Institutional approaches for carbon financing in the forest sector: learning lessons for REDD+ from...

Institutional approaches for carbon financing in the forestsector: learning lessons for REDD+ from forest carbonprojects in Uganda

Leo Peskett a,*, Kate Schreckenberg b, Jessica Brown a

aOverseas Development Institute, 111 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JD, UKbUniversity of Southampton, School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK

e n v i r o n m e n t a l s c i e n c e & p o l i c y 1 4 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 2 1 6 – 2 2 9

a r t i c l e i n f o

Published on line 18 November 2010

Keywords:

Carbon forestry

Development

Agroforestry

Collaborative forest management

Rules

a b s t r a c t

With momentum building around the implementation of REDD+ programmes and projects,

questions surrounding the appropriate structuring of institutions are becoming increasingly

important. We examine how the variations in the institutional arrangements related to the

carbon finance aspects of projects affect the opportunities for poor rural producers involved,

or those living in the vicinity of projects. Evidence is drawn from a review of three forest

carbon projects in Uganda, based on qualitative stakeholder interviews and supported by

policy documents and literature. Three aspects of project institutions are discussed; actors,

rules and links to existing external institutions. The findings suggest that supporting such

projects with carbon finance can have some positive impacts on opportunities through

improved monitoring, but that considerable progress needs to be made in balancing the

interests of project financers with those of the communities involved and improving policy

coordination with existing institutions external to projects. We suggest that these lessons

are particularly transferable to the growing number of REDD+ approaches that are strongly

performance based or funded through carbon markets, and implemented through direct

payment systems between buyers and local producer groups or individuals.

# 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

avai lable at www.sc iencedi rec t .com

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci

1. Introduction

REDD+ is a mechanism being negotiated through the United

Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

to mitigate climate change by compensating developing

countries for demonstrated reduced emissions from deforesta-

tion and forest degradation (Phelps et al., 2010). Since REDD was

introduced on to the UNFCCC agenda in 2006 its scope has been

expanded through successive negotiations to include not only

forest conservation activities, but also forest enhancement and

sustainable management of forests (the so-called REDD+

agenda) (Holloway and Giandomenico, 2009). With growing

* Corresponding author at: Overseas Development Institute, Rural Policy7JD, UK. Tel.: +44 020 7922 0300; fax: +44 020 7922 0399.

E-mail address: [email protected] (L. Peskett).

1462-9011/$ – see front matter # 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservedoi:10.1016/j.envsci.2010.10.004

momentum to develop REDD+ systems, there has been

increasing focus on the appropriate institutional arrangements

for implementing REDD+ at the international, national and

project levels. Some of the key institutional questions that need

to be addressed include how carbon finance can be effectively

distributed in REDD+, how to ensure benefits reach forest

communities, and what the tradeoffs may be between

approaches in areas such as managing finance, and evaluating

greenhouse gas reductions or removals.

Recent studies have looked at some of these issues at the

international level (Meridian Institute, 2009) and increasingly

at the national and subnational levels (Angelsen, 2009). They

and Governance Group, 111 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1

d.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2010.10.004

mailto:[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2010.10.004

1 The CDM is a mechanism which has been developed under theKyoto Protocol. It involves the development of emissions reduc-tion or carbon sequestration projects in developing countries fromwhich certified credits (equivalent to 1 t of carbon dioxide) can bepurchased through emissions trading markets by developed coun-tries seeking to meet their own emissions reductions obligationsunder the Protocol.

e n v i r o n m e n t a l s c i e n c e & p o l i c y 1 4 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 2 1 6 – 2 2 9 217

highlight a range of institutional options, which vary

depending on the way REDD+ is financed, how it fits into an

international climate agreement, at what scale REDD+ policies

and measures are implemented (e.g. by national governments

across the whole forest estate, or in targeted project areas) and

whether they aim to conserve standing forest, or promote

afforestation and reforestation (A/R) (Parker et al., 2009).

Despite a growing literature on these issues, there is still

only a small evidence base related to existing forestry

greenhouse gas reduction or removal projects and, where

evidence does exist, often a lack of systematic lesson learning

for REDD+. This paper focuses on drawing lessons for REDD+

from existing carbon A/R projects. It looks at the institutional

design of three different projects in Uganda, in terms of the

actors involved, the rules under which they operate and their

links to existing external institutions, particularly with regard

to how greenhouse gas emissions and related carbon finance

flows are governed. The question it seeks to address is how

variations in these institutional arrangements, particularly

those required by the carbon finance aspects of the projects,

affect the opportunities for poor rural producers involved, or

those living in the vicinity of projects.

2. Institutional arrangements for forestcarbon projects and opportunities for the ruralpoor

While there are many different notions of institutions within

the political science literature, in this paper we use a rule-

based approach which refers to institutions as ‘‘the rules that

humans use when interacting within a wide variety of

repetitive and structured situations at multiple levels of

analysis’’ (Ostrom, 2008). From this, we break our analysis

into a study of the different participants and actors involved in

projects and the rules that they have created to manage

interactions between them. We also draw from this definition

the need to understand the extent to which actors and rules

are newly created or existing, and the level at which they

operate.

Forest carbon projects (defined here as forestry projects

financed through ‘markets commercializing emission rights

generated through carbon dioxide fixation by forest ecosys-

tems’, after Corbera and Brown, 2008), are a sub-set of

‘Payments for Environmental Services’ (PES) projects which

have developed since the 1990s ‘‘as a mechanism to improve

the efficiency of natural resource management’’ (Pagiola et al.,

2005). The dominant conceptual approach sees PES as a policy

tool to internalise environmental externalities (Pascual et al.,

2010). In theory, incentives are generated through a market in

which users of environmental services channel finance to

service providers (land managers). Most definitions of pay-

ments for environmental services emphasise the require-

ments for a well defined trading commodity, the existence of

at least one ‘buyer’ and one ‘seller’ of the service and the

principle of conditionality (i.e. payment delivered only where

the seller secures provision of the environmental service)

(Landell-Mills and Porras, 2002; Wunder, 2005). These theoret-

ical principles influence the institutions that have emerged

around PES systems and mean that at a general level, many of

the building blocks of projects, and the markets in which

carbon is traded, are similar.

In practice, however, there are large variations in the

details of how institutions have emerged and operate,

particularly at the local scale. Observers argue that this is

partly due to the fact that projects do not conform strictly to

the definition of PES given above (Wunder, 2005) or are not yet

operating in self-sustaining markets (Corbera and Brown,

2008). However, it also relates to the different types of actors

that can come together within projects, under different formal

or informal sets of rules operating at different scales. To date,

only a few projects have been studied in detail (e.g. Asquith

et al., 2002; Boyd, 2002; Nelson and de Jong, 2003; Corbera et al.,

2009; Corbera et al., 2007), but existing literature and publicly

available Project Design Documents (PDDs) highlight some of

the main differences that arise across these three aspects of

institutions. These are summarised in Table 1.

REDD+ programmes are likely to share many of the

institutional features of carbon forestry projects. The most

direct links can be made with REDD+ approaches that include

projects operating in specific geographic areas (as opposed to

broad policy reforms), where implementation occurs through

local PES systems that link direct payments to individual or

group performance and which incorporate existing institu-

tions into their operation. Initial surveys of REDD+ demon-

stration activities and strategies indicate that a number of

countries are approaching REDD+ implementation in this way

(Wertz-Kanounnikoff and Kongphan-Apirak, 2009).

