Following REDD+: Elite agendas, political temporalities, and the politics of environmental policy failure in Guyana

Abstract

This article follows the journey of Guyana’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programme, from its promising emergence in 2009 as an ambitious, Norway-funded scheme worth US$250m to its near-abandonment by all actors ten years later. It is based on primary fieldwork conducted in Guyana in 2016 and 2017 and a deep review of the theoretical and empirical literature on REDD+ policy processes and the Norway–Guyana agreement. The article shows how, contrary to the mainstream understanding of environmental policy as a disinterested search for a rational, scientific solution, decisions governing REDD+ policy in Guyana were rather shaped throughout by the political objectives and calculations of a small number of opportunistic elite actors. It further shows how even the modest incarnation of REDD+ in Guyana (which ended up resembling more of a results-based aid programme than a Payment for Ecosystem Services scheme) was continually affected by political factors beyond the control of policy managers. These included fluctuations in the world gold price that led to an increase in mining activity and deforestation, the departure of a key international investor which caused the collapse of the flagship REDD+-funded Amaila Falls hydropower project, and legislative gridlock in Guyana generated by a hung Parliament. While not suggesting that REDD+ (or similar Payment for Ecosystem Services schemes) can never work, the article nonetheless illustrates the ways in which political objectives and unforeseen events can overwhelm substantive policy efforts towards fighting climate change. The findings also illustrate the dangers of prioritizing short-term ‘success stories’ over longer-term and more consultative environmental policy processes.

The extractive embrace: shifting expectations of conservation and extraction in the Guiana Shield

“…They note that REDD+ has fueled an 'economy of expectations ' (Borup, 2006in Fletcher et al 2016 that promises elusive future benefits, leading stakeholders and communities to accept small steps in its general direction (Fletcher et al 2018). In like manner, drawing on the vantage point provided by my simultaneous interrogation of two REDD+ participating countries, one of which (Suriname) did not benefit from a bilateral REDD+ agreement, I see the characterization of REDD+ as results-based aid rather than marketbased conservation as justified primarily when the study focuses exclusively on a single country's national reinterpretation of REDD+, as is the case of Guyana and its REDD+ agreement with Norway (Hook 2019a). When analyses are broadened out to include Guyana and Suriname's simultaneous multilateral efforts towards engaging in REDD+ in preparation of the eventual arrival of a global cap-and-trade initiative, REDD+ is shown instead to be a market-based policy that failed in its ascendence.…”

“…In contrast to this view of REDD+ as results-based aid masquerading as a market-based mechanism , Hook 2019a), Fletcher et al (2017 link REDD+'s failure to the inability of conservation markets to replace those tied to extractive activities, such as mining. They note that REDD+ has fueled an 'economy of expectations ' (Borup, 2006in Fletcher et al 2016 that promises elusive future benefits, leading stakeholders and communities to accept small steps in its general direction (Fletcher et al 2018).…”

“…Coupled with the fact that both REDD+ and the international carbon market intended to support it have still not been fully realized, this reinterpretation contributes to REDD+'s lack of results . Supporting this view of REDD+ as mostly results-based aid through a focus on Guyana, Hook (2019a) confirmed that REDD+ was never constructed as a challenge to entrenched deforesting practices, but was driven instead by 'personal relationships and narrow political interests' (Hook 2019a(Hook , 1016.…”

“…The debate on the extent to which REDD+ is failing continues to rage in the critical literatures on conservation and development (Fletcher et al 2016, Lund et al 2017, Massarella et al 2018, environmental policy , Fletcher et al 2017, Hook 2019a) and REDD+, more broadly (Enrici and Hubacek 2018). For , REDD+ is best understood not as a market-based policy but as results-based aid, a distinction that preserves space for the market to be seen a viable option for supporting environmental conservation.…”

“…Differences aside, Hook (2019b) writes that, 'Perhaps the most serious long-term effect of the gulf between the exaggerated rhetoric associated with Guyana's REDD+ programme and the minimal delivery has been the unwarranted raising of expectations' (Hook 2019a(Hook , p. 1019, expectations that Massarella et al (2018) define as 'imagined ideas about the future that are produced, circulated and mediated through social interaction, resulting in social change' (Massarella et al 2018, p. 376). I outline the means for marking out expectations as a site for analysis through Foucauldian discourse analysis and governmentality in the rest of this section.…”