Community-Led Dissemination: Strengthening Implementation Through Transparency and Trust

As part of the validation and verification process under Verra’s Jurisdictional and Nested REDD+ (JNR) and AFOLU standards, the COCOMACIA REDD+ Team led a large-scale field dissemination across 124 Afro-Colombian communities in Chocó and Antioquia for the COCOMACIA Community JREDD+ Project. The effort ensured communities were informed about the project's market standard’s technical documents, project progress, and issuance timeline. The COCOMACIA REDD+ Team, led by local community professionals based in Quibdó and supported by COCOMACIA’s governing body, the Junta Directiva, met with the communities to ensure full information sharing about the project process and alignment with the communities. Terra Global supported the preparation of dissemination materials, including geospatial maps, project and monitoring summaries, and outreach documents. The team divided into two groups to reach each of the 124 communities, including those in remote forest areas only accessible by multi-day boat travel. In addition to sharing the ex-post results of monitoring of emission reductions from 2021 to 2023, the maps showed historical deforestation and degradation within each community’s boundaries, helping local leaders plan conservation, restoration, and monitoring activities more effectively.

Communities also received training from the COCOMACIA REDD+ Team on the project’s grievance and redress mechanism and discussed each communities’ on-going project participation, which will be further formalized, along with an expanded benefits allocation plan. In coordination with local leaders, three gestores ambientales (environmental monitors) were elected in each community and trained and equipped with mobile phones to support patrols and report illegal deforestation and poaching issues. The dissemination demonstrated the leadership and growing capacity of the COCOMACIA REDD+ Team, reinforced by strong internal governance. Regular communication, accessible information, and transparency have built trust across the communities within the vast COCOMACIA territory. This community-driven process reflects the collaborative spirit and integrity at the heart of the COCOMACIA Community JREDD+ Project, supported by climate finance deployed by Terra Global, who is also providing on-going technical and business management support.