There is a small literature on the opportunities that forest

carbon projects offer for the rural poor, though insights can also

be drawn from the wider PES literature, because forest carbon

projects operate under PES principles. The literature suggests

that whilst PES was developed with efficiency objectives in

mind, it can provide some livelihood benefits (Landell-Mills and

Porras, 2002; Pagiola et al., 2005; Porras et al., 2008; Wunderet al.,

2008). These include: increased income above opportunity costs

(Wunder et al., 2008), increased tenure security (Asquith et al.,

2008; Engel and Palmer, 2008) and increased social capital

(Grieg-Gran et al., 2005). However, high transaction costs related

to complex methodologies may be a barrier to participation

(Grieg-Gran et al., 2005; Pagiola et al., 2005) and indirect effects

can occur such as reduced quality of roads and water, and

increased prices of local produce (Grieg-Gran et al., 2005).

Relatively little is known about the impacts on non-participants

(Tacconi et al., 2009). Whilst there are a number of studies on the

international and national features of carbon markets (e.g.

Olsen and Fenhann, 2008), only a few studies have directly

analysed the links between opportunities and risks arising and

the way institutions function within projects (e.g. Nelson and de

Jong, 2003; Boyd et al., 2007b). Minang et al. (2007) explicitly look

at how principles underlying the operation of the Kyoto

Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism1 (CDM) (such as

Table 1 – The main actors, rules and external institutions operating in carbon forest projects and considered in this study.

Institutional aspect Main components Functions Comments

Actors Participantsa Implement emissions reduction or

sequestration activities and sell

carbon credits

The overlaps between actors and

their roles can be complex and more

actor types can be involved. Projects

can broadly be classified on a

continuum from more private sector

focussed projects with profit

objectives, to more NGO led projects

with more philanthropic objectives

(Boyd et al., 2007b)

Project developers Design, establish and often fund

projects (and can act as participants)

Intermediaries May act as aggregators for

participants, brokers, or providers of

technical services such as monitoring

and verification

Buyers Purchase carbon credits originating

from the activities

Rules Standards Specify the processes that project

developers need to go through in

order to establish carbon forestry

projects, such as project pre-

assessment procedures (e.g.

community consultation), design and

ongoing monitoring

Procedures are similar across

different standards, but the level of

detail required can vary significantly

(Peskett et al., 2007)

Project Design

Documents (PDD)

Incorporate information from project

pre-assessments and establish

processes which are to be used in the

operation of the project, such as

monitoring plans

PDDs are highly standardised but

content varies depending on type of

project and type of methodology

approved by the CDM Executive

Board for calculating carbon dioxide

emissions and removals

Emissions Reduction

Purchase Agreements

(ERPAs)

Comprise the main formal set of

rules used to structure carbon

finance agreements. Specify expected

carbon credit volumes, carbon credit

prices, duration and scheduling of

payments, risk reduction

mechanisms and forest management

systems

ERPAs for forestry projects often

contain similar clauses but can vary

in aspects such as fixed or variable

pricing

Links to external

institutions

Forest, land use and

investment policies

Provide a framework for, and may be

referenced in, project rules; include

policies such as collaborative forest

management agreements or

environmental policies

Most standards stipulate that

projects must follow local policies

and regulations, so these can be

instrumental in areas such as the

design of benefit sharing systems

External actors Provide links to (and potential

coordination with) policies and

processes that may affect efficiency

and impact of the project, e.g. local

environmental officers managing

environmental impact assessment or

district agricultural officers managing

adjacent lands

External actor networks also exist at

the national level (e.g. focal points for

the UNFCCC; foreign direct

investment promotion depts.) and

international level (e.g. donors

influencing implementation of

poverty reduction policies)

a Note that we use the term participant throughout the paper to refer to community members involved in project activities. This is narrower

than the formal definition given in the CDM Glossary of Terms, Version 03.


additionality, leakage and certification) place demands on

community capacity to implement community carbon forestry.

3. Case studies and methods

This study was carried out as part of a larger project funded by

the Ford Foundation to investigate the opportunities that

carbon offset projects offer for poor rural communities

(Peskett et al., 2010). The study focused on Africa because of

the limited number of empirical studies of carbon forestry

projects in Africa (Bozmoski and Hultman, 2010; Skutsch and

Ba, 2010; Minang et al., 2007). Uganda was chosen as a case

study country because it is one of only a few countries in Africa

to have several relatively well advanced carbon forestry

projects in which activities have been implemented for a

number of years.

Three different projects were chosen as case studies: the

Nile Basin Reforestation project (a CDM project implemented

on National Forest Authority (NFA) land); the Trees for Global

Benefit (TGB) project (an NGO-run voluntary carbon project

implemented by farmers on their own private land); and the

Kikonda Forest Reserve project (a voluntary carbon project

implemented by a private company on NFA land). These

projects were chosen because of their length of operation,

their different institutional arrangements in terms of actors,


carbon standards used and land use systems, and because

they all have arrangements to deliver carbon payments

directly to participants.

To understand the different ways in which the projects are

operating and their impacts on participants and non-partici-

pants, we employed a qualitative research process based on

in-depth stakeholder interviews and focus groups (5–15 people

each) conducted in March and April 2009. At the project level

we consulted three main groups of stakeholders:

� People active within each of the carbon offset projects.

These included participants who were planting trees either

individually or in groups to earn carbon credits, local project

staff and on-site project managers (47 people in 5 focus

groups and 24 people in smaller or individual meetings).

� Non-participants living or working in project areas. These

included community members with no particular interests

in the projects as well as occupational groups, such as

charcoal burners and grazers, with specific concerns related

to the projects (36 people in 4 focus groups).

� Government staff providing the external policy, governance

and information context for the projects, such as District

Forest, Agriculture and Environment Officers, local NFA

officials as well as two representatives of another local

carbon offset project (10 people).

The local-level fieldwork was carried out by a team

including the two lead authors (one an expert on REDD+

and the other specialised in community forestry and partici-

patory research approaches) together with a Ugandan re-

searcher, Roselline Nyamutale, specialised in agricultural

development and veterinary science. For field visits to the

Nile Basin and TGB projects, the team was joined by Janet

Fisher, a PhD student from the University of East Anglia, who

was carrying out related PhD fieldwork in Bushenyi District.

Where necessary, interviews and focus groups were translat-

ed by our Ugandan team member or by local project staff. All

interviews were guided by a checklist of questions surround-

ing institutional functions developed through a detailed

review of project documentation, existing research studies

and scoping interviews with researchers and market partici-

pants in the UK. These focused on issues including the policy,

legal and institutional context for the projects, sustainability

of benefit flows, how carbon offsets and benefit flows were

monitored, and potential benefits and opportunity costs for

the poor. Meeting notes were discussed in the evenings and

queries or contradictions checked with other informants.

The lead author undertook 16 further interviews in

Kampala with national staff of the organisations responsible

for negotiating the projects and carbon credit sales as well as

with non-project national stakeholders (Ministry representa-

tives, NGO staff, and private sector organisations). These

interviews were carried out both before and after the project-

level fieldwork and began with a preliminary list of informants

developed through a review of project documents. These

initial interviewees were then asked to recommend other

useful informants. Further telephone interviews and e-mail

exchanges were conducted with international staff involved in

the projects during the reporting and analysis phase of the

work.

4. Carbon market and forest policies inUganda

Carbon offset projects have operated in Uganda since the mid

1990s. By the end of 2009 there was one CDM and four

voluntary forest carbon projects, with around 14 more in

development (UNEP Risoe, 2010; and information from

stakeholders). There are some concerns that, despite numer-

ous CDM capacity building initiatives (Olsen, 2007), the lack of

operational funds and competing existing commitments of

officials and insufficient staff within the Designated National

Authority (DNA—the institution which approves CDM pro-

jects) have caused delays in project progress. This has been

exacerbated by high levels of bureaucracy in the CDM and

relevant UNFCCC bodies within the CDM globally (UNDP,

2006). The National Environmental Management Authority

(NEMA) is also involved in the approval process for CDM

projects, establishing Environmental Impact Assessment

guidelines for use by District Environment Officers in the

approval process. The capacity to carry out such assessments

is generally extremely low, so it is unlikely that the process is

particularly meaningful in practice.

