Ostrom Workshop Working Paper: "REDD Blues: Trading in Carbon Credits without Trading off...

“REDD Blues”:

Trading in Forestry Carbon Credits without Trading off Sustainability

Prakash Kashwani,ii,*

Robert Holahani

Citation: Kashwan, Prakash and Robert Holahan. 2011. ‗REDD Blues‘: Trading in Carbon Credits without Trading off Sustainability. Working Paper-W11-16. Bloomington, Workshop in

Political Theory and Policy Analysis

i Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, 513 N Park Ave,

Bloomington, IN 47408

ii School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, 1315 East Tenth Street,

Bloomington, IN 47405-1701

*Corresponding author: Prakash Kashwan; e-mail: [email protected]

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Shanna Dietz, Kerry Krutilla, Elinor Ostrom, Jacob Phelps, Achim

Schlüter, Edward Webb, and the participants at the Indiana University Political Science Graduate

Student Annual Conference 2007 and the Workshop Mini-Conference 2007, both held at

Bloomington, Indiana, and the fifth biennial conference of the Indian Society for Ecological

Economics at Ahmedabad, India in January 2009, for their comments on earlier drafts, and

Joanna Broderick for her editorial comments. Usual disclaimers apply.

Role of the funding source

Funding source(s) had no involvement in the conduct of the research, in study design, in the

collection, analysis and interpretation of data, or in the decision to submit the paper for

publication. Research assistantships from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis,

Indiana University, Bloomington supported the authors during the writing of this article.

―REDD Blues‖: Trading in Forestry Carbon Credits without Trading off Sustainability Page 1 of 35

Summary

Internationally funded carbon forestry projects have become a central concern of scholars and

policy makers working on global climate change mitigation. The anticipated impacts of carbon

forestry projects on forest-dependent communities have been debated in terms of normative

concerns of equity and justice. We offer a positive and arguably more robust theoretical

argument supported by case-study evidence to demonstrate that for effective emission

reductions, the stakes of local communities must be built into carbon forestry projects. We also

contribute new insights and suggest specific institutional mechanisms to restructure the

monitoring arrangements for effective and efficient carbon forestry.

Key words: Climate Change, Carbon Forestry, Payment for Ecosystem Services, Common

Property Theory, Cases from Asia, Africa, and Latin America (Location)


1. INTRODUCTION

In this paper we employ theories of institutional analysis, in particular common property, to

analyze past carbon forestry projects and the ongoing debates about the United Nations‘ program

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and its added role of

conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks

(REDD+). Basing our arguments on the fundamental theoretical premises informing REDD+ we

point out critical gaps between the theory and the broader focus of current policy debates. By

synthesizing lessons from four well-documented carbon forestry projects implemented in recent

times, we illuminate and contextualize the importance of institutional aspects that the ongoing

policy debates gloss over. We argue that the various proposals put forward for REDD+ need to

focus on the key task of ensuring emission reductions through forest conservation and

sustainable local development. Failing this, the global environmental policy community may risk

promoting carbon trade at the cost of sustainable development. Achieving the closely tied twin

agenda of successful REDD+ programs and sustainable development, we argue, is closely related

to making critical property-rights reforms mandatory for participating governments. We argue

that a nested governance approach to REDD+, in which local ownership of forestry resources is

paired with national policy objectives, is the most fruitful approach to achieving the core

missions advanced by REDD+ advocates.

The financial stakes involved with REDD+ are significant. Advocates of the program argue

that it could lead to a transfer of more than $10 billion from industrialized nations to tropical

forest countries by 2020, with a goal of reducing annual carbon emissions by 17–20% (Vidal,

2010). These volumes may explain why the debates over REDD+ are focused largely on the

development of financing mechanisms and national reporting requirements. The prevailing fund-


centric view of REDD+ ignores the lessons of past failures at forest conservation, including

those where the World Bank, one of the key actors in the emerging REDD+ initiatives, invested

billions of dollars on afforestation and reforestation programs globally. Not only did some of

these investments fail to pay off, a major review commissioned by the World Bank revealed that

in many cases it actually worsened the emissions problem by creating monocultures, and

promoting increased deforestation (Lele et al., 2000).

The foremost challenge in implementing REDD+ is to ensure that these investments actually

lead to the promised carbon emission reductions and that the communities benefit from the

program as much as government bureaucrats. To this end, the recent experiences of carbon

forestry projects supported under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto

Protocol and similar voluntary carbon forestry initiatives provide valuable lessons. The CDM has

similarly stated goals to REDD+, and the conceptual and operational challenges experienced in

existing carbon forestry projects are also likely to be faced at some stage in REDD+. Yet, to our

surprise, few studies have made this connection (cf. Corbera and Brown, 2010). Even fewer have

undertaken a systematic theoretical analysis of the fundamental theoretical link, a significant gap

that this paper addresses. Drawing upon the rich common-property literature from around the

world, we present a theoretical analysis of the institutional conditions that lead to successful

forest conservation efforts. The theoretical evidence is then combined with empirical case studies

to demonstrate how a failure to account for the key findings from our theoretical analysis was

linked to the challenges faced in the existing carbon forestry projects.

In the next section, we discuss the organizational structure of CDM and draw parallels with

ongoing debates about the institutional structure of REDD+. We then provide a theoretical

framework informed by the large literature on common property and forest governance in section


3. This is followed in section 4 by a summary of key experiences and lessons from four different

case studies of carbon forestry projects located in a variety of sociopolitical, geographical, and

institutional settings. In section 5, we synthesize the findings from these case studies in light of

the theoretical framework we propose. We conclude this paper in section 6 with key findings

from the analyses presented in the paper.

2. KYOTO TO COPENHAGEN: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES FOR REDD+

Kyoto Protocol‘s CDM was created as a market-based program to reduce global carbon

emissions from energy production by encouraging firms or public agencies in industrialized

countries to buy carbon offset credits in developing countries. The hope for CDM was that it

would reduce emissions, and make ―contributions to the host country‘s sustainable development‖

(Hardner, Peter, & Darren, 2000: 62). While plantation forestry projects were allowed under

CDM, projects with the primary purpose of preventing deforestation or degradation were not

admissible under the protocol (Smith, 2002). By implication, a forestry company in a developing

country could qualify for carbon emission reduction credits by clear-cutting natural forest in

order to establish a tree plantation.

This devaluation of natural forests in favor of artificial forests led some countries to propose

REDD as a complementary program to CDM, focusing on carbon sequestration wholly from

reducing deforestation and forest degradation. Since then a consensus has emerged among policy

makers and scholars to add plantation forestry projects (while not allowing a plantation to

replace an existing forest) to create REDD+ (Angelsen, 2009). The historical link between CDM

and REDD+ and the common theoretical mechanisms that inform each of these allows us to

make use of lessons learned under CDM to inform our discussion of implementing effective,

multiscale REDD+ governance systems. In this section, we compare and contrast three potential


REDD+ governance structures: full decentralization, full nationalization, and a nested approach

in light of the experience so far.

