REDD+ readiness process in Cameroon: an analysis of multi-stakeholder perspectives

Cameroon has been a keen participant in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+) negotiations since 2005 and has engaged in activities to enhance the implementation of REDD+. This article reviews progress on REDD+ readiness in Cameroon based on a multiple REDD+ functions framework. Results show that some progress has been made in terms of planning and coordination, institutional development, and the development of some REDD+ projects. Absence of a legal framework, inadequate procedures for stakeholder participation, slow progress in the development of a national strategy, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) challenges, and weak financing remain prominent constraints. Despite having one of the slowest REDD Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PP) processes in the Congo Basin, stakeholders feel strong ownership because the R-PP was done almost entirely by Cameroonian experts. Some opportunities for improving REDD+ can be considered going forward, including the establishment of procedures for a broader participatory process, speeding up the operationalization of the National Observatory on Climate Change, making use of the ongoing forestry law reform, consideration of a carbon concessions concept, tapping from international initiatives to build on MRV, and improving benefit sharing and financing through the development of an appropriate and decentralized mechanism. Enhancing these opportunities is fundamental for successful REDD+ implementation in Cameroon.

Policy relevance

This article offers a new multidimensional approach to assessing the REDD+ readiness process in Cameroon. This critical assessment, which is done using six key functions, provides an opportunity for enhanced understanding of the process by policy makers, decision makers, and professionals with a view to enabling improvements in the readiness process. Furthermore, the article proffers a series of opportunities that the government and other relevant stakeholders can capitalize on to overcome current hurdles affecting the REDD+ readiness process. It is hoped that policy makers driving the REDD+ process in Cameroon will be able to incorporate the findings of this research into their strategic policy, formulated to advance the REDD+ readiness process. More importantly, it is hoped that the multidimensional framework applied in this study could be useful for assessing REDD+ in similar contexts in the Congo Basin.     

REDD+ finance in Brazil,Indonesia and Vietnam: Stakeholder perspectives between 2009-2019

Financing REDD+ is complex, due to the need to seek answers not only to the question of who should finance REDD+, but also who should benefit from it. This paper examines the perceptions of REDD+ stakeholders in Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam on different aspects of financing: who should finance REDD+ and who should receive REDD+ benefits for what. Our findings show these issues are political, driven by economic considerations at national level and – despite the narrative of inclusive, participatory decision making – are largely determined by governments. Lack of finance was thereby not always considered by national policy actors to be the most significant challenge during 2010–2019; rather other issues – like lack of knowledge on REDD+ by relevant actors; ineffective coordination between state agencies, the private sector and civil society; unclear tenure rights; ineffectively addressing the main deforestation drivers; low law enforcement capacity; and unclear benefit-sharing mechanisms – have also been perceived to impede REDD+ implementation and payment distributions.     

Community perceptions of REDD+: a case study from Papua New Guinea

REDD projects have received considerable attention for their potential to mitigate the effects of climatic change. However, the existing literature has been slow to assess the impacts of proposed REDD projects on the livelihoods of forest communities in the developing world, or the implications of these local realities for the success of REDD+ initiatives in general. This study presents ethnographic research conducted with communities within the April-Salomei pilot REDD+ Project in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Several cases of institutional biases and uneven power relationships have been exploited by local elites to prevent landowners from making free and informed choices about their involvement in the project, although landowners and local communities are well positioned to capture forthcoming project benefits. By underestimating the scale and impact of traditional shifting cultivation practices, the credibility of the REDD+ project design and the value of any future carbon credits are critically undermined. Based on the actual practices found in PNG, the authors' radical proposal is to call for a halt on REDD development in PNG while institutional enabling conditions are improved, comprehensive landowner consultations conducted, and detailed mapping and genealogical surveys of landowners completed. Without these developments, future REDD+ projects in PNG are unlikely to benefit either the global climate or local development.     

REDD+ projects and national-level Readiness processes: a case study from Kenya

The Bali Action Plan and Cancun agreements on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, plus forest conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) have encouraged demonstration activities as part of Readiness and a step towards national approaches. This has enabled important growth in pilot and demonstration projects. Yet an understanding about how these projects are connected and contribute to national-level technical, policy, and institutional preparedness (Readiness) for REDD+ is lacking. This article examines the linkages between national processes and the private-sector-driven Kasigau Corridor REDD+ project in Kenya. The study reveals interesting cross-scale interactions that have increased over time and have high potential for harnessing national-level processes through lessons from the project level. Key innovations from the Kasigau Corridor Project include the implementation of REDD+ in dry forests, operationalization of conservation easements in the context of REDD+, and demonstration of potential ways of obtaining upfront finance for REDD+. The study also provides a number of key recommendations for Kenya and REDD+ in general, including official endorsement of stand-alone REDD+ projects under national Readiness schemes and exploring jurisdictional and nested REDD+ approaches. Additionally, more accommodating national-level frameworks for attracting private-sector engagement and investments, and for integrating, scaling-out, or scaling-up lessons from such projects, would be needed to enhance national REDD+ Readiness.     