Following the 1995 Constitution of Uganda, reforms in the

forest sector were initiated. This led to the development of a

forest policy, a forest law and a national forest plan, with a

focus on decentralization and collaboration (Kamugisha-

Ruhombe, 2007). The National Forestry and Tree Planting

Act, which turns the policy into legislation, came into force in

2003. It classifies forests under five different management

regimes, of which two are of relevance here: Central Forest

Reserves (CFRs), managed by the NFA and Private forests, owned

and managed by individuals, the private sector or NGOs.

Sections of the Act prohibit certain activities in a Forest

Reserve (e.g. grazing and cultivation of crops), except when

they are permitted in the specific forest management plan.

Despite efforts by the NFA to develop approaches to involving

communities, there is frequent conflict. A strategy of the NFA

to help resolve some of these conflicts has been to establish

Collaborative Forest Management agreements (CFM) which

define rights, roles and responsibilities of communities living

on forest-adjacent land. In practice, the effectiveness of such

arrangements has been hampered by issues such as a lack of

guidelines for benefit sharing, limited implementation capac-

ity, a lack of information for communities and the limited

duration of agreements (EMPAFORM, 2006).

5. Institutional structures and carbon financearrangements in the three projects

5.1. Nile Basin Reforestation project

The Nile Basin Reforestation project began in 2006 and

consists of five small-scale Clean Development Mechanism

(CDM) projects being implemented in the Rwoho Central

Forest Reserve in South Western Uganda. Around 50% of the

9100 ha reserve is available for reforestation with pine trees

(Pinus caribaea 75%) and the indigenous trees Maesopsis eminii

(20%) and Prunus africana (5%). The total emissions reductions

from all five sub-projects are expected to be approximately


260,000 t CO2e by 2017. The overall project is being imple-

mented by the NFA with carbon finance provided by the World

Bank Biocarbon Fund. Although, at the time of study, planting

had occurred in most project sites, only one site had been

registered as a CDM project.

Local communities are involved in the project in two ways.

Formal ‘participants’ collaborate through pre-existing or

newly formed community associations in each of the five

project areas and ‘non-participants’ are involved through

employment on the plantation.

The participant associations enter into a Collaborative

Forest Management agreement with the NFA to manage part

of the reserve. At the time of the study, this had only occurred

in one project site between the NFA and the Rwoho

Environmental Conservation and Protection Association

(RECPA). The agreement gives RECPA members limited access

rights to a 200 ha area of the forest reserve in which they are

currently managing 60 ha as part of the carbon project. RECPA

receives free seedlings and is entitled to carbon and timber

revenues from the area it manages. All local community

members are given restricted access rights to the remaining

natural forest in the CFM agreement areas.

Payments for carbon credits will be made to the NFA based

on annual reports, but corrected after each verification carried

out by a third party (likely to be at 5-yearly intervals). Carbon

finance for communities is generated by sale of credits from

the trees planted on their CFM areas. The tree planting licence

agreements for the CFM areas do not stipulate who is entitled

to benefit from the carbon credits, because appropriate

national regulations have not yet been developed. However,

the current understanding of the Ministry of Lands, Water and

Environment and the NFA is that, whilst the NFA will be the

rights holder and maintains overall responsibility for deliver-

ing carbon credits, the community association (RECPA) is

entitled to the revenue from both the trees and the carbon in

its area. Following third party monitoring RECPA will receive

an initial payment for carbon and further payments after

every subsequent monitoring period. RECPA should receive

around $62,640 in the period to 2017, based on the projected

credit volumes from their CFM area and reasonable assump-

tions about prices.2 This figure does not take account of any

transaction costs which have to be covered from the carbon

revenues and could be deducted from the income received by

the NFA (and possibly passed on to communities as a

reduction in payments).

RECPA’s governance structure includes an internal ‘carbon

group’, membership of which is contingent upon buying up to

six shares to cover maintenance and planting costs. The above

carbon revenues will be divided depending on the number of

shares, with a small proportion going to the wider RECPA

group. If RECPA continues to have its current 73 members,

each member’s annual average carbon payment over the first

ten years, after a one-off joining fee ($53) and the share cost

2 The details of the ERPA are confidential, but it is reasonable toassume prices are similar to the average price for temporary CDMforestry credits of $4.76 per ton CO2e reported in Hamilton et al.(2009).

3 Based on exchange rate at 1 April 2009: US$1 = UGX2115.

($47 per share) have been deducted, is expected to be about $84

per share (Fig. 1).

Permanence is dealt with through a variety of conditions,

such as limitations on when thinning, harvesting and re-

planting can occur, and placing certain requirements on the

NFA up to the end of the contract period (to 2037) relating to

payment of damages and taking corrective actions depending

on the cause of permanence failure. The project will also

generate temporary credits, which expire at the end of the

Commitment Period following the one during which they were

issued.

The project has been implemented under standard CDM

guidelines for small-scale A/R projects. These require social

impacts to be outlined in the Project Design Document. A

number of community consultations were carried out prior to

project implementation and a basic social survey involving 25

participants was conducted, although there is little reference

to how issues raised in this process will be addressed in project

implementation.

5.2. Kikonda Forest Reserve project

The Kikonda forest reserve project is a commercial planta-

tion in a 12,186 ha Central Forest Reserve in central Uganda.

It is being implemented by German-based company, Global-

Woods AG through a local subsidiary called ‘Sustainable Use

of Biomass’ (SUB) and certified by the CarbonFix standard.

The standard is currently being applied to nine projects

worldwide and defines procedures for generating verified

emissions credits from forestry projects, including measur-

ing and monitoring sequestered carbon, implementing

forest management systems and assessing social and

environmental impacts.4 200,000 t CO2 are estimated to

have been sequestered within the first 1000 ha that have so

far been validated. SUB is the originator of carbon credits

from the plantation, being responsible for all plantation

activities (though carried out within the rules specified by

the NFA). They can be sold directly to buyers, through

brokers or online.

The company currently employs around 300 people,

though not all local. It is also collaborating with 300

community members (individual households and institutions

such as the church and school) through a group called the

Kikonda Community Forestry Association (KiCoFa) (Fig. 2).

This was established by the company in 2005 to encourage tree

planting in the vicinity of the plantation, facilitate training and

improve information dissemination (KiCoFa Constitution,

cited in Steiss, 2007). The only requirement for membership

was that farmers owned land for planting and showed a

capability and interest in managing trees. KiCoFa is governed

by an elected nine-member executive including SUB’s Public

Relations Manager—a founding member of KiCoFa and also a

principal signatory on the association’s bank account. SUB has

been working with KiCoFa members to support tree planting

on their own land, providing technical advice and free

seedlings. Carbon finance contracts developed with KiCoFa

members would make payments based on the CO2 seques-

4 See CarbonFix standard website for more details: http://www.carbonfix.info/CarbonFix-Standard.html.

http://www.planvivo.org/


Rwoho Environmental Conservation and Protection Association (RECPA)

Other community groups for four other projects (yet to be agreed)

World Bank/International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

National Forest Authority (NFA)

Collaborative forest management agreement - Community groups manage ~ 15% of area planted under the projects - RECPA will be paid for carbon after monitoring visits

Emissions reduction purchase agreement (ERPA)

RECPA Carbon Group

Internal community association agreements within RECPA - Carbon revenues divided on a shareholding basis and other criteria

Wider community

Legend Carbon finance (agreement exists)

Carbon credits

Carbon finance (agreement pending)

Fig. 1 – Flow of carbon finance between actors and associated rules (dotted boxes) in the Nile Basin Reforestation Project,

Uganda. (Note that the term ‘carbon credits’ is used here for all projects in a general sense to refer to the transfer of certified

emissions reductions/removals resulting from activities.)


tered through these trees, with revenues divided 25% to the

farmers, 25% for community schemes and 50% to global-

woods. However, there is little understanding within KiCoFa

about the payment schedule or related contractual stipula-

tions. Unfortunately, the contracts are currently meaningless

as the company has been unable to certify their activities

under the CarbonFix standard. This is because the mailo5 land

tenure, which predominates in the areas outside the Central

Forest Reserve, is perceived by investors (though not local

people) to be too insecure to guarantee that the trees will be

retained for the duration of the contracts.

