What must we do with local stakeholders before our Verra project starts?

Before the project start date you identify and group stakeholders, with attention to women and vulnerable people, prepare a stakeholder engagement plan, consult people under it, and set up a publicly available grievance redress mechanism. Verra's rules list each step.

The steps, in order

1. Identify stakeholders, with special attention to women, marginalised people and vulnerable people, and record how you identified them.
2. Put every stakeholder in at least one group and describe each group.
3. Decide the level of engagement for each group using the classifications in the Standard.
4. Prepare a stakeholder engagement plan on Verra's template. It runs for the life of the project and is updated for each verification.
5. Consult stakeholders under the plan before the start date and throughout the project.
6. Set up a grievance redress mechanism and make it publicly available before the start date.

What the grievance mechanism must do

• Be translated into a language every stakeholder understands, where needed.
• Accept grievances through several channels, including anonymous ones, and acknowledge them within 21 days.
• Resolve them in culturally appropriate, gender-sensitive ways, track each one, and prevent retaliation.
• Allow appeals, and follow three stages: good-faith resolution, mediation by a neutral third party, then arbitration or the courts.

For a factory project

Think about who the project touches: your workers and contractors, neighbours near the plant, the local authority. Keep a stakeholder input tracker, which Verra requires, recording what people said and what you did about it.

Example: a project starting on 1 April

• January: list stakeholders, group them, note how you found them
• February: write the engagement plan and the grievance process
• March: consult each group, log input, publish the grievance contact
• 1 April: project start date, with all of the above in place

An example timeline. The plan itself follows Verra's template.

What Senseible does here

Senseible does not run consultations or write the plan. It keeps your dated fuel and power records from the first bill, which is the baseline your validation and verification body (VVB) will test. It does not register projects or issue credits; Verra and your VVB do.

• Environmental and social risk assessment
• Can an FPO run its own project
• Carbon credits

Sources: Verra, VCS Standard v5.0 (16 December 2025), section 3.17

Last reviewed 2026-11-04. Section numbers are from VCS Standard v5.0; re-check them when Verra publishes a new version.