Social Science Research Council

“Farming Carbon, Sequestering Livelihoods:  The Dynamics of Carbon Markets in Costa Rican Indigenous Communities”

Carbon sequestration credits are a rapidly expanding mechanism for mitigating climate change, increasing forest cover, and improving the livelihoods of rural land managers. Despite its promise as a win-win solution for the global climate and local land users, early experiences with carbon credits have encountered a number of political and methodological difficulties. Carbon credits are often associated with large-scale tree plantations that contribute little to local biodiversity or social benefits for the rural poor; meanwhile, the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol have resulted in a number of unresolved technical challenges in measuring a given landscape’s carbon storage.

This project investigates the social relations of power, knowledge, and technology that are involved in addressing these issues while establishing carbon credits among indigenous smallholders. Using a case study of a carbon credit project in Costa Rica’s Talamanca Indigenous Reserve, this research focuses on how global scientific and development institutions incorporated local land users into global carbon markets, and the ways in which carbon credits have transformed the local socio-economic dynamics of land use and livelihoods in this region. Employing ethnographic, archival, and survey data, through an extensive study of how this carbon project was shaped by the interests of local actors and global institutions, this research explores how carbon credits are both informed by and transformative of local agrarian livelihoods.