At two sites SUB is also piloting collaborative forest

management (CFM) agreements by which community mem-

bers manage a 100 m wide perimeter strip of land within the

reserve in a similar way to the Nile Basin project. They have

been given free seedlings and will be entitled to the timber and

carbon revenues from trees grown on the strip. The two

groups (one of five and one of seven members) have been

newly convened by the SUB Public Relations Manager. They do

not include all of the people actually living along this section of

5 The Land Act of 1998 formalised ‘‘parallel claims to mailo land’’,which is land occupied by customary tenants under often absen-tee landowners (Hunt, 2004).

the plantation boundary, which could pose risks for the

desired ‘buffering’ effect of the collaborative strip. This is

supposed to prevent encroachment and reduce fire risk by

increasing the incentives for adjacent local communities to

protect the strip. Draft carbon finance contracts are being

developed between SUB, each pilot group and individuals

managing the land (and co-signed by the NFA as owner of the

land). Each group has a representative who will sign the

contract with SUB but this will specify the individual

members, their land area and seedling entitlement. 90% of

the financial benefits will go to individuals and 10% to the

group. The draft contract includes the possibility of providing

an advance to cover labour costs which would be repaid from

the carbon credits or timber sales. In late 2009 this scheme had

stalled because, according to the company, the NFA is not

willing to have the land ‘‘sub-licensed’’ to farmers selected

and monitored by SUB.

Global-Woods claims that the introduction of carbon

finance to the plantation has had some positive effects on

the way it is managed. Better baseline assessments have

been conducted and monitoring systems have been put in

place. Achievement of ‘silver’ status under the Climate,

Community and Biodiversity (CCB) standard and the likely

application for FSC certification also mean that there has

Wider community

KiCoFa members – planting on private land

Community groups – boundary planting

Buyers: Petrol stations, public transport companies, electricity boards, conferences, festivals purchasing credits from CarbonFix

- Carbon contracts with KiCoFa members (not operational) - Contracts between SUB and community groups incorporating a collaborative forestry management agreement under NFA rules (yet to start)

- Emissions reduction purchase agreements with buyers - Rule setting by NFA (land owner) and CarbonFix Standard for SUB’s plantation and carbon management

Internal community association agreements (yet to be designed)

Global Woods

Sustainable Use of Biomass

Individuals Community fund

Wider community


Carbon credits

Carbon finance (agreement pending)

Fig. 2 – Flow of carbon finance between actors and associated rules (dotted boxes) in the Kikonda Project, Uganda.

6 The Plan Vivo system has been developed for implementingcommunity-based ecosystem service projects. Registered projectsexist in Uganda, Mozambique, Tanzania and Mexico, www.planvi-vo.org.


been much consideration of community impacts and appro-

priate safeguards.

5.3. Trees for Global Benefit project

The TGB carbon offset project uses carbon finance to fund

the planting of indigenous trees by project participants

on their private land (Fig. 3). It has explicit objectives of

poverty reduction and environmental protection. The

project spans three districts in Western Uganda and is

managed by ECOTRUST, an environmental NGO based in

Kampala. This case study focuses on project activities in

Bushenyi District.

The TGB project grew out of an existing relationship

between ECOTRUST and the Biteriko Women’s Group which

was started in the late nineties to create a savings and credit

scheme for women implementing projects such as clean cook

stoves, goat breeding and eucalyptus planting. The carbon

project began in 2003 with external support from donors and

NGOs. A total of 345 participants have registered sale

agreements since 2003 and the project is expanding rapidly.

Under the project each participant has to implement the

‘Plan Vivo6’ system for tree planting which consists of a seven

step cycle for generating Verified Emissions Reduction (VER)

carbon credits. Following introduction to the project by local

ECOTRUST volunteers, producers develop simple plans of

their land holdings, detailing current uses and plans for future

management schemes (which must include certain types of

local or indigenous tree species). These plans are evaluated

and if they meet criteria relating to land ownership, land size

and access to a bank account, farmers are registered with

ECOTRUST to participate in the carbon scheme and become

eligible for carbon payments based on the numbers and types

of trees they are planning to grow. Once registered, farmers

may start planting. Agreements are usually signed later after

the buyer and price have been confirmed. ECOTRUST

negotiates the price, typically between US$4 and $10 per



Community fund Producers

planting on private land

- Emissions reduction purchase agreements - Plan Vivo Standard

- Carbon sale agreements with farmers based on Plan Vivos - Direct payments to farmers over 10 year period - 10% of credits to community fund

Buyers: e.g. Tetrapak

ECOTRUST


Carbon credits

Fig. 3 – Flow of carbon finance between actors and associated rules (dotted boxes) in the Trees for Global Benefit Project,

Uganda


tonne, on behalf of the participants. Priority of allocation of

buyers is given to those who have demonstrated commitment

by planting after their Plan Vivo has been approved. In practice

this appears to be quite an ad hoc system, with some farmers

confused as to why they did not yet have buyers.

The sale agreement stipulates the area of land being

planted, the management system, the length of time the trees

must be maintained (this appears to have been revised from 50

to 25 years, or around the length of one rotation for most of the

species that are planted (Fisher, pers. comm., 2009), the price

of carbon and the requirement to re-plant trees if they are lost.

Participants are paid, on average, around US$1000 in total in

regular instalments over the first ten years (ECOTRUST, 2007)

but with higher payments early on to help cover establishment

costs. After the first payment in year zero, subsequent

payments are made following monitoring visits by ECOTRUST

and the fulfilment of any corrective actions.

In addition to individual payments, a ‘community carbon

fund’ has recently been established. This has not yet been

discussed with participants but new Plan Vivo contracts

include a clause stating that 10% of the payments will be

deducted and pooled into a community fund. Administered by

ECOTRUST, the aim of the fund would be to support capacity

building, community development projects and any farmers

that face natural disasters or other calamities related to

planting (based on procedures yet to be agreed) (ECOTRUST,

2008).

One of the features of the Plan Vivo system is that carbon is

sold upfront by ECOTRUST, meaning that all carbon seques-

tered over the course of the contract (25 years) is sold to

buyers. This means that ECOTRUST is then bound to deliver

the reductions that have been promised and must ensure that

participants maintain their trees, making the management of

permanence particularly important. Monitoring of trees is

carried out every three months by local volunteer coordina-

tors, who count the number of trees on each plot. Once the

trees reach five years of age, growth rates are assessed and

third party verification is carried out.

6. Discussion

The analysis presented here draws links between the

institutional arrangements in the three case studies, particu-

larly those relating to carbon finance, and the opportunities

and risks for local communities, triangulating with wider

carbon forestry and community forestry literature where

possible. Lessons are drawn for the development of REDD+

institutions.

6.1. Actors

All three projects work with groups of participants, even the

TGB project in which tree-planting takes place on individual

land. Project developers explain that working with groups

reduces transaction costs and provides participants with peer

support leading to more positive project outcomes. However,

there is clearly a difference in capacity between pre-existing

groups, like the TGB Biteriko women’s group and RECPA in the

Nile Basin project, and the other groups in the Nile Basin and

Kikonda projects, which have been established especially for

the carbon projects and appear to be much weaker. In the case

of the Kikonda project, the KiCoFa community group was

founded and continues to be part-managed by a company

employee, making it more of a liaison group for the company

than a group representing the interests of a clearly defined

community. As also found by other studies (Boyd et al., 2007a),

this suggests that REDD+ projects would initially benefit from


working with well-established groups and only then taking

this experience forward with new groups which should

be sufficiently independent of project developers and

intermediaries.

