapping of the social groups, their organizations, relationships, and contexts.
At the end of the analysis, we present our results to the communities, so that the people can respond to and validate the data, confirming if their points were understood and represented correctly. These responses also help us refine our identification about community leadership, our comprehension of relationships, and demands from the territory. They represent a request to the community to make time to have conversations with us about their lived experiences.
CONSULT: “During the consultation step, we seek to guarantee the community’s rights while we understand their realities, identify concerns and opportunities, and align expectations” – Nina Fassarella
The second phase is dedicated to direct consultations, where we follow a listening protocol designed to honor the specificities of each territory and construct a participative and realistic planning strategy. This is the moment where we seek to comprehend what the community desires and expects from Biomas’ presence in the territory.
Our interest is understanding not only the demands and the necessities that can be connected to our project, like hiring local workers and partnerships for seed collections or negotiations with community plant nurseries. We are also interested in understanding the demands and needs that are not related to the project, like supporting supply chains and the development or renovation of community structures and equipment.
At Project Muçununga, for example, one of the actions being studied involves the headquarters of a community association. Built by the community with profits from yucca sales, the project demonstrates the strength and desire to have a communal space to strengthen ties and preserve collective assets. The lack of an adequate location has had serious consequences during a flood, during which 2 thousand donated books were lost and couldn’t be used to furnish the library.
“The foundation for identifying opportunities in communities is active listening. Not everyone shares their dreams, but by creating this space, we make possible the collective construction of solutions that bring us closer to what the community desires, or what, ultimately, becomes meaningful accomplishments for the group.”– Nina Fassarella
Just like the learning phase, consultations come before meetings and workshops where conclusions and decisions are developed collectively. They are meetings that validate collected information, clarify expectations, and identify the benefits to be shared.
The last step of this phase involves the workshops for the co-creation of projects and social benefits, where Biomas and community collaborators come together to plan the steps to be taken. These meetings are a way to strengthen transparency, respect to what was said, and our bonds as a community.
IMPLEMENTATION: “Implementation is not just about doing. It’s about taking action based on what was agreed upon, respecting the agreements, rhythms, and people” – Nina Fassarella
During the implementation phase, the decisions agreed upon with the communities are put into practice. The principal focus of this phase is guaranteeing that the deals made during the previous phases are honored, while respecting the deals and local contexts. Just like the other phases, this one requires careful communication, continued attention to relationships built, and flexibility to address change.
This phase begins after the listening and project co-creation phase, but community participation remains a central component: we remain open to change and to the identification of new demands. Our team begins to monitor the projects through implementation and day-to-day relationships, maintaining the listening practice.
“Being in the territory and implementing these projects means having a convivial relationship with the community and being truly present. It also means being attentive to changes that arise during the beginning of the project” – Nina Fassarella
MONITOR: “The monitoring phase is a continuation of listening and building trust with the communities” – Nina Fassarella
To us, the engagement with communities doesn’t end once the project is delivered. We want to monitor these communities and territories, document the results, learn with them, and verify if the projects are truly transformative. We want to know if what was promised was truly delivered and if anything unexpected occurred. We also want people to see that what was built in collaboration is being tended to.
During this phase, we use performance indicators, which are established metrics to measure the projects’ impact and success. Listening to people as they choose the indicators is also essential, since we want to measure the changes that the community finds relevant. Because of this, these evaluative tools are defined on a case by case basis, in a way focused on the expected improvements of each territory.
For example, If the benefit is support for the implementation of individual units for processing fruits, the evaluation could involve results like amount in fruits processed, growth of family income, access to markets, the obtaining of certifications of organic products, and more. Each of these points require the use of different indicators.
It’s fundamental that the metrics used are capable of providing a reliable evaluation that shows we are able to promote truly transformative projects with a positive social impact. Nina explains that “the idea is the indicators can be monitored long term. This is because, sometimes, we start with one priority and the landscape changes. So, this is a process that requires us to watch the indicators and adjust them when necessary.”
Our Social Vision is Part of Our Response to the Current Challenges We Face
Our projects integrate the standards and requirements of primary best practices, allowing us to implement sustainable social initiatives as a way of sharing benefits via structured, respectful, inclusive, and transparent dialogues with the areas we work with.
This means that our social action strategy is aligned with the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), linking the initiatives developed during the stakeholder engagement process to specific goals. This way, it’s possible to monitor the performance of each social initiative, respecting the results of the participative process and the unique context of each territory we work in.
Our goal is to develop projects that guarantee meaningful and credible social benefits for the environment, communities, and biodiversity in an integrated and sustainable way, confident that our activity can positively contribute to economic, environmental, and social development of the country.
The very existence of the restoration sector is a direct response to global environmental sustainability challenges, especially regarding climate and biodiversity. However, the continuation and success of this response also depends on addressing social problems. To us, each restoration project represents a meaningful opportunity to contribute to these broader goals.