Bangkok-based · Southeast Asia & Global
Social safeguards, FPIC, and community engagement consulting for conservation and nature finance
Ground Truth Advisory is a specialist social safeguards practice. We bring field-tested, community-centered methods to conservation organizations, biodiversity credit developers, and corporations navigating Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and development finance safeguard requirements.
We listen to the people whose land and livelihoods are closest to the project before designing the assessment. Their knowledge, priorities, and concerns shape the methodology before any compliance framework is applied.
We design safeguards for material change in how communities are treated, not just procedural compliance. Our approach draws on environmental justice frameworks that address distributional, procedural, and recognition dimensions.
We conduct both social and ecological research, employing qualitative and quantitative methods across disciplines. The strongest findings come from this kind of rigorous, interdisciplinary lens, and we build every assessment around it.
Every engagement produces a specific, named product with a clear scope, timeline, and compliance standard. You know exactly what you will receive.
We are clear about the scope and constraints of every assessment, including where our own expertise is still developing. Credibility comes from accuracy and transparency.
The people living alongside conservation projects are not beneficiaries to be consulted. They are active experts with knowledge that shapes better outcomes. They will be treated, compensated, and valued as such in all work we do.
Conservation organizations lose funding rounds because proposals lack credible social safeguards components. Funders like the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Darwin Initiative, and Global Environment Facility increasingly reject applications without clear community engagement strategies.
Complete proposal packages with embedded social safeguards: Theory of Change development, logframes, and community engagement plans that funders expect. Monthly fundraising retainers available for conservation organizations.
Conservation projects report monitoring data that tracks ecological indicators but cannot demonstrate whether social safeguards are functioning. Funders and verifiers are noticing.
Monitoring frameworks that integrate safeguards indicators alongside ecological metrics. Participatory monitoring and evaluation protocols with community-led indicators, combined with environmental and social management packages that track whether safeguards produce real outcomes.
Corporations facing Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures or EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive requirements discover that their environmental consultants cannot produce the community dependency and impact assessments these frameworks require.
The social assessment modules that environmental consultants cannot provide: community dependency mapping, engagement plans, consent frameworks, and social risk registers formatted for TNFD LEAP, CSRD ESRS E4, and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive compliance.
Conservation and development projects affect communities unevenly. Women, ethnic minorities, Indigenous peoples, and households dependent on natural resources bear disproportionate costs when safeguards are treated as paperwork rather than protection. Projects stall or lose funding when social risk assessments fail to identify who is vulnerable and why.
Community-level social risk assessments that identify vulnerable groups, map how project activities distribute costs and benefits across households, and produce the safeguarding documentation that funders require. We build frameworks to World Bank, IFC, ADB, and Green Climate Fund standards, with grievance mechanisms communities can actually use.
Conservation organizations and credit developers need their field teams trained in community engagement, but generic corporate responsibility training does not address the specific requirements of consent processes or biodiversity safeguards.
Workshops on community engagement for nature disclosure, consent process implementation for biodiversity credit projects, and social safeguards for conservation practitioners. Licensed curricula available for organizations building internal capacity.
Conservation and development projects increasingly require community-level social assessment, consent processes, and human rights due diligence. These are specialized skills that most teams do not carry in-house.
Ground Truth Advisory delivers that work. Community engagement assessments, safeguard frameworks, and compliance documentation in formats that funders, crediting bodies, and corporate reporting standards accept. Defined scope, defined timelines, defined pricing.
PhD candidate in Environmental Studies with expertise in environmental justice and political ecology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Over a decade of conservation practice spanning Southeast Asia and the Americas, including 33 months of participatory action research with farming communities in Southern Thailand. MS in Global Conservation Leadership from Colorado State University. Certified in CMP Open Standards, conflict management, and program management. Explorers Club inductee, 2025.