Whether working with new or existing groups, projects

need to be aware of potential barriers to entry for individuals

who are less well networked, less able to understand the

market or pay upfront costs and – in the case of individual

tree-planting – lacking land. Even within groups, some

individuals may be disadvantaged. For example, in the TGB

project, buyers are allocated first to those participants who

have demonstrated commitment by planting after their plan

has been approved, thus tending to favour wealthier farmers

who are able to cover upfront costs. To encourage poorer

members, RECPA, in the Nile Basin project, allows shares to be

paid in cash or kind but few if any poorer people have taken up

this offer. Our observations suggest that this is because the

association’s membership is strongly biased towards wealthi-

er community members and professionals (even including the

wife of the country’s President) with non-members pointing

out the difficulty of meeting membership fees and annual

subscriptions. To prevent the elite capture widely discussed in

the community forestry literature (McDermott and Schreck-

enberg, 2009; Pagdee et al., 2006), REDD+ projects may need to

support good governance and pro-poor activities within

participant groups. This is more complex than merely

insisting on equal participation (McDermott, 2009), as was

done in one of the Nile Basin groups, for example, where a

requirement that women participate simply led male mem-

bers to register their wives.

As with any new product, there are relatively few

intermediaries available to link carbon credit producers and

buyers. Participants in the three case studies are not able to

choose between different intermediaries, increasing their

vulnerability to the potential collapse of ‘their’ intermediary as

well as to unscrupulous practices (though these were not

noted in the case studies). The potential for conflict between

partners in PES schemes has led to calls for ‘honest brokers’ to

stimulate and facilitate the process (Wertz-Kanounnikoff and

Kongphan-Apirak, 2008), building trust and sharing knowl-

edge between stakeholders (Pham et al., 2010). The literature

on community forestry (McDermott and Schreckenberg, 2009;

McDougall et al., 2007) and forestry outgrower schemes (Race

and Desmond, 2002) also suggests the involvement of a third

organisation, often from civil society, to build technical and

organisational capacity among producer groups and enable

them to draw on a wider network of experience to improve

their ability to negotiate an informed and fair deal. However,

no such independent actors are currently involved in the three

case studies. In both the Kikonda and the Nile Basin project,

the project developers are themselves also producers and in

the case of the Nile Basin project, the involvement of

community groups is simply a condition of their own contract

with the buyer. In the TGB case, the project developer is an

NGO with no production activities of its own, but it is

nevertheless funded from a share of the sales income. To

reduce the vulnerability of communities and thus increase the

stability of carbon value chains, REDD+ projects and pro-

gramme developers may consider encouraging the develop-

ment of civil society actors not directly involved in

transmitting carbon credits, but able to perform a critical

information and capacity-building role. Whilst accountability

is a key theme in the REDD+ debate at national level (Angelsen,

2009), there has as yet been little discussion about the details

of how best to equip communities to deal with the complex set

of external actor interests introduced at the local level.

In the projects reviewed here, only a small sub-set of the

community benefits directly from the carbon payments,

though a school teacher is supported in the Kikonda project

which has benefits for the wider community, and a commu-

nity fund is planned for the TGB project. In all three sites, there

is an expectation among both participants and non-partici-

pants of general benefits from increased circulation of cheaper

wood products and related employment in the future.

However, the projects all seem to impose some costs on

non-participants. In the TGB project, for instance, there is

some indication that participants have increased their

landholding size since becoming members (Carter, 2009).

Whether they were already reasonably wealthy to start off

with and bought up more land to shift their crops on to, or

have become wealthier as a result of the project, such changes

in land ownership may increase disparities and conflict,

affecting project sustainability. In the Nile Basin and Kikonda

projects, carbon finance provided the resources and impetus

for stricter enforcement of existing rules preventing adjacent

populations from cultivating crops or grazing their livestock in

the reserve. This has led livestock owners to sell or move their

herds with the result, according to carbon project participants

in the Nile Basin case, that the price of a cow had increased

and milk had become scarce. To ensure the wider sustainabil-

ity of REDD+ projects, they may need to retain the flexibility to

respond to such unexpected impacts and consider making

special provisions for non-participants. Another possibility

not explored in these cases is to eschew individual payments

(which appear small in any case) in favour of community-level

benefits, as has been suggested by a number of authors (van

Noordwijk et al., 2004; Rosa et al., 2003), although this

approach is not without challenges in PES schemes (Wunder,

2005).

6.2. Rules

The three projects illustrate very different approaches to

scheduling carbon payments (Table 2). In both the TGB and the

Kikonda projects, carbon credits are sold up-front—a recogni-

tion of buyers’ willingness to underwrite sequestration costs

and share in some of the risk that trees may not be maintained

for the contracted period. This makes permanence manage-

ment more of an issue than in the Nile Basin project where

payments are only made once carbon sequestration has been

verified. The TGB project passes the up-front payment on to its

participants, providing them with staggered payments over 10

years to pre-finance their costs. Although this leaves the

project with no financial incentives (or sanctions) to apply in

the final 15 years of its 25 year agreements, it claims that, after

10 years, the economics of maintaining trees until year 25 will

outweigh those of removing them early. Furthermore, it

retains a buffer of 10% of credits. These assumptions about

payment schedules could hold true for the current harvest

cycle, but may not incentivise further activities without

Table 2 – Types and timing of expenditures incurred and incomes received by different project stakeholders in three forestcarbon offset projects in Uganda.

Nile Basin Reforestationproject

Kikonda Central Forest Reserve Trees for global benefit

Collaborative forestmanagement model

KiCoFa model(on farmers’ own land)

Expenditure

Project preparation

costs

NFA/World Bank

Biocarbon Fund

German-based Global-Woods (GW) and Ugandan

subsidiary SUB

ECOTRUST

Participation costs Membership fee plus

annual subscription of

RECPA, plus purchase

of shares in RECPA’s

‘carbon group’

CFM group membership KiCoFa membership

fees plus land

ownership

Group membership fee,

land ownership, bank

account

Land Provided by NFA Provided by SUB Participants’ own Participants’ own

Tree seedlings NFAa SUBa Participants

Land preparation,

planting, tree

care, thinning

Participants Participants SUB provides support for fire fighting Participants

Regular monitoring NFA, annually SUB ECOTRUST volunteers,

every 3 months

3rd party verification NFA, every 5 years GW/SUB, every 5 years GW/SUB ECOTRUST, every 5 years

Certification NFA GW/SUB GW/SUB ECOTRUST

Price negotiation NFA GW/SUB GW/SUB ECOTRUST

Income

Sale of tree products Participants: thinnings

after 12 years; timber

at 20 years (3� rotations)

Participants: Thinnings after 12 years, timber at

20–25 years (2� rotations)

Participants: Fruit from

5 years, timber from

20–50 years

Carbon credit sales Sale by NFA after Yr5

verification

Upfront sale by GW (after certification which has

not been achieved in the KiCoFa model)

Upfront, by ECOTRUST

Carbon income

for participants

First payment expected

after Yr5 verification,

and then annually

thereafter for 15 years

(until timber harvest).

Payments proportional

to number of shares owned

Intention to split

income: 90% to

individual member;

10% to CFM group

Intention to make

annual payments

until first timber

harvest, with income

split: 50% to GW 25%

to community 25% to

individual member

Total payment split into

community fund (10%)

and participants (90%).