The organizational structure of CDM operates under the supervision of an intergovernmental

board of governors, which reports to the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention

on Climate Change. The CDM Board supervises CDM activities and approves accreditation of

Designated Operational Entities, which are international agencies or corporations 1 that validate

proposed CDM projects, verify the emission reduction occurring from a registered CDM project,

and request the CDM Board to issue Certified Emission Reductions (CERs).2 Designated

Operational Entities work closely with each country‘s Designated National Authority, which are

the country-specific government agencies that serve as primary overseers of CDM in-country

activities. Designated National Authorities, in turn, certify that a project proposed by a

Designated Operational Entity is in conformance with its national sustainable development

objectives.

The Kyoto Protocol does not specify how CER credits and the finances they generate should

be distributed. A quick survey of reports on existing projects under the mechanism suggests that

after the CDM board has approved a CER on the recommendation of a Designated Operational

Entity, funds are exchanged directly between the seller and the buyer without involving

government agencies. In this sense, CDM serves as a project-based, subnational arrangement, as

it is referred to in the ongoing REDD+ discussions (Figure 1), with regulatory oversight from

both international and national organizations (Angelsen, 2009).

[Figure 1 here]

While the responsibility of ensuring that national sustainable development goals are met lies

with the Designated National Authorities, they are usually poorly financed and staffed, and lack


adequate incentives to accomplish this in practice. CDM is, in many ways, a decentralized

mechanism. In contrast to CDM, if REDD+ takes a more national approach (Figure 2), national

governments will have a fair degree of autonomy in conducting and coordinating their domestic

REDD+ activities.

[Figure 2 here]

Advantages of a national approach include achieving better convergence of policies across

sectors and avoidance of leakage (Vatn & Angelsen, 2009). As opposed to the existing studies

arguing that a national architecture will lower monitoring costs (ibid.), we show below how

monitoring costs can be significantly lowered by involving local users, at the same time creating

synergistic effects toward forest protection. Given the current sociopolitical configurations in

most forested countries, a national approach is likely to lead to recentralization of forest

governance (Phelps, Webb, & Agrawal, 2010). When national governments are given sole

authority to monitor projects and disperse profits from these projects, they may seek to

consolidate direct control over project implementation (Sandbrook et al., 2010). Three

consequences of this approach are likely to adversely affect the incentives of local communities,

and perhaps local public officials, each one of them critical to forest conservation.

First, national ministries are likely to rely on large-scale afforestation projects in areas

currently used by forest users to stock CERs while finding ways of continuing to exploit forest

resources already under its control. It is likely that public agencies claim ownership of carbon in

forests without sharing significant benefits with current forest users.3 Second, by granting public

agencies the authority of distributing REDD+ resources to various stakeholders, projects will

become further subject to rent seeking by government officials at various levels of the public

hierarchy. Third, while national- level aggregate monitoring helps overcome the problem of


leakage, ignoring intranational variations will almost certainly dampen local incentives for forest

protection. When this happens, the anticipated gains of a national architecture in creating

interregional and intersectoral synergies may be of little use.

In addition to wholly decentralized proposals and wholly nationalized proposals for the

organization of REDD+, some recent attention in the literature has been given to a nested

organizational approach (Figure 3). Under this proposal, REDD+ would operate under a

combination of subnational and national arrangements, in which primary responsibility for

project verification and implementation would take place at a subnational level, involving both

local forest users and regional government officials (Angelsen, 2009). A nested approach also

would result in lower costs for monitoring and verification of project activities since the monitors

would be closer to the project activities than centralized national bureaucrats. Under such an

arrangement, the benefits of carbon trade would be directed to forest users helping protect

forests, while national governments would still have primary responsibility for coordinating

national emission reduction targets.

[Figure 3 here]

Key proponents of a nested approach view such an approach as a short-term stepping stone

to a national approach (Wertz-Kanounnikoff & Angelsen, 2009). Such an approach, however, is

indicative of what Arun Agrawal4 refers to as ―chasing capacity‖—as if the most serious problem

in implementing carbon offset projects is a lack of current capacity on behalf of national

governments. This presupposes that the actors in the national government would implement good

resource policy if they had sufficient capacity. Rather, many national government actors enact

poor resource policies precisely because they stand to benefit from the failed policy either

through increased rent capture or corruption (Ascher, 1999). In light of such evidence, unlike


previous REDD scholars we argue that treating a nested approach merely as a stepping stone

toward a national architecture will create disincentives for national governments to pursue local

reforms, particularly in the realm of property-rights recognition. We demonstrate that a nested

approach to government is the key to successful implementation of REDD+, not just an

intervening step along the way. The following section further develops the theoretical benefits of

a nested approach.

3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: A NESTED APPROACH TO REDD+

GOVERNANCE

This section presents a concise summary of the theory of common property (Ostrom, 1990;

Agrawal, 2001), with a particular focus on illuminating the complementary role of national and

subnational governments in promoting the dual objectives of sustainable forest use and local

development. At the local level, we focus on the microincentives faced by forest users in

harvesting, monitoring, and enforcing rules governing forest use. At the national and subnational

levels we focus on the role of central governments in defining and protecting property rights. By

coordinating policy across levels of governance and clearly delineating the responsibilities of

different levels of government, REDD+ could help effectively reduce carbon emissions and

provide livelihood opportunities to local communities best placed to contribute to forest

conservation (Minang & McCall, 2008). The theoretical arguments and empirical evidence

presented below would imply that stakeholders exercise caution against assuming that REDD+

can generate emission reductions irrespective of local livelihood benefits.

The core mechanism proposed in REDD+ is to create an economic asset out of carbon

sequestration in the form of a Certified Emission Reduction (CER) unit that is bought and sold in

an international market. A CER is fundamentally dependent on the underlying condition of the


physical forest asset for its valuation. In principle, the link between forest condition and the

value of a CER is sufficient to incentivize the owners of the forest to maintain its condition

(Angelsen, 2009). However, in practice, this link is more complex and policy makers may do

well to account for these nuances.

