# The problem, disintermediation

The people who control the world's food supply and tangible climate action are economically disempowered — with disproportionate impact on planetary boundaries.

There are 1.6 billion people who live in the natural forests of the world (Newton et al. 2020). As a social group, collectively, they are one of the most powerful human economies working for, or against, the future of forest ecosystems.

Smallfarmers have significant control of the world's food supply. Roughly 600M farms worldwide are smaller than 2 ha and produce \~35% of the world’s food by volume, despite controlling only about 12% of the global agricultural land (Lowder et al. 2021). More broadly, small-scale and family farms produce about 50% of the world’s total food calories with \~30% of agricultural land (Samberg et al. 2016; Houngbo, World Economic Forum 2020).

Indigenous Peoples and local communities protect 40% of the intact planet and 22% of its biocritical regions (ICCA Consortium 2021), an (estimated) 80% of the biodiversity (Fernández-Llamazares et al. 2024), and get just <1% of the climate funding (Gjefsen and Mongabay 2021).&#x20;

Smallfarmer economies are unique, tangible, and pragmatic. They typically transact with a combination of local fiat physical currencies and social capital. In general, smallfarmers have partial food security (FAO 2015), although labor productivity is lower and financial poverty is common. But explicit understanding of the economic value of food security as an asset is often lacking, lacking direct comparison to disadvantaged urban populations who lack access to food production access. Around the world, these groups are frequently categorized by ethnicity (Indigenous, AfroDescendant, tribal, or local community). But ethnicity, culture, and economics in practice are often heterogeneous and fluid. Savimbo often finds it simpler to differentiate incoming communities by legal and economic status in terms of collectivism, sovereignty, and land rights.&#x20;

We do have a significant history in negotiating for better economic terms, contracts, benefit sharing, and equitable power at several levels for and with our communities. But the details of the practice of postcolonialism in general are outside the scope of this chapter. Suffice it to say we negotiate postcolonialism specifically for the aims of planetary science, and that perspective is threaded throughout our conclusions (Funes 2022; IPCC 2023).&#x20;

With humility, as we are not anthropologists, our current practice-based understandings, as a community business partner, screening a number of new grassroots communities every month around the world, are the following:&#x20;

#### Collectivism:&#x20;

Some communities have divided land rights into small parcels with individual decision-makers, while others require collective decision-making. There is a wide spectrum of the ratios of individual vs collective decision-making across the communities we work in, regardless of legal status. Where possible, and when asked, we encourage collectivism because of its association with ecological protection (Herrera Arango 2018; Yang et al. 2024). It is unquestionably more work to get a collective decision made, but the benefits far outweigh the costs, from our perspective. One of the immediate benefits is including women and elders, who often are not front-and-center in early negotiations with outsiders. For us, this significantly derisks projects and makes economics more stable and equitable.&#x20;

#### Sovereignty:&#x20;

The difference between most local communities and Indigenous Peoples and some AfroDescendant and tribal cultures is national sovereignty under international law (International Labour Office 2003; Organización Internacional del Trabajo Oficina Regional para América Latina y el Caribe 2009). These communities are equal to, and often in cultural and economic competition with, modern nation-states, also called ‘host nations’, that surround or border them. Sometimes they represent large parts of the population of a country. Simply looking at economic status misses important legal, economic, rights, and power differentiators at play that factor strongly into the communities’ economic decision-making, reliance on money for subsistence, land rights, FPIC compliance, and negotiating power.&#x20;

Economically, many local communities are disadvantaged in modern economic structures. (While not serfs in a legal sense, many local communities occupy neo-feudal economic positions: formally free, but structurally dependent and value-constrained.) In contrast, Indigenous Peoples and their contemporaries are hybrid, plural, and strategic in their economic choices—not categorically outside modernity, but selective and utilitarian in their engagement with its paradigms. Both may experience low socioeconomic status, but this should not be assumed, as it is an independent factor in communities’ self-perceptions of “wealth” and their access to natural capital.

