Local Stakeholder Consultation
Local Stakeholder Consultation: informative feedback from the community
Local Stakeholder Consultation (LSC) meetings are an important part of developing a carbon project and a mandatory requirement to pass the carbon standards certification. This is a meeting where all relevant stakeholders, including technology users and non-users, local authorities, representatives from ministries, NGO’s and INGO’s are invited to discuss the positive and negative impacts of the projects regarding the society, environment and economy.
On the 29th of August, ceramic water filter producing social enterprise and Nexus’ member Hydrologic conducted such a local stakeholder consultation with the technical support of Nexus at Banan district, Battambang province. The participants included villagers, local authorities, NGO’s and representatives from the Ministry of Environment. A Secretary of State at the Ministry of Environment and Designated Operational Entity focal person, His Excellency Mr. Sabo OJANO and Mr. Sophal LEANG, Chief of Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Mitigation Office from the Ministry of Environment also joined the meeting.
The LSC started with Hydrologic’s field officers presenting the benefits of ceramic water filter technology. Next, Nexus Carbon Project Manager Mr. Chanvibol MENG explained the purpose of developing a carbon project and introduced Gold Standard procedures as well as the sustainable development assessment matrix. The second half of the meeting consisted in group discussions and collecting feedback and questions from participants.
Social enterprise Hydrologic works to provide access to clean drinking water to people in Cambodia by selling Ceramic Water Purifiers (CWP). Hydrologic has sold about 320,000 CWP’s between 2010 and 2017. These unites have provided safe drinking water for more than 1.5 million people, and at the same time reducing the demand for water treatment through boiling water with non-renewable biomass. Hydrologic’s ceramic water filter project was first registered as a carbon project with the Gold Standard certification body in 2010. Nexus has been the key technical and financial partner working with Hydrologic to oversee this work. Since 2010, Hydrologic and Nexus successfully certified 470,000 tCO2e (representing tons of CO2 avoided from domestic energy efficient improvement practices).
At the end of the meeting, H.E. Sabo OJANO provided a closing remark and acknowledged Hydrologic’s work for the wellbeing of public health and environment in Cambodia. He thanked the organizers for conducting this stakeholder consultation allowing all participants to learn about the project as well as being involved in the project’s sustainable development assessment. He welcomes this project and recommends Hydrologic to work closely with the Ministry of Rural Development and the Ministry of Environment for bringing the filter to remote areas in Cambodia, where access to clean water is still limited.
– This blog was written by Chanvibol Meng.
Chanvibol Meng is a technical expert with more than 10 years of experience in sustainable development projects in Asia, particularly renewable energy and water supply. He is currently the Carbon Project Manager at Nexus where he provides technical support for carbon development projects, clean energy financing facilities, and other energy and water supply related projects.