By Ajong Mbapndah L
Morocco’s High Atlas Foundation (HAF) has used the global stage at UNCCD COP17 in Mongolia to make a forceful case for putting local communities—particularly women, young people and farming families—at the center of land restoration, climate finance and the rapidly expanding carbon credit market.
Delivering HAF’s key messages in Ulaanbaatar on August 21, Vice President Souad Agnaou argued that sustainable restoration and effective climate action will remain elusive unless communities are empowered to identify, design, manage and benefit from projects that directly affect their land, livelihoods and natural resources.
Agnaou said the international community must move beyond top-down climate interventions and instead invest at scale in locally conceived initiatives that respond to the different realities of communities.
“Sustainable restoration and climate actions require maximizing opportunities from locality to locality, that communities identify and implement,” Agnaou said.
She emphasized the importance of training people who can facilitate inclusive planning involving women, youth and other community members, enabling them to develop enterprises and projects that simultaneously improve livelihoods, environmental protection, education and health.
Morocco’s Community Development Experience
Drawing on Morocco’s experience, Agnaou said the country provides significant space for locally driven development initiatives, but acknowledged that much more needs to be done—with greater urgency—to empower communities and connect their priorities with national and international investment.
The HAF message at COP17 stresses that communities should not simply be beneficiaries of projects designed elsewhere. Instead, they should participate from the earliest stages of identifying priorities and developing proposals through implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
Agnaou called for climate and development financing mechanisms that allow projects to be co-created directly with communities.
Such an approach, she argued, would increase the likelihood that investments deliver meaningful and lasting benefits while strengthening local ownership.
Rethinking Carbon Credits
One of HAF’s strongest messages at COP17 concerns the future of carbon offset credits and how the benefits of the growing carbon market are distributed.
The Foundation is advocating a model that places women, youth and farming families at the heart of carbon-credit initiatives, rather than treating communities simply as locations where carbon-offset projects are implemented.
HAF’s approach includes the planting of endemic fruit and forestry tree varieties, locally managed water infrastructure designed to maximize conservation and utility, intercultural dialogue, opportunities for people living in arid and semi-arid environments, and stronger South-South cooperation.
The Foundation wants existing and emerging carbon-credit standards, regulatory frameworks and major global purchasers of credits to recognize and reward these broader social and developmental benefits.
According to HAF, carbon markets should be structured so that the people doing the work of restoring landscapes and protecting natural resources retain a meaningful share of the economic value generated.
The Foundation further argues that as much carbon-credit revenue as possible should be reinvested in projects identified and managed by communities themselves.
Such investments could help ensure that women, young people, landless populations, farming families and historically marginalized groups benefit from the expanding climate-finance economy rather than being left on its margins.
Climate Crisis Cannot Be Separated From Inequality
HAF also used its COP17 platform to draw a direct connection between environmental degradation and persistent social and economic inequality.
Agnaou argued that global environmental unsustainability is deeply rooted in inequality both within countries and between societies.
Addressing climate change, therefore, cannot be reduced to technical interventions, carbon calculations or international declarations. It must also confront the economic and social conditions that leave millions of people without sufficient resources or influence over decisions affecting their futures.
“The climate crisis and the preservation of our best future cannot be sustainably addressed while the people of the world are intensely socially and economically stratified,” Agnaou said.
HAF is consequently calling for stronger leadership across government, business and civil society that places human well-being at the heart of climate and development decision-making.
Measuring COP17 by Changes in People’s Lives
For the High Atlas Foundation, the ultimate test of COP17 will not simply be the number of commitments announced or agreements reached in Mongolia.
Success, Agnaou said, should be measured by what happens after delegates return home—and particularly by whether international commitments produce measurable improvements in communities confronting drought, land degradation, poverty and climate vulnerability.
HAF says several practical questions should guide that assessment: Can farming families successfully withstand increasingly severe drought? Are women and young people gaining the resources and opportunities to develop stronger economic and climate initiatives? Are communities themselves restoring the degraded lands on which they depend? And do local people have a meaningful voice in decisions concerning land and natural resources?
These questions, the Foundation argues, should become central indicators for assessing whether international climate and land-restoration commitments are delivering tangible results.
From Global Commitments to Local Transformation
HAF’s message from Ulaanbaatar ultimately centers on closing one of the enduring gaps in global climate policy—the distance between ambitious international commitments and the everyday realities of communities on the front lines of environmental degradation.
The Foundation is calling for climate financing that is more accessible at the grassroots level, long-term partnerships that strengthen rather than bypass communities, and investment models that recognize local people as partners and decision-makers.
For HAF, the billions of dollars flowing into climate action, carbon markets and land restoration will achieve their greatest impact when communities have the skills, resources and authority to determine how those investments address their priorities.
“National and international commitments only become meaningful when they fully and widely translate into local community projects, accessible financing, long-term partnerships, and major results that people everywhere transformatively experience,” Agnaou said.
That message places a clear challenge before COP17 and the broader international climate community: global ambitions must ultimately be judged locally—by restored land, stronger livelihoods, resilient farming families and communities empowered to shape their own futures.
