There are potential conflicts between private financing and community empowerment.
To promote truly integrated and plural frameworks for nature recovery projects, it is vital that the domination of technology and science-driven, market-oriented approaches is recognised, and more collaborative governance arrangements are sought after. This includes supporting and experimenting with innovative governance arrangements for nature recovery must include a diversity of actors - including companies, research institutions, non-profits and communities – that work in partnerships to foster the collective ownership and management of natural resources. This also requires explicitly addressing power imbalances, fostering a shift away from dominant market framings that privilege certainty towards more open-ended approaches that embrace conflict, uncertainty, and democratic struggle. Avoiding “democracy washing” means ensuring that community engagement and empowerment is not merely a tool for legitimising financial objectives, but opens up the space for genuine opportunities for community agency to shape sustainable and equitable futures.
In a practical sense, potential solutions could include:
• Prioritising genuine community agency and empowerment, including strong mechanisms for community-led decision-making and collective governance. In particular, collaborative governance arrangements that bring together multiple partners including community groups, private business, government bodies, non-governmental organisations, charities, etc. (e.g., co-designing project proposals and developing a local stakeholder group, or following the ‘Silver Standard of land tenure’ which could include community management boards, community right to buy, and actively selling land to the community).
• Building on existing standards for community benefits, while recognising that these should go beyond simple metrics to include community agency in co-producing place-based standards (e.g., see these resources on a community inclusion standard in natural capital projects, and this report on community benefits from natural capital projects).
• Embrace uncertainty and complexity as an opportunity for innovation, rather than as obstacles that need to be mitigated against. Disagreement, trade-offs, and complexities are not problems to be feared and mitigated against, but are vital for crafting resilient, creative, and inclusive approaches to nature recovery (e.g., see this report on mapping diverse types of public engagement in biodiversity and climate projects, and this flexible, place-based guidance for Nature-based Solutions governance).