First, it requires that clear and enforceable ownership rights to the forest and to the CERs

exist so that those instrumental in maintaining or improving forest condition accrue the returns

from carbon forestry. Second, the success at REDD+ requires that the forest asset be quantifiably

measurable to ensure both that those protecting forests receive a fair return for their investments

and that the buyers of a CER receive a fair value for their purchase. Third, it requires that the

asset be regularly monitored to ensure the physical asset maintains its value beyond the point of

sale. If any of these necessary conditions are not met, the uncertainty over true forest condition

will decrease the open market value of a CER regardless of true forest condition. Therefore, even

if the eventual goal for REDD+ is to work out national accounting systems in order to avoid

intranational leakages (Vatn & Angelsen, 2009), the task of forest protection will have to be

coordinated locally and across a variety of forest conditions throughout a country. Missing out

on this key distinction may cost the effectiveness of REDD+ in promoting forest protection if a

national architecture leads to increased de facto powers in the hands of national bureaucracies.

Successful forestry management often requires that residents living in or near the forest are

granted rights (or have pre-existing rights acknowledged) to use the forest. It also requires that

those with rights to use the resource acknowledge and follow a system of rules governing

resource use, monitoring, sanctioning, and enforcement (Ostrom, 1990). Commons scholars have

repeatedly found that monitoring by local users is associated with successful resource outcomes

regardless of the ownership (Coleman, 2009; Gibson, Williams, & Ostrom, 2005). Monitoring


and enforcement by government agents can also be effective in many settings, especially in the

developed world, but there is growing evidence that endogenous rule enforcement is highly

correlated with success in forest conservation (Coleman, 2009). Because local resource users

interact with one another on a regular basis, and are in the forest relatively frequently compared

to local officials, they are most able to identify rule violations. This form of monitoring can often

occur at much lower cost than central government control and provides a rationale for REDD+ to

emphasize local ownership of forestry resources. However, the success of local monitoring

cannot be achieved in isolation of local users‘ dependence on forests for meeting their livelihood

needs.

In many areas of the world, forests provide mushrooms, herbal remedies, fodder, fuel (in the

form of downed trees or limbs), and numerous other non- timber forest products. Many of these

uses have no consequential negative effect on efforts of carbon sequestration. Policies that

prohibit any form of harvesting from or use of a forest are ineffective precisely because local

residents dependent on the forest are forced into underground or black market activities in order

to earn a subsistence standard of living (Grieg-Gran, Porras, & Wunder, 2005). Instead, REDD+

must recognize the important role multiple uses of forests have and encourage non-timber

product uses for local development. The potential for such synergies has found support in large-

N studies combining data on biophysical, economic, and institutional aspects of local forest

management (Chhatre & Agrawal, 2009).

Community groups organized to protect their forests under locally designed and generally

accepted institutional arrangements may be faced with timber or wildlife poachers. In such a

forest setting, a multilayered governance approach is necessary to ensure that even if poachers

are not susceptible to the rules or sanctions present in the local institutional framework, they can


still be held legally liable for their actions at a higher level of government like a municipal or

regional court (Schlager & Ostrom, 1992). When poachers hold an asymmetric power

relationship with local communities, the need for a multilayered approach to institutional

development and enforcement becomes even more important. If poachers can simply bribe

corrupt regional officials or trick local communities into trading or selling away rights without a

full understanding of the legal framework, then these poachers can frustrate institutional

arrangements and must be held liable through some higher- level authority. This underlines the

complementary role that local forest-dependent people and government agencies and officials

working at different levels have in ensuring the overall success of REDD+.

4. LEARNING FROM EXISTING CARBON FORESTRY PROJECTS

A number of carbon forestry projects have been implemented throughout the world in recent

years thereby providing valuable real-world case studies available for those engaged in the

ongoing debates around REDD+. In this section, we discuss four such case studies, with the aim

of illustrating the difficulties in implementing carbon forestry projects without creating

significant stakes for local communities. These cases also demonstrate how carbon forestry

projects influence the incentives of actors involved in the projects implemented in a variety of

property rights in forests and forestlands.

(a) ITC’s social forestry project

The Indian Tobacco Company (ITC), one of the largest paper and pulp companies in India,

has for decades entered into buy-back contracts with local farmers for an assured supply of raw

material that goes into pulp and paper production. Showcasing ITC‘s achievements in

developing private forestry, a company official wrote in 2001 that because of the government‘s

land ceiling law the company was not in a position to develop captive plantations, and the ―only


alternative‖ it had was to promote ―farm forestry plantations on marginal agricultural lands‖

(Lal, 2001:33–34). However, the company has since won a CDM project for the same project

that the official described above as the ―only alternative.‖

In this case, ITC has been able to pass on as a carbon sequestration project an activity that is

central to its core business of paper and pulp production and has been in operation since 2001,

and which didn‘t bring about any additional carbon sequestration (Tiwari & D‘Souza, 2009). In

case of commercial plantation, the theoretically expected gains of improved incentives for

afforestation are realized only if the incentives are directed to the landowners who make land-use

decisions. Since ITC neither owns the land planted nor bears any of the costs associated with

plantations, its ownership of carbon credits falls simply in the category of speculative business

transactions (Lohman, 2008). In this case, since the income from carbon trade goes to ITC,

farmers‘ incentives to grow trees haven‘t changed compared to the pre-CDM scenario. Not

surprisingly then, independent assessments suggest that the farmers cut trees sooner than the

claimed project cycle because putting their lands to farm forestry isn‘t sufficiently profitable

(Tiwari & D‘Souza, 2009).

Neither the Designated National Authority nor the project validating agency recognized this

discretion before approving the project. This suggests that significant asymmetries are likely in

the national system of verifying and monitoring emission reduction commitments made by

project proponents. Indeed, it also shows that it is possible to ―game‖ the system (Eastin,

Grundmann, & Prakash, in press). Next, we consider a case of a national wildlife service

collaborating with a private foundation to undertake some carbon forestry plantations.

(b) The UWA-Face carbon forestry project in Mount Elgon

The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and the International Union for Conservation of


Nature (IUCN) had been discussing ways of dealing with a long-standing conflict over the

boundaries of Mount Elgon National Park, part of which local residents had farmed and claimed

as their own. These plans were abandoned in 1994 when the UWA and the Dutch Face (Forests

absorbing carbon dioxide emission) Foundation signed a contract for reforesting the foothills of

Mount Elgon—an area with a long history of conflict between local communities who claim

customary ownership of some of the park land and the Ugandan government that created the

park (Lang & Byakola, 2006). As per the contract, the Face Foundation would own the carbon

rights to the pledged forests for the next 99 years, while the UWA retained the ownership of

―trees and other proceeds‖ from the forest.

The park boundaries have been redrawn multiple times since 1993, including the last time it

was done to facilitate UWA-Face carbon plantations. This demarcation cut across several fields

claimed by locals, some of who inherited legal titles from their parents. Others had apparently

―purchased‖ some of the land during the late 1970s from forest guards who were desperate to

make some money after not being paid for months. Legal challenges to plantations began in 1998

when some local communities filed a suit against the UWA, resulting in an injunction to allow

communities to farm parcels of land that they used to cultivate within the park. However, park

authorities continued to prevent locals from farming and harvesting even in the cases where their

claims were supported by the injunction. Some of the families that had been displaced from the

forests deep inside the park in 1993, were displaced a second time in 2002 in preparation for the

UWA-Face carbon plantations.