Project manager and researcher with nearly four years leading community livelihood and conservation projects in Thailand. MA in Social Innovation and Sustainability from Thammasat University. Two years as a research assistant facilitating social science data collection in farming communities for the University of Colorado Boulder. Former secretariat assistant for the ASEAN Environmental Rights Working Group and communications manager for an environmental law research institute. Thai (full professional), English (professional working).
Operations manager with over two years of experience in conservation field operations, education programming, and community outreach in Thailand. BA in French Studies from Ramkhamhaeng University. Background in field logistics, administrative coordination, and working directly with farming communities around protected areas. EFSET C2 English certified. Thai (native), English (proficient), French (elementary).
Prachuap Khiri Khan, Thailand
Farming communities adjacent to Kuiburi National Park faced crop raiding, property damage, and physical danger from wild elephants with minimal input into coexistence governance. We conducted 33 months of participatory action research: 40 semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping, and community workshops documenting how conservation governance distributed costs and benefits.
Outcome: Comprehensive environmental justice assessment, 3 peer-review publications, and assessments for local NGO partner on program evaluation, participant justice outcomes, and vulnerability assessment.
Thailand
Bring the Elephant Home & Wildlife Alliance – Co-Investigator/Collaborator
Developed and tested a multidimensional framework to assess the feasibility of reintroducing captive Asian elephants to the wild. The research integrated behavioral assessments of captive elephants, habitat suitability modeling, and extensive interviews with mahouts and elephant owners from Indigenous communities and sanctuaries. A scoring system based on behavioral similarity to wild elephants was piloted across 16 individuals. Socioeconomic and cultural data from 30 in-depth interviews and 208 household surveys informed a comparative analysis of rewilding scenarios balancing elephant welfare, ecological integrity, and human livelihoods.
Outcome: Replicable, community-engaged toolkit for ethically and ecologically responsible elephant rewilding. Findings highlight the roles of ownership models, local environmental knowledge, and bonded cow-calf groups in shaping rewilding success.
New York State, USA
University of Colorado Boulder & The Nature Conservancy – Co-Investigator/Collaborator
Conducted qualitative research on the equity implications of sea-level rise adaptation strategies in coastal and riverine communities. Responsibilities included designing and conducting stakeholder interviews, thematic coding and analysis, and contributing to two academic publications. The project identified the unintended social consequences of climate adaptation programs, such as flood buyouts and managed retreat, and proposed a justice-centered evaluation framework.
Outcome: Transferable toolkit to assess equity and procedural fairness in adaptation planning, since adapted for human-wildlife conflict contexts through doctoral research.
Publications: PLOS Climate (2023) · Global Environmental Change (2024)
Multi-country, Asia
USFWS Project – Co-Investigator/Collaborator
Interdisciplinary, multi-country study investigating how agroecological systems can transition from conflict-prone to coexistence-focused regimes by understanding and shifting human and elephant behavior. The project spans four Asian countries and examines social-ecological dynamics of human-elephant conflict using quantitative surveys, ecological monitoring, behavioral assessments, and agent-based modeling. Responsibilities included developing indicators of community tolerance, designing experimental cropping interventions, and supporting participatory research with farming communities.
Outcome: Predictive model for resilience in agroecosystems and a generalizable framework for applying coexistence strategies across human-wildlife conflict contexts.
The TNFD LEAP framework requires companies to assess dependencies and impacts on communities, but most implementation guides skip the methodology. Here's what the Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare stages actually demand for social assessment.
Verra SD VISta, CCB Standards, and the Biodiversity Credit Alliance Principles all require FPIC, but their specific requirements differ in ways that affect how you design your consent process. A side-by-side comparison.
After 33 months of field research in southern Thailand and consulting on safeguards across the region, the patterns of failure are consistent. Five structural reasons safeguards documents don't translate to community outcomes.
Describe your project and timeline.
We scope engagements within 48 hours
and provide a fixed-price proposal within one week.
Bangkok, Thailand
ICT / GMT+7
tylernuckols@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/tyler-nuckols
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Ground Truth Advisory
