Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is a principle that indigenous communities have the right to give or withhold consent to projects that may affect their lands. It involves meaningful participation and decision making according to customary systems. FPIC is relevant for projects involving infrastructure, natural resources and research. When implemented properly, it can help communities negotiate benefits and block unacceptable projects. However, ensuring FPIC is implemented fairly presents challenges around power balances, representation, and verification. Carbon projects should fully incorporate FPIC principles to respect land rights and ensure equitable benefit sharing.

1. Free & Prior Informed Consent
(FPIC) in Carbon Projects
Delia C. Catacutan
ICRAF, Nairobi, Kenya

2. What is FPIC?
• A principle that a community has the right to give or withhold its consent
to proposed undertaking that may affect the lands they customarily own,
occupy or otherwise use.
• A practice of informed, non-coercive negotiations between researchers,
development agencies, investors, companies or governments and
indigenous peoples prior to any undertaking, research, development or
business on their customary lands.
• A right to allow for indigenous peoples to reach consensus and make
decisions according to their customary systems of decision-making.
• A tool for achieving greater equity and a natural pathway to a co-
management role for local communities in large development projects.

3. FPIC
A decision-making process that:
Free: does not involve coercion/manipulation
Prior: is made before activities are undertaken
Informed: is founded upon an understanding of the
full range of issues and potential impacts
Consent: involves granting or withholding consent –
saying ‘Yes Yes’ or ‘No No’ to an activity,
programme or policy
Weitzner 2006

4. What does the FPIC principle consist
of?
• Information about, and consultation on any
proposed initiative and its likely impacts
• Meaningful, free and voluntary participation
of indigenous peoples
• Representation of indigenous institutions

5. Objective of FPIC
To secure the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities to self-
determination, control access to their land and natural resources, and
share in the benefits when these are utilized by others.
Where is FPIC relevant?
When governments make regulatory decisions, for example, allowing
logging in forests traditionally occupied by indigenous peoples, or
displacing riverside communities in order to construct a large hydropower
dam (WRI 2005)
In infrastructure planning from the building of roads that traverse through
ancestral domains, to tourism development decisions such as providing
access to sites considered sacred by tribal people.
In making decisions about bioprospecting for genetic resources as it is for
making choices about locating major energy projects, from power plants
to pipelines.

6. Benefits of FPIC requirement
• Enables affected people to negotiate more favorable relocation terms,
including legally binding provisions on compensation, support for new
housing, and necessary infrastructure for shelter, livelihoods and
education.
• Allow communities to negotiate fair, equitable, and enforceable terms
of revenue- and other benefit- sharing.
• The inclusion of FPIC as a legal condition for financing, investment, or
regulatory decisions could become a critical means to make poverty
alleviation programs more sustainable (Goodland 2004; Kamijyo 2004).
• Block unacceptable exploration and investments in ancestral domains.

7. Accomplishments
By insisting on their right to FPIC, forest peoples in Indonesia have been
able to block plantations and dams planned for their lands and have been
able to negotiate fairer deals with palm oil developers, loggers and local
government land use planners.
The Kalahan forest people in the Philippines was able to block the
establishment of major mining exploration in the forest.
The use of FPIC is now expanded to non-indigenous lands or ancestral
domains. Compliance to ‘ethical issues’ in R&D interventions are now
based on FPIC principle.

8. FPIC as key principle in national and
international law and jurisprudence
• The Philippines (Congress of the Philippines 1997) and Australia
(Commonwealth of Australia 1976: Sections 66-78) have enacted laws
requiring that FPIC be obtained by the government for projects within the
ancestral domains.
• The World Commission on Dams (WCD 2000:xxxiv-xxxv,98-112) and the
Extractive Industries Review (World Bank Group 2003 Executive Summary:
2-3, Volume 2:29-33, 47-50; MacKay 2004) of the World Bank have
recommended the adoption of FPIC in making decisions about dams and
oil, gas, and mining projects.
• FPIC has been acknowledged in the Convention on Biological Diversity,
with regard to access to and benefit-sharing of genetic resources (Perrault
2004: 22; Casas 2004:2728).
• UN Declaration on the rights of IPs (Sub-Commission resolution 1994/45).
• UN agencies and multi-lateral organizations have either institutionalized
FPIC requirement in financing projects, while others are on adhoc basis.
• And more recently, in REDD and related initiatives

9. Pitfalls and obstacles of FPIC
Power is unbalanced!
As a non-litigation tool for conflict resolution, FPIC failed
to resolve conflict between local people and the Sawit
Plantation Development in Sumatra. Almost 7 million has
of Sumatran swamp-peat forest would be converted to
Sawit-palm oil plantation, despite strong opposition from
local people—the conflict has resulted to violence and
human rights violations.

10. Continue….
 Identifying who should verify that the right to FPIC has been respected
and how this should be done. Making free, prior and informed consent
work: challenges and prospects for indigenous peoples (FPP, June 2007),
identifies some experiences with third-party audits for the Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) in Indonesia and suggests that verifiers have
been unduly lenient about what constitutes adequate compliance,
thereby weakening any leverage that communities may gain from
companies’ obligations to respect their rights and priorities.
 Lack of standard FPIC procedures (Case in the Philippines in 2001)
 Publication of FPIC verification procedures has also proven problematic by
bribes and corruption.
 Another challenge for indigenous peoples in their efforts to exercise their
right to FPIC is to ensure that their systems of decision-making are
genuinely representative and made in ways that are inclusive of, and
accountable to members of their communities.