Latter paid out in 5

tranches: Yr0 = 30%

Yr1 = 20% Yr3 = 20%

Yr5 = 10% Yr10 = 20%

a Because of the scale of their planting (at least 25 ha), the NFA and SUB received a 50% subsidy for the seedlings through the European-funded

Sawlog Production Grant Scheme.


sustained incentives (Wunder et al., 2008). The Kikonda and

Nile Basin projects minimise the risk that participants may

renege on their agreements by providing seedlings but not

paying until trees are established, and then providing small

annual amounts until contract end.

The process of price establishment for carbon payments is

an issue that affects the ability of participants to benefit

economically from carbon sales. In all of the projects,

participants have had no role in price negotiation, which

has been dealt with by the project developers or intermediar-

ies. This is not necessarily a problem (and it may be

unreasonable to expect producers and buyers to negotiate

directly), but if the terms of contract and price are poorly

understood this could result in payments that are much lower

than required by communities to manage their land in

accordance with the contracts. This risk is particularly evident

in the Nile Basin project where the shareholding arrange-

ments within RECPA are an important determinant of the level

of economic benefits that participants can expect from carbon.

In this case each participant is limited to six shares but there is

no limit on the number of shareholders, and the group’s lack of

knowledge about potential carbon income levels could result

in diminishing returns for each shareholder. Similarly, lack of

understanding in the group about who is responsible for

replanting dead trees means that sound financial planning is

impossible. In the TGB project, upfront costs for farmers have

risen considerably due to loss of trees during the early stages,

changing the opportunity costs of involvement in the project—

an issue reported in other Plan Vivo projects (Nelson and de

Jong, 2003). REDD+ developers therefore need to understand

how carbon finance may be managed by communities and

provide groups with sufficiently detailed income (and expen-

diture) projections and details of related permanence man-

agement arrangements to enable them to make financially

viable decisions on internal arrangements.

Price variation between participants is an issue in the TGB

project, where prices can vary between $4 and $10 per tonne of

carbon, with different participants receiving different prices.

The rationale for having such a pricing system (rather than

one set price established by ECOTRUST) is that buyers are keen

to have direct agreements with individuals. However, it has

resulted in some concerns among participants (ECOTRUST,

2008), which could undermine their confidence in the project.

At present it appears that most farmers are fairly unaware of

7 ‘Leakage’ is the displacement of emissions generating activi-ties outside the boundaries of the project. ‘Permanence’ is linkedto the fact that carbon sequestered during a tree’s growth can bere-emitted into the atmosphere if trees are removed and decay orburn, therefore having a minimal impact on atmospheric carbondioxide reductions.


the differences in price (Fisher, pers. comm., November 2009)

but this may change as more farmers become involved and

share experiences. The fact that prices in these contracts are

fixed over long periods could help to isolate participants from

price fluctuations and enable longer-term planning. However,

unlike in the Fairtrade sector, where producer prices are set to

cover the costs of sustainable production and a sustainable

livelihood plus a social premium (Fairtrade Foundation, 2008),

carbon prices are set by the market at the time of contract

negotiation and may not necessarily take account of any

changes in the opportunity costs of participation over time.

There is also a potential risk that the structuring of contract

negotiation in this way concentrates power towards buyers

and intermediaries, and could lead to projects that respond to

buyers’ demands rather than those of communities as has

been reported in the Mexican Fondo Bioclimatico project, for

example (Nelson and de Jong, 2003). For REDD+ projects this

suggests that decisions about price-setting mechanisms may

need to balance buyers’ desires for direct contracts and

producers’ rights to a fair deal.

Social impact assessment and monitoring requirements

vary depending on the standards used, but usually include at

least one community consultation during project design.

Consultation processes varied from detailed plot-by-plot

assessments in the TGB project to a baseline social impact

study in the Kikonda project and a more general stakeholder

workshop and small survey in the Nile Basin project. The

Kikonda project is now certified with both the CarbonFix and

the CCB Standard, both of which are supposed to require high

standards in terms of analysing and mitigating social impacts

of projects (CCBA, 2008). Whilst the risks for the wider

community have been documented in the assessments for

these standards, the processes for their mitigation appear to

have been poorly assessed. These findings support earlier

studies that have found that consultation processes are often

poorly conducted if at all (May et al., 2004) or can decline in

priority as projects progress (Nelson and de Jong, 2003). In

addition to good pre-assessments, ongoing and participatory

monitoring of REDD+ projects is clearly necessary to avoid the

kinds of negative impacts on the wider community outlined

above (Angelsen, 2009). Further training for project verifiers in

social impact assessment methods (cf. Richards, 2008;

Schreckenberg et al., 2010), in addition to carbon assessment,

could also help to improve these processes.

The monitoring requirements for carbon stocks are a

potentially positive aspect of carbon forestry projects. For

example, the regular monitoring in the TGB project provides

participants with extension services related to tree manage-

ment where they would have otherwise been weak. However,

there are also trade-offs to be considered. These include high

upfront and transaction costs (Lipper and Cavatassi, 2003),

which can act as a barrier for smaller projects to enter the

market, and potentially increased land concentration (May

et al., 2004). The TGB project highlights a further concern about

the scaling up of an approach relying on volunteer coordina-

tors and whether the monitoring protocols used can fit with

the increasingly rigorous requirements of standards as they

evolve in the carbon offsetting industry. This may introduce

further trade-offs, for example, if local capacities to carry out

monitoring or third party verification services are not

supported, leading to a reliance on international consultants

as has been reported in other studies (Minang et al., 2007).

REDD+ projects may need to consider how to support the use

of community-based monitoring systems (Bond et al., 2010),

but also pay attention to how these may have to develop over

time as international and national REDD+ requirements

evolve.

6.3. Links to external institutions

Existing policies form an important framework on which

carbon finance related rules are established, for example in

terms of who holds rights to trade environmental services and

forest management systems to be used in project activities.

They are likely to form a key aspect of REDD+ implementation

(Angelsen, 2009). CFM agreements and related implementa-

tion guidelines and Tree Planting Licenses are the basis on

which the Nile Basin project interacts with local communities

and determines the sharing of carbon benefits. Yet these are

considered to be relatively weak instruments in Uganda,

having a lifespan of only 10 years and often being poorly

implemented (EMPAFORM, 2006). Although generally consid-

ered a good approach for benefiting communities, there is

huge variation in what CFM means in different countries and

the extent to which it benefits the poorest within communities

relative to options such as employment provision or non-

forestry interventions (McDermott and Schreckenberg, 2009;

Lawrence, 2007; Sunderlin et al., 2005). When incorporating

existing policies – particularly in order to benefit local

communities – REDD+ projects could capitalise on their

international links to draw on not just national, but interna-

tional, best practice.

Despite the incorporation of specific national policies

within the case study projects, there is little evidence of links

to institutions that are less directly involved in project

implementation. An example is the clear disconnect between

project developers (SUB in Kikonda and the NFA in the Nile

Basin project) managing the Central Forest Reserve land, and

the District Agriculture Department managing lands outside

the reserve. Given the importance of land management

outside the reserves for managing leakage and ensuring

permanence7 this raises risks from a carbon management

perspective. However, it could also impact on the sustainabil-

ity of alternative livelihood strategies promoted by the

projects and therefore the opportunities for both non-

participants and participants in the long term. There is also

a risk that the establishment of carbon projects will have

perverse incentives on surrounding farmers not involved in

projects. Some non-participants interviewed in this study

highlighted their interest in planting trees only if they receive

financial incentives. This even occurred between regions, with

participants in the Nile Basin project wondering why they

were unable to receive funding to plant trees on their own


private land, as they had heard was the case in the TGB project.

Similar impacts have been discussed in the PES literature—for

example, the increased clearing of land outside forest areas

because farmers are being paid to preserve forests and

‘ransom behaviour’ involving threats from participants in

order to leverage additional income (Jack et al., 2008). This

suggests that REDD+ projects need much more focus on

coordinating activities with institutions operating beyond the

project boundary, especially given that initial surveys on

REDD+ highlight lack of policy coordination as a major issue

(Peskett and Brockhaus, 2009).