When contacted by the researchers, the international monitors who verified Face‘s carbon

sequestration claims, refused to discuss the evictions and how they might affect the project‘s

claim for carbon sequestration, suggesting that the information was confidential (Lang &


Byakola, 2006). While the larger problem of land rights is a major issue, what has prevented this

from becoming an issue related to carbon forestry locally is that communities have not been

informed about the plantations being part of a carbon forestry project. For them, it is just another

instance of the government asserting its control over disputed lands.

The UWA-Face project highlights the issue of contested land tenures that is far too common

throughout the forest areas in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The national parks and other

reserves have often been set up in forests where indigenous and other forest-dependent

communities have lived for generations with or without statutory recognition of their customary

rights (Brockington, Igoe, & Schmidt-Soltau, 2006). The creation of REDD+ projects at the

expense of resolution of the pre-existing conflicts around land tenure is not amenable to any

long-term benefits of carbon sequestration, let alone sustainable development. Statements of

Mount Elgon communities indicate to the potential for cooperation once their fields have been

marked properly and they themselves are beneficiaries of carbon forestry (Lang & Byakola,

2006). A case that partially exemplifies this potential is discussed next.

(c) Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project

One of the earliest projects that sought to avoid deforestation by purchasing existing logging

concessions, the Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project (NKMCAP), was signed in 1998

between the Government of Bolivia, Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza (FAN, a national non-

government organization [NGO]), the Nature Conservancy (TNC), and a consortium of energy

companies and electric utilities. The project implemented in the Noel Kempff National Park

explicitly included three key objectives: carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and

local sustainable development. The area of park was almost doubled as a result of inclusion of

former logging areas into the boundaries of the park. Even though the ending of logging


activities would improve forest conservation and biodiversity resources in the park, the local

communities stood to lose employment opportunities and faced the possibility of new restrictions

to access their customary lands (Smith & Scherr, 2003).

The most notable success story of the project so far has been the creation of a land-titling

program that has helped to formalize the legal protection of indigenous lands adjacent to the park

totaling nearly 400,000 ha (Boyd, 2009). The title was granted to an indigenous community

organization, which has significantly improved the capacity of indigenous communities to

negotiate with other actors and to craft sustainable management plans.

Carbon rights from the project are controlled centrally by the Bolivian government, which

receives 49% of all carbon credits generated, of which 20% is shared with NGOs. The remaining

51% of carbon credits are divided among the project‘s private-sector investors. While none of

the proceeds from carbon trade go to the communities involved, a project linked to NKMCAP

has undertaken several developmental activities. We do not question the potential success of

these activities itself, but we are skeptical that the benefits of such projects can be sustained over

the long gestation of carbon forestry projects. For instance, studies have demonstrated that the

microcredit activities implemented as part of the project have found limited success (Boyd,

2009). That being the case, while project proponents may consider those funds to have been

spent on ―sustainable development,‖ they are unlikely to contribute toward bolstering local

incentives for forest conservation.

Even so, this is perhaps one of the most promising projects we have come across in the

literature. First, it explicitly recognized the importance of and helped create legally enforceable

property rights in forests that the communities had lived in without formal recognition of their

customary rights prior to the project. Second, the project seems to have successfully created


processes of deliberations among community members enabling them to deal with future

community projects in a more efficient manner. Third, the project also involved communities in

monitoring the disassembling/discontinuation of logging operations. However, there is still

significant scope for improvement in the project design (see also Corbera & Brown, 2010). Even

though local communities have benefitted from land titling and some developmental

interventions launched with project funds, communities do not get a share of the proceeds from

carbon trade, thus severing the vital link between carbon sequestration and community activities.

(d) Local monitoring for forest conservation

One of the most consistent findings from studies of community-based forest management is

that monitoring and enforcement are necessary conditions for successful resource management

(Gibson, Williams, & Ostrom, 2005; Coleman, 2009). Yet, the ongoing debates on ―monitoring‖

treat it merely as a synonym for auditing ex post facto. It is perhaps because of such a narrow

understanding of the concept that doubts are often expressed about whether community-based

monitoring is relevant to apparently more technical monitoring and reporting requirements

anticipated under REDD+.

Margaret Skutsch (2005) reports on an action research project titled ―Think Global, Act

Local – Action research to bring community-based forest management projects under the

UNFCCC and the Kyoto protocol‖ implemented across five countries in Asia and Africa in 13

forest sites with 50–250 ha of forest at each site. The project is developing participatory

geographical information systems that are fed with georeferenced base maps. Handheld

computers and global positioning systems are used by community members for real-time

monitoring and data recording. Community members with four to seven years of education have

been trained in user-friendly and IPCC-compliant measurement and monitoring techniques


developed by scientists from a region. Key steps in the process entailed the following (Skutsch,

2005:437): (1) create an accurate map of the forest under local management and calculate its

area; (2) classify forests according to their growth characteristics and record this information; (3)

lay out permanent and representative sampling plots; and (4) record basic information such as

species, condition, diameter at breast height, and height of each tree, and weight measures for

ground vegetation.

The initial costs of the program were half of what local professional personnel would charge

for similar services, and the costs are expected to drop as the technology becomes more readily

available. Similar programs have been undertaken elsewhere, for instance in Cameroon (Sonwa

& Minang, 2009) and Mexico. In the Scolel Te project in Mexico, local monitoring has greatly

reduced transaction costs. This in turn led to better returns to participating farmers (Cacho,

Marshall, & Milne, 2005). Skutsch (2005) also proposes that the monitoring and measuring

protocols could find applications in, and we agree that it would greatly improve, the pre-project

and project documentation, and subsequent processes of validation and approva l of carbon

forestry projects.

5. ANALYSIS

A summary of the empirical evidence presented in the previous section is provided in Table

1 below. Notwithstanding that most projects have not fared well due to what could be referred to

as the ―sustainability test‖‘ of CDM/REDD+ (Brown et al., 2004), we seek to draw attention to

the finer institutional issues that seem to have received less attention in the literature. In what

follows, we analyze the implications of the empirical evidence presented above revisited in the

context of the theoretical framework outlined in section 3.0.

