First Nations Carbon Collaborative-Indigenous Peoples and Carbon Markets: An annotated bibliography

The emergence of carbon markets has created a unique opportunity for indigenous communities to develop an economic sector that can be aligned with traditional lifestyles and sustainable forest management goals.

It is also an opportunity for governments and industry to build meaningful partnerships and develop relevant policies with indigenous peoples.Globally, indigenous communities are concerned with a general lack of effort to involve them in carbon markets or to consider the social impacts that these markets, and related policies, can have—and have had—on communities. Indigenous peoples require that their free, prior and informed consent be attained as governments develop carbon market policies and regulations.The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides a framework for meeting minimum international standards for the protection and inclusion of indigenous peoples' rights in government-led carbon policy development. Ensuring indigenous land and carbon rights is the first step in meaningful joint planning and implementation of emissions cap-and-trade policies/regulations.Consequently, indigenous peoples should have equal and meaningful involvement in developing carbon markets that may impact their traditional and current territories. It is also important to recognize the contributions that indigenous peoples have made and do make towards conserving forests and biodiversity.The objective of the annotated bibliography is to provide an introduction to indigenous peoples' land and carbon rights, carbon offset regimes and carbon accounting from a broad international perspective. We hope that the First Nations Carbon Collaborative—Indigenous Peoples and Carbon Markets: An annotated bibliography will help policy-makers, researchers and educators shed some light on the potential positive and negative impacts that carbon markets could have on indigenous peoples. The literature surveyed revealed that, although there is a reasonable amount of information on indigenous peoples and carbon markets, there seems to be very little information on First Nations in Canada and carbon markets. This indicates that an information void may need to be filled for First Nations to become active participants in current and emerging carbon markets.