Approach
One thread, four moments
Where we come from
Cap Impact was founded in 2016 as CAP!, the Centre for Advocacy Practices, on a simple premise: expertise in political influence should not be reserved for those who can afford it.
Ten years on, the record speaks. More than a million signatures gathered against glyphosate in six months. Three hundred professionals trained in advocacy and negotiation. Four hundred Congolese organisations brought into a single network around the REDD+ process. Decriminalisations won, rights recognised, funding unlocked.
In 2026 we narrowed the terrain. The intersection of climate and human rights is where our work is most useful, and that is where we want to concentrate our efforts. Advocacy has not disappeared: it has become one of three uses of a single competence, alongside safeguards and evaluation.
This is a narrowing of focus, not a change of trade.
One thread
Our work comes down to a single question: what climate and environmental action changes for the people living on the territories concerned, and what institutions do with that. We are at the core of this question at every stage.
- Before the project, our safeguards expertise lets you anticipate.
- Throughout implementation, we work to make partnership and direct funding genuinely workable.
- Mid-term and at the end of a programme, evaluation establishes what actually happened.
- Beyond the project, advocacy support carries those findings to decision-makers.
These are not four trades. It is one competence, exercised at different points in a programme's life.
Do no harm — and do better
Safeguards are not declared. They are built.
“Do no harm” is the phrase the sector has used for a long time, and it still holds. It protects people, and it protects the institution: a project that anticipates its effects on communities moves faster than one that discovers them halfway through.
“Do better” begins where compliance stops. It means moving decisions and resources towards the people who live on the territory, building accountability that runs both ways, and accepting that the result will be contested. It is more ambitious, it takes longer, and it is what separates a programme that holds from a programme that passes.
We work on both. The first is enforceable and verifiable. The second has to be built.
How we work
We start from the ground, then build the framework. A safeguard system tested with a community organisation produces protection; the reverse produces paperwork.
We design requirements that can be met. The point is not more control, it is obligations a local organisation can genuinely satisfy — and has an interest in satisfying.
We say what we find. A frank evaluation is the only kind worth commissioning. Our clients know they will get our analysis, not their own reflection.
We assemble the team before we introduce it. Every assignment is carried by the combination of skills it calls for, drawn from our network of senior consultants. You know who is involved, on what, and in what capacity before you sign.
We work in French and English, and with interpreters where the working language is neither.
Where we are most useful
We concentrate our work on the intersection of climate, human rights and safeguards, because that is where ten years of practice and fifteen years in the field make a measurable difference.
We leave to others carbon finance engineering, technical MRV and certification, environmental science, communications consulting and programme coordination. That perimeter is a choice, and it is what makes the rest solid.
Our ground rules
Two things we would rather set out from the start.
We do not take funding or partnership advisory work with an organisation whose programme we are evaluating, for the duration of the evaluation and for twelve months afterwards. Any pre-existing relationship is declared in writing before any proposal.
Marine Gauthier also writes, and produces a podcast, on the social consequences of international climate policy. That work is free and at times critical of institutions that are also potential clients. Where an assignment concerns an organisation or an instrument she has commented on publicly, she discloses it to the client before engaging. It is a guarantee of independence, and our clients know it before they sign.
The name
CAP is a name from 2016 — Centre d'Accompagnement du Plaidoyer, the Centre for Advocacy Practices. We kept the three letters because ten years of work sit behind them. The philosophy that shaped the 2026 repositioning is ubuntu — I am because we are. It says what we believe well enough: a programme is worth what it produces for the people it touches, and an institution always gains by working with those it affects.