Green Accountability Tech Accelerator
Citizen Monitoring with Integrity Action
Welcome to our latest series, where we get to know the teams behind the first cohort of the Green Accountability Technology Accelerator. Four teams joined us in May 2024 to develop tech-enabled tools that enhance citizen oversight and decision making in climate finance and climate action. Today, we’re sitting down with Brittany Stevens of Integrity Action to learn more about what drives her team to build tools for citizen monitoring in Nigeria and beyond.
Climate Collective: Who is Integrity Action? Tell us about your team.
Brittany Stevens: Integrity Action is an NGO that implements citizen monitoring initiatives globally. Our small but dedicated team of seven is based in the UK, and we are passionate about leveraging our citizen-centered accountability model to help combat the climate crisis.
Arran Leonard (our technology lead) and I are spearheading the development of a new citizen monitoring tool for carbon projects. Arran has a background in computer science and environmental science, and brings previous experience with WWF and Greenpeace in Australia and the Pacific. My background is in education and international development, and I have been working for over a decade with NGOs like WaterAid and UNICEF across Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
We are proud to collaborate with a team from the Okomu National Park Carbon Project in Southwest Nigeria to roll out this tool. This includes Africa Carbon Partners (Savo), the National Council on Climate Change, and ANI Foundation, along with the 50,000 local residents from the 45 villages surrounding the park. Together, we are working towards a common goal of ensuring that environmental projects deliver real benefits to the communities they impact.
Climate Collective: What are you building? Tell us about your application.
Brittany Stevens: We are developing a tool to bring the community’s voice into the delivery of carbon projects, ensuring that project implementers and government partners are held accountable to their promises. Citizens will be trained to generate and share rich, real-time data, helping stakeholders understand where problems arise and how they can be solved, especially around benefit-sharing mechanisms. Our goal is to ensure that the community benefits of carbon projects are equitably distributed and that community needs and desires are met.
This tool is modeled on our flagship digital application, DevelopmentCheck, which enables citizens to flag and resolve issues in community development projects. To date, citizens have monitored over $1 billion worth of projects in 20 countries, and 77% of identified problems have been resolved. As these “fixes” accumulate, life starts to visibly improve for communities, while valuable trust is built along the way. We are excited to build on this solution and bring greater trust, transparency, and accountability to the voluntary carbon market.
Climate Collective: How does the citizen monitoring and feedback process ensure carbon projects are delivering benefits that are in line with community needs and desires?
Brittany Stevens: It’s a no-brainer that communities should have a voice in the benefits they receive through carbon projects, yet so often they do not, even with Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) processes. We are hearing this directly from our partners on the ground across sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, who have witnessed unequal and non-transparent benefit-sharing, land right violations, and a general lack of understanding among communities regarding the contractual agreements of carbon projects.
We want to change this. By bringing our tested citizen monitoring model to carbon projects, we can gather feedback and support problem-solving so that communities really are getting what they want and need, and are fairly compensated. Our tool allows for continuous monitoring and feedback, ensuring that issues are identified and addressed promptly, and that projects adapt to meet the evolving needs of the community. This real-time data collection and sharing helps bridge the gap between project developers and community members, fostering transparency and trust.
Climate Collective: What motivates the team at Integrity Action to build tools that enable Green Accountability? How are you achieving this?
Brittany Stevens: At Integrity Action, we are driven by a commitment to shift power dynamics. We know that the climate crisis disproportionately affects the most vulnerable, and this is a huge motivator to co-create Green Accountability tools with local communities, giving them a voice to promote a just transition.
In our consultations with local CSOs in India, Nigeria, and Kenya, we are learning that these groups want a tool to support community engagement, provide timely information and accessible data, foster continuous dialogue to solve problems as they are found, and ensure that the promises made to communities are kept.
To fill this need, we are developing innovative, user-friendly tools that empower citizens to monitor environmental projects and hold stakeholders accountable. By providing communities with a way to share their insights and experiences, and collaboratively solve the problems that are found, we are making sure their voices are heard and their needs are prioritized in climate action strategies.
Climate Collective: What do you need to take this to the next level? How can others get involved?
Brittany Stevens: We’re interested in partnerships that will help us to scale our impact. We are looking for funding, technological support, and collaborations with environmental organizations to expand our reach and enhance our tool’s capabilities. Partnering with tech companies will help us to refine our data collection and analysis processes, while collaborations with NGOs and government bodies and other stakeholders working in carbon markets can facilitate broader adoption and impact across Nigeria and beyond.
If you want to get involved, please reach out to me at brittany.stevens@integrityaction.org. Together, we can ensure that carbon projects are accountable and truly beneficial to the communities they impact.
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About Climate Collective: Climate Collective is an innovation network made up of start ups, investors, scientists, and non-profits putting digital technologies to work for climate and nature at scale. Since 2021, Climate Collective has granted over $4 million towards early-stage tech development, research, and community building for nature and climate action. Learn more at www.climatecollective.org.
About GPSA: The Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) was established by the World Bank’s Board of Directors in 2012 to expand opportunities for civil society and governments to work together to solve pressing governance problems and improve development outcomes. Its “collaborative social accountability” model facilitates engagement of citizens and civil society organizations (CSOs) with public sectors to promote transparency and accountability of government policies and services and improve their performance and responsiveness. The Green Accountability Technology Accelerator is part of the Green Accountability Platform, which the GPSA launched at COP28 to develop an ecosystem of CSOs creating green accountability and supporting citizen action across the climate finance agenda. This includes a global knowledge platform on green accountability managed by WRI, Huairou Commission and SouthSouthNorth. Learn more at https://greenaccountability.org/.
