The Role of Forest-Based Carbon Offsetting in Climate and Community Resilience: Multidisciplinary, Participatory Research with Indigenous Communities in Oaxaca, Mexico

Abstract

As the effects of climate change are felt more frequently, there is increasing demand to employ forests and their ability to sequester carbon dioxide to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Forest-based carbon offsets (FBCOs), through which companies, governments or individuals mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing carbon offsets produced through changes in management practices by landowners, are one means of incentivizing and providing financial support for forest restoration and conservation. Our research team partnered with the Integrator of Indigenous and Campesino Communities of Oaxaca (ICICO), a nonprofit organization that works to protect threatened ecosystems by empowering rural communities in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico to find new ways to benefit from and be compensated for their traditional environmental management practices. Working closely with ICICO, our research questions explored the threats facing these communities, including climate change, the strategies they are employing or envision for fortifying community and forest resilience and the influence and impacts of FBCO in these processes. To answer these questions, we utilized case study methodology with sample selection based on maximum variance of key variables. The research team conducted interviews with fifty-eight community leaders and forest managers in four ICICO member communities throughout the state of Oaxaca. The resulting interview transcripts were coded for relevant thematic content and summarized. Our results indicate that these communities define resilience as the capacity to respond to and recover from challenges, grounded in local knowledge, strong collective governance, and shared resources. Our results also reveal that forest management decisions are shaped by a combination of environmental concerns, such as drought, climate change, and economic pressures, as well as social-institutional values such as communal governance and education. We found that, in these cases, participation in FBCO has strengthened local engagement and increased interest and action for sustainable forest management across communities. At the core of ICICO’s FBCO model are the foundational elements that make resilience possible: comunalidad, education, collective governance, and community-based decision making. These values and structures serve as the essential basis for the effective and equitable use of FBCO funds and ensure that projects reflect local priorities rather than external agendas. This co-produced resilience model provides valuable insight into how climate mitigation tools such as FBCO can be ethical, equitable, and effective when guided by local knowledge and priorities and centered on strengthening the ability of people to act collectively to realize their own vision for the communities and their forests.