Principles to gain a social licence to operate for green initiatives and biodiversity projects

Green initiatives — for example, biodiversity offsets, carbon schemes, protected areas, nature reserves, payments for environmental services, and UN-REDD/REDD+ — have caused negative social impacts to local communities, especially Indigenous peoples. The typical impacts include economic displacement, physical displacement, livelihood impacts, impoverishment, disruption to everyday life and to ecosystem services, and human rights impacts. Community resistance is reflected in various labels: green-washing, green grabbing, green greed, green colonialism, greenshit, carbon cowboys and paper parks. Rather than the protection paradigm of fortress conservation, a different approach is needed in the parks and people discourse. Social impact assessment — the processes of managing the social issues associated with projects — can help green initiatives gain a social license to operate. By effectively managing the social issues, green initiatives will gain acceptability, legitimacy and trust.