Climate change and deforestation: The evolution of an intersecting policy domain

Abstract

Forests and climate change are increasingly dealt with as interconnected policy issues. Both the potential synergies and policy conflicts between forest conservation and restoration and climate change mitigation now receive sustained and high level attention from academic, policy analysis and practitioner communities across the globe. Arguably the most pronounced contemporary policy manifestation of this is the debate on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (or REDD+) by which governments and private investors from developed countries may compensate actors in tropical forest countries for reducing forest loss beneath an agreed baseline. Problems of climate-forest policies implementation and governance, however, can also be found in countries such as Canada, the USA, the UK and Australia. The future of instruments like REDD+ is uncertain with growing critiques on payment and performance-based mechanisms and unresolved issues of governance, government and accountability. This paper, and the special issue it introduces, illustrates that in the REDD+ debate many contentious issues have resurfaced from past debates. These issues include the participation and rights of local communities in forest policy and management; the relationship between internationally agreed payment and performance-based programmes and formal democratic decision-making processes and structures; the complexities of rights to carbon versus tenure rights; and the ways in which -in spite of the high expectations of both developing and developed countries to combat carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation through the REDD+ mechanism -effective climate-focused forestry policies are seldom found in most tropical forest-rich countries. REDD+ is now very much the dominant discourse at the forest-climate interface, and one with a primary focus on measurability to communicate carbon mitigation results across various levels. However, this serves to disperse and displace, rather than resolve, policy-making on non-carbon values.

Framing national REDD+ benefits, monitoring, governance and finance: A comparative analysis of seven countries

“…Eliasch, 2008;Stern, 2007). Others, however, criticize the neo-liberal logic of REDD+ and the "marketization" of forest carbon, highlighting the adverse equity and effectiveness implications of turning (certain aspects of) forests into commodities (Melo et al, 2014;Vijge, 2015;Stephan, 2012;Corbera, 2012;Van der Hoff et al, 2015;Nielsen, 2014;Buizer et al, 2014;McAfee, 2012). In this article we analyze views among policy actors regarding the preferred funding mechanism for REDD+.…”

“…Due to the centrality of monitoring systems in REDD+ debates, policies and practices, a focus on expert knowledge may empower scientific elites at the cost of those without scientific knowledge or expertise, such as local communities (Gupta et al, 2012Den Besten et al, 2014;Buizer et al, 2014;Gupta et al 2012Gupta et al , 2014. This has also been referred to as a "technicalization" trend (Gupta et al, 2014, p. 182).…”

“…The prime focus of REDD+ accounting activities, funding and REDD+ compensation at the national government level, as well as empirical evidence of REDD+ policy processes, has led a number of scholars to assert that REDD+ can lead to a "centralization" of forest governance, and in some cases reverse the long-standing trend of decentralization of forest governance. This could disempower actors operating at the sub-national level, including local communities (Toni, 2011, p. 67;Phelps et al, 2010;Sandbrook et al, 2010;Vijge and Gupta, 2014;Angelsen et al, 2009;Rantala and Di Gregorio, 2014;Buizer et al, 2014). We assess views among policy actors on whether REDD+ accounting and payments should go through the national government.…”

Not just another variable: untangling the spatialities of power in social–ecological systems

“…Whatever its explicit and implicit assumptions and promises, REDD+ was thus not introduced into a blank and undifferentiated space. Rather, it mapped out problematically across a sociopolitical space that had been shaped by antecedent resource claims, regulatory controls, and spatialized power networks (see also Buizer et al 2014). In this sense, REDD+ is less new than it was presented to be.…”

Modelling the Violation of Restrictions Pertaining to Deforestation in a Given Land Right

“…These declines in forest cover is attributed to be one of the major causes of climate change as a result of lack of adequate forest stock to absorb carbon and greenhouse gases (GHG) [16]. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that 17% of global GHG are as a result of these changes in land use and forest cover loss [17]- [19].…”