#### Land rights&#x20;

Land rights must be considered a separate, but interconnected, data layer from climate action data. Frequently conflated, land control, rights to sale of ecological credits without double-counting, and benefit-sharing rights should be analytically separated.&#x20;

Control over land does not automatically imply uncontested control over carbon, biodiversity, or other ecosystem-service revenues. In practice, project feasibility depends not only on biophysical potential but on whether communities hold the legal authority, contractual standing, and governance capacity to enter long-term environmental transactions. For smallholder and Indigenous agroforestry, this means that rights analysis should include at least five layers: customary land rights, legal land rights, rights to environmental attributes, internal community governance and consent, and benefit-sharing arrangements. This is not a secondary social consideration but a core project-design variable, since weak rights alignment can undermine permanence, claims validity, and equitable distribution.

For simplicity, we’ll just look at basic legal land rights, divided into three categories: customary, tenure, and title-based rights.&#x20;

This is critical for negotiating climate payments from agroforestry systems (AFS). Even when grassroots owners have title, most smallfarmers can only sell via insetting due to economies of scale. Indigenous Peoples often only have tenure or territorial rights instead of title rights, and might not have control over mineral, water, or air rights on their customary territory, which can block or disrupt projects if government extraction overrides them. Only title holders can certify and sell on exchanges, and tenure rights are often not long enough to negotiate a sale due to certifier restrictions (30-100 year contract length). Conflicting land claims at different governing levels, and out-of-date or double-titling are common, especially in zones with a history of conflict and displacement due to violence.&#x20;

This means that existing land-rights inequity directly transfers into climate markets inequity.  Our protocols are designed and negotiated to operate in one-hectare parcels, specifically to include smallfarmers.  But the biggest structural barrier to agroforestry adoption and spread among our target populations is unquestionably the land rights data layer.&#x20;

For a more comprehensive, qualified, and updated understanding of these three factors, we strongly recommend the work of Rights and Resources Initiative, which is a fast-moving, contemporary organization at the forefront of defining equity and negotiating land rights around the world [(Rights and Resources Initiative)(Rights and Resources Initiative)](https://sciwheel.com/work/citation?ids=18625540\&pre=\&suf=\&sa=0). In particular, their work on the Land Rights Standard is widely regarded by many communities we work with as one of their most representative and informed negotiators and definitive operating principles.&#x20;

Grassroots economics

Carbon was the wrong initial transaction point for these populations for two reasons (directly related to the opportunities for financial fraud and market intermediation).&#x20;

First, it is invisible; no one can directly visualize a ton of carbon, only the organic material housing it. Invisibility creates verification gaps that fraud exploits. Second, it has extended timelines (2-5 years for project certification and credit sale, requiring up-front investing and land title) [(Buys et al. 2006)](https://sciwheel.com/work/citation?ids=14165620\&pre=\&suf=\&sa=0). Extended timelines require upfront investment that intermediaries capture, exacerbating inequities already rooted in unequal access to capital.

Carbon simply does not respect or optimize the pragmatism and intelligence of grassroots economics. Small farmers and Indigenous People have tangible sciences (different expectations of epistemological knowledge) and economics that occur in dramatically shortened timescales (shorter-term economics) [(Buys et al. 2006; Hale 2006; Foley 2018; Boogaard 2021; Global Forest Coalition 2024)](https://sciwheel.com/work/citation?ids=14165620,16545595,16473535,2551241,18625554\&pre=\&pre=\&pre=\&pre=\&pre=\&suf=\&suf=\&suf=\&suf=\&suf=\&sa=0,0,0,0,0). These are cultural preferences, no less valuable paradigms than industrial world finance paradigms. And, Savimbo would argue vehemently, these preferences are perhaps more aligned with the outcomes we actually want.&#x20;

So the most important people in the world, for our purposes, are the least economically incentivized to work on the problem. But paradoxically, their incentives might be the most aligned with its actual solution.<br>

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