7. Conclusions

The case studies presented here offer lessons particularly for

the growing category of REDD+ programmes and projects that

are likely to be funded through carbon markets (or funding

approaches with a strong emphasis on performance) and

implemented through direct payment systems between

buyers and local producer groups or individuals. They

illustrate the diversity of institutional arrangements that

can exist, even in projects implemented with similar objec-

tives and in similar institutional contexts. They also highlight

some of the different ways in which the carbon financing

requirements place constraints on institutional design. There

are some clear linkages between how these institutional

aspects are being handled in project implementation and the

opportunities and risks for local communities. Clearly the

diversity of actors, rules and links to existing institutions

needs to be fully understood during the design process for

REDD+ projects to ensure opportunities for the rural poor.

The main positive aspect is the potential for better

monitoring and support to participants, given the require-

ments for the long term security of carbon assets, although

there is clearly a need to ensure adequate participation in

monitoring processes and that the focus on carbon does not

come at the expense of social impact assessment. From the

perspective of project developers, these requirements can also

increase the financial burden, which could increase, rather

than reduce, barriers to the involvement of communities.

A related point is that approaches need to be developed to

balance the strong external interests driving projects, and the

way rules are established, such as pricing and payment

scheduling. This may be of more importance in REDD+

because of the increasing international momentum and high

expectations about financial benefits. Effective communica-

tion is clearly important, both for project developers to

understand the intricacies of community institutions, and

for communities to understand the details of financing and

contract arrangements. This needs to occur in an impartial

way, and support for more independent entities, whether

government extension services or civil society organisations,

operating at the community level, could assist communities.

The coordination of project institutions with existing

external institutions and the incorporation of existing policies

are the most challenging areas for project implementation.

The case studies illustrate that coordination does not

necessarily achieve the desired outcomes if policies are

already weak, do not follow best practice or where there are

few incentives for coordination between different actors.

Coordination is prominent in the language of emerging

national REDD+ strategies, and there is hope that the national

focus of REDD+ policy development will promote more

landscape based planning, even where REDD+ is implemented

as distinct projects. This could enhance opportunities for

project participants without imposing unacceptable costs on

the wider non-participating community.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Sami Izutsu and David Brown

for their help in planning the fieldwork. Many thanks go to

Roselline Nyamutale, Cornelius Kazoora and colleagues at the

Sustainable Development Centre (SDC) and Janet Fisher in

Uganda for their assistance with fieldwork.

Role of the funding source: Funding for this study was provided

by the Ford Foundation. The funder had no involvement in

study design, data collection or writing of the report.

r e f e r e n c e s

Angelsen, A., 2009. Realising REDD+. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.Asquith, N.M., Vargas Rıos, M.T., Smith, J., 2002. Can forest-

protection carbon projects improve rural livelihoods?Analysis of the Noel Kempff Mercado climate action project,Bolivia. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for GlobalChange 7, 323–337.

Asquith, N.M., Vargas, M.T., Wunder, S., 2008. Selling twoenvironmental services: in-kind payments for bird habitatand watershed protection in Los Negros, Bolivia. EcologicalEconomics 65 (4), 675–684.

Bond, I., Chambwera, M., Jones, B., Chundama, M., Nhantumbo,I., 2010. REDD+ in Dryland Forests: Issues and Prospects forPro-poor REDD in the Miombo Woodlands of SouthernAfrica. Natural Resource Issues No. 21. IIED, London.

Boyd, E., 2002. The Noel Kempff Project in Bolivia: gender, powerand decision-making in climate mitigation. Oxfam Genderand Development Journal 10 (2), 70–77.

Boyd, E., Gutierrez, M., Chang, M., 2007a. Small-scale forestcarbon projects: adapting CDM to low-incomecommunities. Global Environmental Change 17 (2), 250–259.

Boyd, E., May, P., Chang, M., Veiga, F.C., 2007b. Exploringsocioeconomic impacts of forest based mitigation projects:lessons from Brazil and Bolivia. Environmental Science andPolicy 10 (5), 419–433.

Bozmoski, A., Hultman, N.E., 2010. Participant perceptions ofrisks and benefits in carbon forestry: evidence from centralTanzania. The Journal of Environment and Development 19(1), 4–27.

Carter, S., 2009. Socio-economic benefits of Plan Vivo projects:trees for Global Benefits, Uganda. Internal report, Plan VivoFoundation and ECOTRUST Uganda.

CCBA, 2008. Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards,2nd edition. CCBA, Arlington, VA.

Corbera, E., Brown, K., 2008. Building institutions to tradeecosystem services: marketing forest carbon in Mexico.World Development 36, 1956–1979.

Corbera, E., Gonzalez-Soberanis, C., Brown, K., 2009.Institutional dimensions of payments for ecosystemservices: an analysis of Mexico’s carbon forestryprogramme. Ecological Economics 68, 743–761.


Corbera, E., Kosoy, N., Martinez Tuna, M., 2007. Equityimplications of marketing ecosystem services in protectedareas and rural communities: case studies from Meso-America. Global Environmental Change 17, 365–380.

ECOTRUST, 2007. Trees for Global Benefits (TGB) Program inUganda: a Plan Vivo Project annual report. ECOTRUST,Kampala.

ECOTRUST, 2008. Trees for Global Benefits (TGB) Program inUganda: a Plan Vivo Project annual report. ECOTRUST,Kampala.

EMPAFORM, 2006. Participatory Forest Management initiativesin Uganda: key implementation concerns andrecommendations for policy actions. EMPAFORM PolicyBriefing Paper No. 1. EMPAFORM, Kampala.

Engel, S., Palmer, C., 2008. Payments for environmentalservices as an alternative to logging under weak propertyrights: the case of Indonesia. Ecological Economics 65 (4),799–809.

Fairtrade Foundation, 2008. The FAIRTRADE Mark: CoreStandards and Practice behind Fairtrade Labelling. FairtradeFoundation, London.

Grieg-Gran, M., Porras, I., Wunder, S., 2005. How can marketmechanisms for forest environmental services help thepoor? Preliminary lessons from Latin America. WorldDevelopment 33 (9), 1511–1527.

Hamilton, K., Chokkalingam, U., Bendana, M., 2009. State of theforest carbon markets 2009: taking root and branching out.Ecosystem Marketplace, Washington, DC.

Holloway, V., Giandomenico, E., 2009. The History of REDDPolicy. Carbon Planet White Paper. Carbon Planet Limited,Adelaide, Australia.

Hunt, D., 2004. Unintended consequences of land rights reform:the case of the 1998 Uganda Land Act. Development PolicyReview 22 (2), 173–191.

Jack, B.K., Kousky, C., Sims, K., 2008. Designing payments forecosystem services: lessons from previous experience withincentive-based mechanisms. PNAS 105 (28).

Kamugisha-Ruhombe, J., 2007. Forest law enforcement andgovernance: Uganda Country Assessment and Issues Paper.GAF CONSULT LTD, Kampala, Uganda.

Landell-Mills, N., Porras, I.T., 2002. Silver Bullet or Fools’ Gold? AGlobal Review of Markets for Forest Environmental Servicesand Their Impact on the Poor. IIED, London.

Lawrence, A., 2007. Beyond the second generation: towardsadaptiveness in participatory forest management. CABReviews: Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science,Nutrition and Natural Resources 2 (28), 1–15.

Lipper, L., Cavatassi, R., 2003. Land use change, carbonsequestration and poverty alleviation, ESA Working PaperNo. 03-13, FAO, Rome.

May, P.H., Boyd, E., Veiga, F., Chang, M., 2004. Local SustainableDevelopment Effects of Forest Carbon Projects in Brazil andBolivia: A View from the Field. IIED, London.

McDermott, M.H., 2009. Equity first or later? How U.S.community-based forestry distributes benefits.International Forestry Review 11 (2), 207–220.