[Table 1 Here]


(a) No trees without tenure: “carbon rights” as the starting point

One key finding jumps out from the empirical evidence presented in the previous section

and a general survey of the literature on existing carbon forestry projects: Carbon rights are

rarely vested in local forest users. It is relevant to recall that key theoretical argument of REDD+

is that ―it provides strong incentives directly to forest owners and users to manage forests better

and clear less forestland‖ (Angelsen, 2009:xii, italics added). Yet, in many carbon forestry

projects, forest users and local community groups received a lump sum payment, which barely

covered labor costs, and forest users weren‘t even aware of the existence of carbon forestry

projects (Granda, 2005). Similarly, attempts at ―paying‖ communities through ―development

projects‖ without linking them carefully and directly to the returns from carbon sequestration are

unlikely to sustain REDD+ in the long run (Boyd, 2009; see also Sunderlin et al., 2005).

The disjuncture between the theoretical propositions underlying carbon forests, including

REDD+, and the discussion of carbon rights for forest users as an afterthought suggests that

community property rights are not being taken seriously (Angelsen, 2009; Cotula & Mayers,

2009). 5 The readiness plans submitted by national governments are not paying the required

attention to the much talked about issues of tenure security and benefit sharing (Phelps, Webb, &

Agrawal, 2010). On the other hand, given the speed with which REDD+ negotiations are

evolving, there may be a slight possibility of achieving property rights reforms in a realistic time

frame (Sandbrook et al., 2010). The key is to ensure that countries participating in REDD+ have

in place a plan for recognizing and enforcing local rights to forest use.

(b) Beyond command and control: rethinking “monitoring” in REDD+

The theoretical framework we outline in this paper places ―monitoring and enforcement‖ as

key factors contributing to successful forest management. Yet, a scan of debates over


monitoring, verification, and reporting in REDD+ reveals that ―monitoring‖ is used merely as a

synonym for ―auditing,‖ which is seen mainly as the role of governments, or even regional

intergovernmental organizations (Herold & Skutsch, 2009; Wertz-Kanounnikoff & Angelsen,

2009; cf. Skutsch, 2005). For example, the Forest Dialogue, a global initiative launched in 2007

to facilitate multisector dialogue and consultation over international carbon forestry agreements,

and UN-REDD (http://www.un-redd.org) emphasize creating government regulations and

structures, managing national inventories through data analysis, and third-party monitors.6

Based on the theoretical and empirical analyses presented above, however, we argue that

ongoing local monitoring offers a double advantage: it is directly linked to local forest

conservation efforts, and in the process reasonable estimates of carbon sequestration can be

culled from data collected by local communities. Local forest users are usually in a better

position to observe activities within the forests than central bureaucrats or external auditors.

When monitoring has been placed exclusively in the hands of external monitors, it leads to high

transaction costs. Moreover, inefficient bureaucratic structures frequently present an inaccurate

picture of forest condition (Nagendra, 2007). Although scholars often point to the technical

nature of carbon accounting procedures, as documented above, several attempts are underway to

simplify the technical aspects of collecting and recording data on carbon sequestration, which

should further improve the chances of community participation in monitoring.

Given the level of scientific uncertainty over precise calculations of carbon sequestration

levels, we suggest that simpler carbon accounting systems based on user monitoring and

accounting activities should receive wider attention and appreciation. More important, these

monitoring activities are, and should be, an integral part of the business of local forest

governance as reported widely. Finer carbon sequestration measurements could be conducted at

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


randomly selected sample sites as part of third-party validation processes. Such a combination of

local and external monitoring is likely to offer synergetic conservation, development, and

governance benefits.

(c) Overcoming the scale disadvantages: a nested enterprise for cross-scale linkages

Local projects and forest communities, best placed to respond to some of the most daunting

challenges of carbon forestry, are at a disadvantage in their inability to achieve economies of

scale. National governments and international agencies may find it challenging to deal with

disparate user groups undertaking forest protection and real- time monitoring and enforcement.

Public agencies and officials located at different scales will have a role in coordinating policy

implementation and in overall monitoring. Yet public bureaucracies, left to their own actions,

may not function efficiently. As scholars have argued in the context of forestry decentralization,

public agencies and governments are likely to perform better when local forest users are

mobilized and cooperate with regional or national bureaucracies (Agrawal & Ostrom, 2001).

The mobilization of forest users and local forestry groups has been achieved in a variety of

contexts. For example, active forest user groups have been mobilized into a national federation in

Nepal, a number of regional federations in India (Wollenberg et al., 2006), and rural producers‘

federations in Latin America (Bebbington, 1996), and efforts are underway to organize

community forest management associations into federations that may participate in

Madagascar‘s protected areas management (Ferguson, 2009). In general, it is clear that the role

of forestry federations has been undertheorized in the literature. Even so, we do not suggest

setting up new government-mandated federations as part of the REDD+ governance mechanism.

Indeed, federations that evolve organically from the ground up are likely to best represent their

constituents‘ interests (Bebbington, 1996). We instead argue that the recognition of existing


federations and the establishment of legal frameworks that allow federations to form in new

places are essential to coordinate among multiple levels of government and across wide

geographical areas.

Forest federations can play an important role in various aspects of REDD+. For example,

federations with a wide reach and membership among remote forest communities may also be

well placed to train community members in basic carbon monitoring and measurement

techniques, in line with the success of Skutcsh‘s (2005) experiment. Federations could also

function as aggregating agencies, allowing for multiple communities with independent REDD+

project proposals to enjoy economies of scale in registration and set-up costs A similar approach

has been employed in the Scolel Te project in southern Mexico where a user federation functions

as a market intermediary, aggregator, and the general clearing house on regional implementation

of the CDM agroforestry project (Cacho, Marshall, & Milne, 2005). Additionally, by linking

forest users and external agencies, forestry federations can work as sources of credible

commitment for local users. Notwithstanding the selective success of forestry federations

illustrated here, a vast majority of forest-dependent people live in a world of information

asymmetry and information hoarding, as the current level of awareness about carbon forestry

projects suggests. This often forces them to either stay away from, or participate only

superficially in, many developmental interventions that are not communicated to them through

carefully designed strategies (Huesca, 2006). Since ensuring participation of forest-dependent

people is a key to ensuring REDD+ success, it may be wise to make use of forestry federations

and other endogenous channels of communication.

(d) The REDD architecture

For the most part, discussion on institutional architecture for REDD+ seems to be focused


on finances and the trio of monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) (Angelsen, 2009). In

several cases we presented above, the extensive national and international hierarchy of monitors

could not detect the problems described by the authors and several others (Corbera & Brown,

2010). Arguably, this could be attributed to a single-minded focus on certifying CERs even when

the additionality or the long-run sustainability of CERs was doubtful to begin with. Therefore,

we would place the tasks of (external) MRV as being secondary to and only a means to

promoting effective forest conservation. Forest conservation requires careful attention to relevant

institutions, which are needed to ―manage information and incentives‖ (Wertz-Kanounnikoff &

Angelsen, 2009:13). We argue that this insight has not been fully internalized in the extensive

debate over REDD+ as it should be.

