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ABSTRACT. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is primarily a market-based mechanism for achieving the effective reduction of carbon emissions from forests. Increasingly, however, concerns are being raised about the implications of REDD+ for equity, including the importance of equity for achieving effective carbon emission reductions from forests. Equity is a multifaceted concept that is understood differently by different actors and at different scales, and public discourse helps determine which equity concerns reach the national policy agenda. Results from a comparative media analysis of REDD+ public discourse in four countries show that policy makers focus more on international than national equity concerns, and that they neglect both the need for increased participation in decision making and recognition of local and indigenous rights. To move from addressing the symptoms to addressing the causes of inequality in REDD+, policy actors need to address issues related to contextual equity, that is, the social and political root causes of inequality.

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This paper investigates public discourses on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) across seven countries to assess whether they support policy reforms. The paper argues that transformational discourses have at least one of the following characteristics: they advocate specific policy reforms that address drivers of deforestation and forest degradation; they take into account potential risks of a REDD+ mechanism; they go beyond technocratic solutions to reduce emissions; they explicitly challenge existing power relations that support drivers of deforestation. The evidence indicates the predominance of win-win storylines, a lack of engagement by state actors with debates on potential negative socioeconomic outcomes of REDD+ and little attention to the drivers of deforestation. The paper concludes that in order to achieve a shift towards transformational discourse, reformist policy actors and the media need to engage dominant policy actors in debates about how to reduce pressure on forest.

University. We also would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. We wish to dedicate this work to the memory of Bryan Bushley, a colleague and friend whom we all sorely miss.