Building the evidence base for REDD+: Study design and methods for evaluating the impacts of conservation interventions on local well-being

Climate change mitigation in developing countries is increasingly expected to generate co-benefits that help meet sustainable development goals. This has been an expectation and a hotly contested issue in REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) since its inception. While the core purpose of REDD+ is to reduce carbon emissions, its legitimacy and success also depend on its impacts on local well-being. To effectively safeguard against negative impacts, we need to know whether and which well-being outcomes can be attributed to REDD+. Yet, distinguishing the effects of choosing particular locations for REDD+ from the effects of the interventions themselves remains a challenge. The Global Comparative Study (GCS) on REDD+ employed a quasi-experimental before-after-control-intervention (BACI) study design to address this challenge and evaluate the impacts of 16 REDD+ pilots across the tropics. We find that the GCS approach allows identification of control groups that represent the counterfactual, thereby permitting attribution of outcomes to REDD+. The GCS experience belies many of the common critiques of the BACI design, especially concerns about collecting baseline data on control groups. Our findings encourage and validate the early planning and up-front investments required to evaluate the local impacts of global climate change mitigation efforts with confidence. The stakes are high, both for the global environment and for local populations directly affected by those efforts. The standards for evidence should be concomitantly high.     

Reform or reversal: the impact of REDD+ readiness on forest governance in Indonesia

Indonesia has turned its alleged role as global leader of land-based carbon emissions into a role as a global trailblazer exploring modalities for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). REDD+ readiness is largely about improving forest governance, but this itself is a multilayered concept. This article analyses how the processes and practices of REDD+ readiness are leading to various forest governance reforms in Indonesia. We analysed six dimensions of REDD+ readiness progress over the past six years and the way these interact with land tenure reform and land-use planning. We found evidence that (1) tenure issues are taken more seriously, as evidenced by the development of social safeguard mechanisms and efforts to accelerate the gazettement of forest boundaries, although a constitutional court recognition in 2013 for customary forest management is, however, yet to be operationalized; (2) spatial planning relates forests more clearly to other parts of the landscape in terms of compliance with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) commitments; and (3) the forest and peatland conversion moratorium initiative led to a revamping of forest management. Despite progress, there are still major obstacles to full REDD+ implementation in Indonesia. The discussion focuses on the weaker part of readiness and possible ways forward.     

Carbon forestry in West Africa: The politics of models,measures and verification processes

In a context of neo-liberal environmental governance, imperatives for global climate change mitigation are motivating a new round of policy initiatives and projects aimed at carbon forestry: conserving and enhancing forest carbon stocks, and trading these values in emerging carbon markets. In this context modelling and measurement, always significant in framing and justifying forest policy initiatives, are of renewed importance, with a growing array of protocols focused on counting and accounting for forest carbon as a commodity. This article draws on perspectives from science and technology studies and environmental discourse analysis to explore how these modelling and measurement processes are being co-constructed with forest carbon policies and political economies, and applied in project design in local settings. Document analysis and key informant interviews are used to track and illustrate these processes in a pair of case studies of forest carbon projects in Sierra Leone and Ghana. These are chosen to highlight different project types – focused respectively on forest reserve and farm-forestry – in settings with multi-layered histories of people-forest relations, landscape change and prior project intervention. The analysis shows how longer established framings and assessments of deforestation are being re-invoked and re-worked amidst current carbon concerns. We demonstrate that measurement processes are not just technical but social and political, carrying and thus cementing particular views of landscape and social relations that in turn make likely particular kinds of intervention pathway, with fortress style conservation or plantations becoming the dominant approach. In the process, other possibilities – including alternative pathways that might treat and value carbon as part of complex, lived-in landscapes, or respond more adaptively to less equilibrial people–forest relations, are occluded.     

Forest tenure reform in the age of climate change: Lessons for REDD+

Numerous authors have stressed the importance of guaranteeing and protecting the tenure and human rights of indigenous and other forest-based communities under schemes for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD, or REDD+); and important international indigenous organizations have spoken out strongly against REDD+. This article examines two specific issues that present risks for local communities: rights to forests and rules for resource use. It draws on the findings of a study conducted by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) on forest tenure reforms in selected countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America from 2006 to 2008. The study underlines the numerous obstacles faced by communities after rights are won, in moving from statutory rights to their implementation and to access to benefits on the ground. It argues that there is currently little reason to expect better results from national policies under REDD+ without binding agreements to protect local rights.     

Experimentalist governance in climate finance: the case of REDD+ in Brazil

One of the most significant impacts of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been the establishment of a participatory process for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). We analyse the case of Brazil, the country whose land-use emissions from deforestation and forest degradation have declined the most. Through semi-structured interviews with 29 country policy experts – analysed in full text around 7 categories of activities that existing literature identifies as central elements of an effective governance system – we find weak links between the international REDD+ system and what actually happens on the ground inside Brazil. The greatest weaknesses are rooted in the absence of any formal learning system, which prevents higher-level efforts from obtaining useful feedback from lower-level entities responsible for implementation. Analytically our approach is rooted in the idea of ‘experimentalist governance’ in which local policy experiments map the space of what is possible and effective with transformative land policy. These experiments provide information to broader international initiatives on how local implementation shapes the ability and strategy to reach global goals. The Brazilian experience suggests that even when international funding is substantial, local implementation remains a weak link. REDD+ reforms should focus less on the total amount of money being spent and much more on how those funds are used to generate useful local policy experiments and learning.

Key policy insights

• A nascent system of experimentalist governance to implement REDD+ is taking shape in Brazil. However, the potential for experimentalism to improve policy reforms within Brazil is far from realized;

• Experimentalist problem-solving approaches could have a big impact on REDD+ with stronger incentives to promote experimentation and learning from experience;

• Reforms to REDD+ incentive schemes should focus less on the total amount of money being spent and more on whether those funds are actually generating experimental learning and policy improvement – in Brazil and in other countries struggling with similar challenges.