The core design elements in REDD+ institutional design should be aimed at bolstering the

incentives of forest communities and forest owners to conserve forest resources. Given this, a

nested approach to REDD+ that relies on flexible and adaptive polycentric institutional

arrangements is more likely to be successful. As William Clark has argued, ―we are not smart

enough to manage a system as complex as the interaction of a global economy and the planet as

though we had a blueprint.‖7 Despite such warnings, a blueprint national REDD+ architecture as

the ultimate goal seems to be gaining currency among policy makers and scholars. Such a

national architecture is a clear invitation to centralization of powers and authority (Phelps, Webb,

& Agrawal, 2010; Sandbrook et al., 2010).

Recentralization is not merely a theoretical possibility, and avoidable, as Wunder (2010)

argues. Indeed, one of the original proponents of REDD, the Government of Papua New Guinea,

has in recent times curbed indigenous land rights rendering community groups unable to legally

contest awards of projects deemed to be in ―national interest.‖8 Similarly, India‘s forest


authorities have sought to bring under carbon forestry the forestlands long held by indigenous

community groups in North East India under shifting cultivation (Kant & Shuirong, 2008). This

is contentious, to say the least, because the cultivation rights in this case were already recognized

under India‘s Forest Rights Act of 2006.9 It is important to foresee these tendencies of national

ministries and forest agencies to recentralize control over forests. Binding obligations of national

governments to secure tenure rights of local communities and assured benefits to groups

protecting forests can help avoid such recentralization (Sandbrook et al., 2010; Sunderlin,

Larson, & Cronkleton, 2009).

A nested architecture (Figure 3) could serve better in the face of scientific, institutional, and

operational uncertainties over how exactly REDD+ interventions will work on the ground. The

roles of key actors in such architecture could then be proposed as follows:

(1) National governments – responsible for national policy frameworks, particularly in protecting

customary and modern property rights of forest users and forest owners.

(2) Subnational/provincial government – responsible for promoting REDD+ programs with

participation of civil society groups with relevant expertise and capabilities; help liaison between

forestry federations and national policy-making bodies.

(3) Forest users and forestry federations – help evolve and promote grounded and locally

productive REDD+ interventions designed to co-produce multiple forest benefits, in particular

carbon sequestration and other ecological services, local livelihood benefits, and economic

development benefits.

(4) Civil society organizations and private businesses – participate in selective third-party

monitoring; oversee and track adherence to sustainable development principles pledged by world

leaders; build capacities of community groups and federations in improving REDD+


performance on the ground; and national and international policy feedback.

6. CONCLUSION: PROPOSING A REDD+ REGIME FOUNDED ON THE PRINCIPLE

OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

REDD+ has come to occupy a central policy and research space in the ongoing debates over

global forest governance (Angelsen, 2009). It is premised on the powerful idea that forest

communities and other forest owners protecting forests contribute to the global public good of

climate change mitigation and ecological resilience, which should be recognized and rewarded.

However, this idea is often being compromised in the zeal to make rapid progress (Sandbrook et

al., 2010). In this paper, we have shown that paying close attention to the incentives that forest

communities and forest users have (or do not have) in conserving forests is fundamental to the

success of REDD+ in bringing about forest conservation and emission reductions. Therefore, the

need to direct significant benefits to forest communities should be regarded as a central

objective, rather than as an afterthought. This will produce improved conservation, secured

livelihoods, and development opportunities to forest communities as means to effective climate

change mitigation. More important, it will simultaneously provide the foundations for local

adaptations (Fisher, Chaudhury, & McCusker, 2010).

We recognize the potential problems in focusing on microincentives (Vatn & Angelsen,

2009). Therefore, we have focused on how the insights from a robust body of scholarship on

common-pool resources and common-property regimes could inform our approaches to specific

elements of a nested REDD+ architecture. For instance, instead of arguing for either a totally

decentralized or a centralized model of property rights with specific funding flows as argued by

Johns et al. (2010), we have discussed the roles that different actors can play at various levels of

governance in effective REDD+ implementation. Second, a focus on rights of local communities


may be faulted on ignoring issues of scale in a global program of the size and spread of REDD+

(Minang, McCall, & Bressers, 2007). In response, we argue that forestry federations and other

civil society groups working in collaboration with public agencies can be effective across scales.

Instead of the current emphasis on exclusive carbon forests (cf. Boyd, 2009), we argue that

local communities who depend on forests for their livelihoods should be allowed to continue

subsistence uses that don‘t compete with the carbon sequestration functions of forests. We have

also demonstrated how it is possible to suitably modify REDD+ components, such as

monitoring, to suit the capacities of local groups rather than expecting them to fit into

frameworks that are predetermined at the global level. Thus, we show that the proposition of

nesting need not be seen as the dominance of higher scales over lower scales as some have

suggested (see, for example, Forsyth, 2009). In seeking to involve local community groups and,

wherever possible, forestry federations and other higher- level organizations in monitoring, we do

not ignore the need for third-party monitoring. Instead, we argue that third-party external

monitors could be employed sparingly, and that they can be sponsored by a REDD+ governing

body instead of the monitors employed and paid by project proponents, as was the case with

CDM (Repetto, 2001).

Provincial and national governments have important roles in facilitating suitable reforms

aimed at clarifying and securing carbon rights, and enforcing them when legitimate right holders

are faced with recalcitrant, powerful poachers. As Cotula and Mayers (2009) argue, success of

REDD+ on the ground is going to be affected significantly by how the benefits are allocated

within countries. It is for this reason that we think REDD+ architecture should require national

governments to carry out vital forest tenure reforms where they are missing (Sunderlin et al.,

2009). In the existing debates, national governments are expected to undertake reforms and


sincerely implement them, which is unlikely to materialize given the past track of such reforms

not implemented unless national governments were forced to do so (Sandbrook et al., 2010; see

also Tacconi, 2007). Without such mandatory provisions, aggregate REDD+ funds are going to

be significantly attractive for the national or provincial public forest agencies in large forested

countries such as Indonesia, India, Brazil, and China, creating incentives for them to take control

of forests or even to recentralize (Phelps, Webb, & Agrawal, 2010). In fact, the reigning

consensus for promoting the ―national REDD+ architecture‖ in the long run creates additional

incentives for national governments to postpone reforms or even avoid them.

Considering such possibilities, we reemphasize the need to reorient REDD+ as a mechanism

that fits into the broader and ongoing movement for effective forest governance instead of

creating governance arrangements that cater solely to REDD+ requirements (Cotula & Mayers,

2009). Such propositions, we have argued, are borne not merely out of normative preference for

democratic forest governance and equitable ―benefit sharing,‖ as the common refrain is, but out

of our concern for the success of REDD+ at its core business of forest conservation and emission

reduction. By arguing for such fundamental integration of sociopolitical issues with concerns for

program effectiveness, we propose a substantive approach to embedding sustainability within the

core principles of REDD+.