McDermott, M.H., Schreckenberg, K., 2009. Equity in communityforestry—insights from North and South. InternationalForestry Review 11 (2), 157–170.

McDougall, C., Prabhu, R., Fisher, R., 2007. Discussion andconclusions. In: Fisher, R., Prabhu, R., McDougall, C. (Eds.),Adaptive Collaborative Management of Community Forestsin Asia. Experiences from Nepal, Indonesia and thePhilippines. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia, pp. 206–225.

Meridian Institute, 2009. REDD+ Institutional OptionsAssessment. Developing an efficient, effective, andequitable institutional framework for REDD+ under theUNFCCC. Prepared by Charlotte Streck, Luis Gomez-Echeverri, Pablo Gutman, Cyril Loisel, and Jacob Werksman.

Available from: http://www.redd-oar.org (last accessed19.09.10).

Minang, P.A., Bressers, H.Th.A., Skutsch, M., McCall, M.K., 2007.National forest policy as a platform for biosphere carbonmanagement: the case of community forestry in Cameroon.Environmental Science and Policy 10, 204–218.

Nelson, K.C., de Jong, B.H.J., 2003. Making global initiatives localrealities: carbon projects in Chiapas, Mexico. GlobalEnvironmental Change 13, 19–30.

Olsen, K.H., 2007. The clean development mechanism’scontribution to sustainable development: a review of theliterature. Climatic Change 84 (1), 59–73.

Olsen, K.H., Fenhann, J., 2008. Sustainable development benefitsof clean development mechanism projects: a newmethodology for sustainability assessment based on textanalysis of the project design documents submitted forvalidation. Energy Policy 36, 2819–2830.

Ostrom, E., 2008. Institutions and the environment: theeconomic analysis of institutions. Economic Affairs 28 (3),24–31.

Pagdee, A., Kim, Y., Daugherty, P.J., 2006. What makescommunity forest management successful: a meta-studyfrom community forests throughout the world. Society andNatural Resources 19 (1), 33–52.

Pagiola, S., Agustin, A., Gunars, P., 2005. Can payments forenvironmental services help reduce poverty? Anexploration of the issues and the evidence to date fromLatin America. World Development 33 (2), 237–253.

Parker, C., Mitchell, A., Trivedi, M., Mardas, N., 2009. The LittleREDD+ Book. Global Canopy Programme, Oxford.

Pascual, U., Muradian, R., Rodrıguez, L.C., Duraiappah, A., 2010.Exploring the links between equity and efficiency inpayments for environmental services: a conceptualapproach. Ecological Economics 69 (6), 1237–1244.

Peskett, L., Luttrell, C., Iwata, M., 2007. Can standards forvoluntary carbon offsets ensure development benefits?Forestry Briefing 13. ODI, London.

Peskett, L., Brockhaus, M., 2009. When REDD+ goes national: areview of realities, opportunities and challenges. In:Angelsen, A. (Ed.), Realising REDD+. CIFOR, Bogor,Indonesia.

Peskett, L., Brown, J., Schreckenberg, K., 2010. Carbon Offsets forForestry and Bioenergy: Researching Opportunities for PoorRural Communities. Report to Ford Foundation. ODI,London.

Pham, T.T., Campbell, B.M., Garnett, S., Aslin, H., Hoang, M.H.,2010. Importance and impacts of intermediary boundaryorganizations in facilitating payment for environmentalservices in Vietnam. Environmental Conservation 37 (1),64–72.

Phelps, J., Webb, E.L., Agrawal, A., 2010. Does REDD+ threaten torecentralize forest governance? Science 328, 312–313.

Porras, I., Grieg-Gran, M., Neves, N., 2008. All that Glitters: AReview of Payments for Watershed Services in DevelopingCountries. IIED, London.

Race, D., Desmond, H., 2002. Forestry out-grower schemes.Journal of Sustainable Forestry 15 (4), 79–98.

Richards, M., 2008. Issues and challenges for social evaluation orimpact assessment of ‘multiple-benefit’ Payment forEnvironmental Services (PES) projects. Prepared for UnitedNations Forum for Forests. Forest Trends, Washington, DC.

Rosa, H., Kandel, S., Dimas, L., 2003. Compensation forenvironmental services and rural communities. PRISMA,San Salvador.

Schreckenberg, K., Camargo, I., Withnall, K., Corrigan, C.,Franks, P., Roe, D., Scherl, L.M., Richardson, V., 2010. SocialAssessment of Conservation Initiatives: A Review of RapidMethodologies. Natural Resource Issues No. 22. IIED,London.

http://www.redd-oar.org/


Skutsch, M., Ba, L., 2010. Crediting carbon conservation in dryforests: the case of community forest management in WestAfrica. Forest Policy and Economics 12 (4), 264–270.

Steiss, A., 2007. Evaluation of the past cooperation between thenongovernmental organisation Kikonda CommunityForestry Association and the company Sustainable Use ofBiomass Limited, Kikonda, Uganda. B.Sc. Thesis, LarensteinUniversity of Professional Education.

Sunderlin, W.D., Angelsen, A., Belcher, B., Burgers, P., Nasi, R.,Santoso, L., Wunder, S., 2005. Livelihoods, forests, andconservation in developing countries. World Development33 (9), 1383–1402.

Tacconi, L., Mahanty, S., Suich, H., 2009. Assessing theLivelihood Impacts of Payments for EnvironmentalServices: Implications for Avoided Deforestation. ResearchSummary. Crawford School of Economics and Government,Australian National University.

UNDP, 2006. The Clean Development Mechanism: AnAssessment of Progress. UNDP Environment and EnergyGroup, New York.

UNEP Risoe, 2010. CDM pipeline database. Available from:www.cd4cdm.org (last accessed 30.05.10).

van Noordwijk, M., Chandler, F., Tomich, T.P., 2004. Anintroduction to the conceptual basis of RUPES. In: RewardingUpland Poor for Environmental Services, ICRAF, Bogor,Indonesia.

Wertz-Kanounnikoff, S., Kongphan-Apirak, M., 2008. Reducingforest emissions in Southeast Asia: a review of drivers ofland use change and how payments for environmentalservices (PES) schemes can affect them. CIFOR WorkingPaper No. 41. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.

Wertz-Kanounnikoff, S., Kongphan-Apirak, M., 2009. EmergingREDD+: a preliminary survey of demonstration and readinessactivities. CIFOR Working Paper No. 46. Bogor, Indonesia.

Wunder, S., 2005. Payments for environmental services: somenuts and bolts. CIFOR occasional paper 42. CIFOR, Bogor,Indonesia.

Wunder, S., Engel, S., Pagiola, S., 2008. Taking stock: acomparative analysis of payments for environmentalservices programs in developed and developing countries.Ecological Economics 65, 834–852.

Leo Peskett is a Research Fellow in Climate Change Mitigation andDevelopment at the Overseas Development Institute. He has sev-en years of research experience on international climate policy,including research in Asia and Africa. His research interests in-clude social implications of climate change policies, particularlyforest carbon markets, REDD+ and bioenergy.

Kate Schreckenberg is a Research Fellow in the School of CivilEngineering and the Environment, University of Southampton.She has over 20 years of research experience in Africa, Asia andLatin America. Her research interests include natural resourceproduct value chains, community-based management of naturalresources and forests in climate change policy.

Jessica Brown is a Research Officer at the Overseas DevelopmentInstitute. She has seven years of research experience on climatechange and development issues. Her research interests includethe institutional structures surrounding climate change financeand carbon market impacts on developing countries.

http://www.cd4cdm.org/

Institutional approaches for carbon financing in the forest sector: learning lessons for REDD+ from...

Documents

Transcript of Institutional approaches for carbon financing in the forest sector: learning lessons for REDD+ from...