11. Manupali Watershed, Philippines 2001
• ICRAF researchers have been working in the watershed since 1994
with very good working relationship with indigenous communities.
• Researchers have had customary rituals every time an interview, field
visit and an experiment is made, and when new researchers or visitors
arrive.
• In 2000, the indigenous community filed a case against the DENR for
failure to comply with FPIC for a World Bank project. The Tribal Chief
penalized everyone working in the watershed, including ICRAF.
• ICRAF offered to be subjected to the FPIC process where there was
none before.
• ICRAF incurred the costs for socio-cultural acceptability assessment
with a huge ritual witnessed by the entire community.
• A report was to be written by the community and a MoA was to be
prepared by both parties, but the report was never done!
• The World Bank project was withdrawn, creating division within the
indigenous community, as some leaders were in-favor of the WB
project.

12. Important remaining questions
• How is ‘free’ defined in practice?
• How far ahead does ‘prior’ mean?
• What are the formal terms of ‘informed consent’?
• What is the role of customary law in FPIC?
• In a diverse community, how is consent given and who gives the
consent?
• Is a majority enough or is full consensus required? Is a written,
legally binding agreement necessary?
• How is FPIC verified? Does the government verify it? or is oversight
by an independent party necessary?
• In implementing FPIC, how do we ensure a balance between the
state, the general public interest, and affected community interests,
particularly in the distribution of benefits?

13. Why FPIC in carbon projects?
• Much of the emissions and sequestration issues
relate to land, and access to land (with or without
forest cover).
• With expectations of new economic value linked
to the maintenance, avoided disappearance or
restoration of terrestrial C stocks, the issues of
control over land obtained a new dimension.
• Most carbon projects especially those under the
REDD (+) mechanism are in common lands, state
owned/controlled and community managed
areas, ancestral domains, or in contested areas
where land and property rights are ambiguous.

14. Why FPIC in carbon projects
• Especially where groups have unequal access to information, forms of
speculation came into play, with some actors‘’ promising good prices to
local governments and communities.
• Carbon rights are linked to land and property rights. Who has the right to
sell carbon, and benefit from it?
• Carbon has thus become a ‘rights’ issue.
• Since FPIC is a rights-based approach to resource
management and conflict resolution, it has become more
important in carbon projects.
• It is unethical, morally incorrect and in some cases, illegal to
implement carbon projects without securing FPIC.

15. Principles adopted in REDD
• Principle 1: Rights to lands, territories and resources are recognized
and respected by the REDD+ program
• Principle 2: The benefits of the REDD+ program are shared equitably
among all relevant rights holders and stakeholders.
• Principle 3: The REDD+ program improves long‐term livelihood
security and well‐being of indigenous peoples and local communities
with special attention to the most vulnerable people.
• Principle 4: The REDD+ program contributes to broader sustainable
development and good governance objectives.
• Principle 5: The REDD+ program maintains and enhances biodiversity
and ecosystem services.
• Principle 6: All relevant rights holders and stakeholders participate
fully and effectively in the REDD+ program.
• Principle 7: All rights holders and stakeholders have timely access to
appropriate and accurate information to enable informed
decision‐making and good governance of the REDD+ program.
• Principle 8: The REDD+ program complies with applicable local and
national laws and international treaties, conventions and
agreements.

16. Conclusion/recommendations …
• Carbon projects should not only embrace FPIC as
a design principle, but should seriously
implement and allocate funds for it.
• Design teams of carbon projects should include
FPIC in project design missions.
• FPIC should be linked to EIA or SIA processes.
• 3rd party verification should be transparent and
strictly enforced.
• Effective communication is crucial in FPIC process

17. References/Readings
• International workshop on methodologies regarding FPIC and indigenous peoples,, New York, 17-19
January 2005. PFII/2005/WS.2/10. Unedited version
• Parshuram Tamang. 2005. Workshop on FPIC and Indigenous Peoples, organized by the Secretariat of
UNPFII, 17-19 January 2005,UN Headquarter, New York, USA.
• Viviane Weitzner . 2006. Free, Prior and Informed Consent: A Brief Overview . Resource Extraction and
Local Communities Forum. April 3 4, 2006.Toronto .
• Empowering Communities Through Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. http//Home / Publications / People
& Ecosystems / World Resources 2005 -- The Wealth of the Poor: Managing ecosystems to fight poverty
• Kamijyo, M. 2004. The Equator Principles?: Improved Social Responsibility in the Private Finance Sector.
Sustainable Development Law and Policy, Special Issue: Prior Informed Consent IV(2):35-39.
• Tebtebba (Indigenous Peoples International Centre for Policy Research and Education). 2002. Indigenous
Peoples and Sustainable Development. Multi Stakeholder Dialogue of the WWSD PrepCom 2, New York,
January 28-February 8, 2002. Baguio City, The Philippines: Tebtebba
• Goodland, R. 2004. Free, and Prior Informed Consent and the World Bank Group. Sustainable
Development Law and Policy, Special Issue: Prior Informed Consent IV(2):66-74.
• Congress of the Philippines. 1997. The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997.? In A Divided Court: Case Materials
from the Constitutional Challenge to the Indigenous Peoples? Rights Act of 1997, ed. A. Ballesteros. Quezon City,
The Philippines: Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan. Online at
http://www.ncip.gov.ph/downloads/philippines-ipra-1999-en.pdf.
• Jonathan Sohn. 2007. Development without conflict. WRI.