REFERENCES

Agrawal, A. (2001). Common property institutions and sustainable governance of resources. World

Development 29(10), 1649–1672.

Agrawal, A. and E. Ostrom (2001). "Collective action, property rights, and decentralization in resource

use in India and Nepal." Politics and Society 29(4): 485-514.

Angelsen, A. (2009). Moving ahead with REDD: Issues, options, and implications. Bogor, Indonesia:

Center for International Forestry Research.


Ascher, W. (1999). Why governments waste natural resources: Policy failures in developing countries.

Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.

Bebbington, A. (1996). Organizations and intensifications: Campesino federations, rural livelihoods and

agricultural technology in the Andes and Amazonia. World Development 24(7), 1161–1177.

Boyd, E. (2009). Governing the clean development mechanism: Global rhetoric versus local realities in

carbon sequestration projects. Environment and Planning A 41(10), 2380–2395.

Brockington, D., Igoe, J., & Schmidt-Soltau, K. (2006). Conservation, human rights, and poverty

reduction. Conservation Biology 20(1), 250–252.

Brown, K., Adger, W., Boyd, E., Corbera-Elizalde, E., & Shackley, S. (2004). How do CDM projects

contribute to sustainable development? Norwich, UK: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

Cacho, O. J., Marshall, G. R., & Milne, M. (2005). Transaction and abatement costs of carbon-sink

projects in developing countries. Environment and Development Economics 10(05), 597–614.

Chhatre, A., & Agrawal, A. (2009). Trade-offs and synergies between carbon storage and livelihood

benefits from forest commons. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States

of America 106(42), 17667–17670.

Coleman, E. A. (2009). Institutional factors affecting biophysical outcomes in forest management.

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 28(1), 122–146.

Corbera, E., & Brown, K. (2010). Offsetting benefits? Analyzing access to forest carbon. Environment

and Planning A 42, 1739–1761.

Cotula, L., & Mayers, J. (2009). Tenure in REDD: Start-point or afterthought? London: International

Institute for Environment and Development.

Eastin, J., Grundmann, R., & Prakash, A. (in press). The two limits debates: "Limits to Growth" and

climate change. Futures.

Ferguson, B. (2009). REDD comes into fashion in Madagascar. Madagascar Conservation &

Development 4(2), 132–137.

Fisher, M., Chaudhury, M., & McCusker, B. (2010). Do forests help rural households adapt to climate


variability? Evidence from southern Malawi. World Development 38(9), 1241–1250.

Forsyth, T. (2009). Multilevel, multiactor governance in REDD+. In A. Angelsen (Ed.), Realising

REDD+. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research.

Gibson, C. C., Williams, J. T., & Ostrom, E. (2005). Local enforcement and better forests. World

Development 33(2), 273–284.

Granda, P. (2005). Carbon sink plantations in the Ecuadorian Andes. Quito, Ecuador: Acción Ecológica.

Grieg-Gran, M., Porras, I., & Wunder, S. (2005). How can market mechanisms for forest environmental

services help the poor? World Development 33(9), 1511–1527.

Hardner, J. J., Peter, C. F., & Darren, C. G. (2000). Prospects for mitigating carbon, conserving

biodiversity, and promoting socioeconomic development objectives through the clean development

mechanism. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 5(1), 61–80.

Herold, M., & Skutsch, M. (2009). Measurement, reporting and verification for REDD. In A. Angelsen

(Ed.), Realising REDD+. Bogor, Indonesia, Center for International Forestry Research.

Huesca, R. (2006). From modernization to participation. In A. N. Valdivia (Ed.), A companion to media

studies. Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishing.

Johns, T., F. Merry, C. Stickler, D. Nepstad, N. Laporte and S. Goetz (2010). "A three-fund approach to

incorporating government, public and private forest stewards into a redd funding mechanism."

International Forestry Review 10(3): 458-464.

Kant, P. and W. Shuirong (2008). "Reducing deforestation and degradation through post-colonial

settlement of land rights: A case study in India." CCLR The Carbon & Climate Law Review 2: 300-

305.

Lal, P. (2001). Private sector forestry research. Bois et Forêts des Tropiques 267(1), 33–48.

Lang, C., & Byakola, T. (2006). “A funny place to store carbon.” Montevideo, Uruguay: World

Rainforest Movement.

Lele, U., Kumar, N., Husain, S. A., Zazueta, A., & Kelly, L. (2000). The World Bank forest strategy:

Striking the right balance. Washington, DC: World Bank.


Lohmann, L. (2008). Carbon trading, climate justice and the production of ignorance: Ten examples.

Development 51, 359–365.

Minang, P., & McCall, M. (2008). Multi-level governance conditions for implementing multilateral

environmental agreements: The Case of CDM forestry readiness in Cameroon. Energy &

Environment 19(6), 845–860.

Minang, P., McCall, M., & Bressers, H. (2007). Community capacity for implementing clean

development mechanism projects within community forests in Cameroon. Environmental

Management 39(5), 615–630.

Nagendra, H. (2007). Thomas K. Rudel, tropical forests—Regional paths of destruction and regeneration

in the late twentieth century. Landscape Ecology 22(7), 1109–1111.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Phelps, J., Webb, E. L., & Agrawal, A. (2010). Does REDD+ threaten to recentralize forest governance?

Science 328, 312–313.

Repetto, R. (2001). The clean development mechanism: Institutional breakthrough or institutional

nightmare? Policy Sciences 34(3-4), 303–327.

Sandbrook, C., Nelson, F., Adams, W., & Agrawal, A. (2010). Carbon, forests and the REDD paradox.

Oryx 44(03), 330–334.

Schlager, E., & Ostrom, E. (1992). Property-rights regimes and natural resources: A conceptual analysis.

Land Economics 68(3), 249–262.

Skutsch, M. M. (2005). Reducing carbon transaction costs in community-based forest management.

Climate Policy 5, 433–443.

Smith, J. (2002). Harnessing carbon markets for tropical forest conservation: Towards a more realistic

assessment. Environmental Conservation 27(03), 300.

Smith, J., & Scherr S. J. (2003). Capturing the value of forest carbon for local livelihoods. World

Development 31(12), 2143–2160.

Sonwa, D., & Minang, P. (2009). REDD+ realities in Cameroon. In A. Angelsen (Ed.), Realising


REDD+. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research.

Sunderlin, W. D., Angelsen, A., Belcher, B., Burgers, P., Nasi, R., Santoso, L., & Wunder, S. (2005).

Livelihoods, forests, and conservation in developing countries: An overview. World Development

33(9), 1383–1402.

Sunderlin, W. D., Larson, A. M., & Cronkleton, P. (2009). Forest tenure rights and REDD+: From inertia

to policy solutions. In A. Angelsen (Ed.), Realising REDD+. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for

International Forestry Research.

Tacconi, L. (2007). Decentralization, forests and livelihoods: Theory and narrative. Global Environmental

Change 17(3-4), 338–348.

Tiwari, A., & D'Souza, N. G. (2009). CDM for sustainable development? A people's perspective.

Visakhapatnam, India: Laya Resource Centre.

Vatn, A., & Angelsen, A. (2009). Options for a national REDD+ architecture. In A. Angelsen (Ed.),

Realising REDD+. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research.

Vidal, J. (2010). United Nations warned that corruption is undermining grants to stop logging. The

Observer (UK), July 4.

Wertz-Kanounnikoff, S., & Angelsen, A. (2009). Global and national REDD+ architecture. In A.

Angelsen (Ed.), Realising REDD+. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research.

Wollenberg, E., Colchester, M., Mbugua G., & Griffiths, T. (2006). Linking social movements: How

international networks can better support community action about forests. International Forestry

Review 8(2), 265–272.

Wunder, S. (2010). Forest decentralization for REDD? A response to Sandbrook et al. Oryx 44(03), 335–

337.


NOTES

1 The list of approved DOEs include Japan Quality Assurance Organization (JQA), British Standards

Institution (BSI), Spanish Association for Standardisation and Certification (AENOR), Det Norske

Veritas (DNV), and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

2 These details on CDM architecture are based on the information available on the website of the United

Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at http://cdm.unfccc.int/about/index.html

accessed September 1, 2010.

3 Agrawal, A. (2010). "Seeing REDD Over Forest Peoples." Retrieved September 10, 2009, from

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660845.stm.

4 Agrawal, A. (2010). "Seeing REDD Over Forest Peoples." Retrieved September 10, 2009, from

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660845.stm.

5 The phrase is inspired by Cotula and Mayers (2009).

6 TFD (2009). Investing in REDD-plus. New Haven, Connecticut, The Forest Dialogue (TFD) Steering

Committee. Retrieved August 5, 2010, from

http://unfccc.int/files/methods_science/redd/application/pdf/tfd_invest ing_in_redd-

plus_en_recommendations.pdf

7 Interviewed by Doug Gavel, June 11, 2009, "William Clark on Sustainable Development." Retrieved

September 9, 2010, from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-

events/publications/insight/international/william-clark.

8 Anon (2010). "Papua New Guinea: Indigenous People Lose Out on Land Rights." Retrieved September

10, 2010, from http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=89322.

9 GOI (2007). The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest

Rights) Act, 2006. No.2 of 2007. New Delhi, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India.

http://cdm.unfccc.int/about/index.html

http://unfccc.int/files/methods_science/redd/application/pdf/tfd_investing_in_redd-plus_en_recommendations.pdf

http://unfccc.int/files/methods_science/redd/application/pdf/tfd_investing_in_redd-plus_en_recommendations.pdf


Linkages: CERs ( ), finance ( ), governance ( )

Figure 1: The CDM Structure (project-based/sub-national architecture)

Buyers in Developed

Countries

COP & CDM Board

Designated

Operational

Entities National Governments &

Designated National

Authority Sellers

(Actors & Agencies in

Developing Countries)



Source: Adapted from Wertz-Kanounnikoff & Angelsen (2009)

Figure 2: State Centric REDD+ Mechanism (National Architecture)

COP & REDD Board

National

Governments &

Designated National

Authority

Sellers



Buyers in Developed

Countries



Source: Adapted from Wertz-Kanounnikoff & Angelsen (2009)

Figure 3: Nested REDD+ Architecture

COP & ‘REDD Board’

‘Subnational

Activities’

Buyers in Developed

Countries

National

Governments &

Designated National

Authority

Sellers




Table 1: Key Issues in the Carbon Forestry Projects Surveyed

Project Legal Land

Ownership

Who Owns

Carbon

Credits

Role of State Key Issues Lessons/Suggested Improvements

ITC Social

Forestry,

India

Private

Landowners

Indian Tobacco

Company

(paper

manufacturer)

None 1- CDM funds went into supporting ‗business as

usual scenario‘

2- Individual farmers have no additional

incentives to protect trees

3- The project documents padded up with proposal of activities irrelevant to improving

success of private plantations

1- Directing incentives to those who make land-

use decisions.

2- Direct participation of local communities in

project formulation and monitoring

3- Concerted efforts to disqualify speculative trade in carbon credits

UWA-Face

Plantations,

Uganda

State

(national

park)

Face

Foundation

(private)

Repressive

enforcement of

park boundaries contested for a

long time

1- Carbon forestry reinforced conflicts over

customary lands declared as a park

2- Violent evictions led to hardships and human-rights violations

3- Obvious threats to the plantations and

significant leakages

4- Violations of injunctions issued by a court of

law

1- Proper vetting of proposals for implications

for historical/ongoing conflicts

2- Building community stakes in the project instead of displacing them by force

3- Avoiding concentrated finances being made

available to public agencies, which might create

incentives to recentralize/gain control

4- Focusing attention on broader forest governance

Noel Kempff

Mercado

Climate

Action

Project, Bolivia

Government

of Bolivia

Government of

Bolivia, an

NGO, and a

number of

private investors

Establishing

linkages between

different actors;

supporting land-

titling program and creation of

community

forests

1- Logging operations bought over

2- Statutory recognition of indigenous land rights

community-forestry programs for the

communities

3- Partially successful development interventions, not directly linked to carbon sequestration

4- Carbon rights owned by non-community

agencies

1- Secured tenure rights over indigenous land

2- Building capacities of local community

organizations/federations

3- Project benefits to be tied directly to carbon

sequestration instead of being delivered through traditional donor-sponsored approaches

4- Community involvement in monitoring of

surrounding forests

Community-

Based Carbon Monitoring

Projects

Public

forestlands

NA NA 1- Technological collaboration between scientists

and local community groups 2- Developing user-friendly/low-skill demanding

protocols and handheld instruments

3- Sustained training and motivation

4- Appropriate payments for monitoring and data

collection 5- Better options for scaling up to be explored

1- Involves communities directly in the

institutional structures for REDD+ 2- Works as a double motivation for forest

protection and measurement of the success of

forest protection and carbon sequestration

3- Savings in monitoring costs

4- Can be replicated with the help of regional scientific/civil society organizations, or with

assistance from existing forestry federations

Ostrom Workshop Working Paper: "REDD Blues: Trading in Carbon Credits without Trading off...

Documents

Transcript of Ostrom Workshop Working Paper: "REDD Blues: Trading in Carbon Credits without Trading off...