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Commodification of forest carbon: REDD+ and socially embedded forest practices in Zanzibar

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Abstract

In this article, we present an empirically based and critical investigation of the ways in which a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) project in Zanzibar takes steps to establish the systems required to produce a forest carbon commodity eligible for sale in the global carbon market. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth knowledge about REDD+ processes in Zanzibar, we discuss how the commodification of forest carbon is at odds with local norms, practices and social relations at local level in Zanzibar, and show how commodification processes – in a context of highly volatile carbon markets – creates new uncertainties and relations of dependence. We argue that, by converting the local forest into a source of one single commodity for sale (‘forest carbon’), the project reduces the use value of the forest for local women and men, thus undermining the longer-term rationality inherent in local norms and socially embedded forest practices. We indicate that these also include norms that serve to protect forests. In the context of contemporary debates about the functioning of REDD+ and commodification of forest carbon more in general, this article contributes to enhance current understanding of REDD+ practices and impacts at local level.

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... This is what Foucault (2008: 260) observes to be an environmental type of intervention rather than an internal subjugation of individuals' disciplinary governmentality. Specifically, in REDD+, there are multifaceted interventions involving monetary incentives, the spirit of entrepreneurship, welfare projects, and environmental education, among other features (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Boer, 2017). A neoliberal approach of this kind promotes a particular mode of environmental citizenship or a green mentality, with an emphasis on conserving specific aspects of biodiversity at the expense of marginal human communities (Mukono & Sambaiga, 2021;Vedeld et al., 2016). ...
... The evidence for this is that the verified carbon tonnage has never been sold and that the Norwegian government withdrew in 2014. One of the project officials said that "We put in many efforts, but we have failed to secure a market for the verified carbon." 3 There are increasing criticisms of REDD+ in Tanzania and other states about the numerous manipulative tendencies surrounding its discourses, and about how reality on the ground contradicts the claims of project funders and managers (Asiyanbi et al., 2019;Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Scheba & Rakotonarivo, 2016;Svarstad & Benjaminsen, 2017). ...
... Findings from the two communities revealed that practices of making REDD+ work for communities generate far-reaching consequences that are erased from discourses provided by its supporters (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018;Samndong, 2018). The evidence further indicates that the actual exercise of ordinary REDD+ practices can be socially disturbing, resulting in displacement, inequality, and spatial fragmentation of the community landscape. ...
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This paper utilizes a Foucauldian approach to shed light on the claim that power relations are complex and dynamic, underlying neoliberal conservation mechanisms. Despite the ascendance of the Foucauldian governmentality lens to deconstruct neoliberal conservation, few context-specific studies analysing its multiple operations and contradictions with local realities are available. To fill this gap, this article advances a multiple-governmentality approach to REDD+ in Lindi, Tanzania, that allows for grappling with the social life of neoliberal conservation. It illustrates existing governing practices and techniques – including fences and fines, community self-management mechanisms, land use management plans, bylaws, monetary incentives, and social infrastructure – that have far-reaching and contradictory social consequences for forest-dependent communities in southern Tanzania. This article concludes by highlighting the significance of progressive, liberating-political framing to confront the exclusions and injustices inherent in current neoliberal conservation models.
... Yet, there is a general under-theorisation of REDD+ schemes in private tenure arrangements and what this means for the experiments around neoliberalisation of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) (Matulis, 2021), and social and economic possibilities in host communities (IPCC, 2022). REDD+ schemes point to countries and projects that can demonstrate progress in the reduction of forest-related carbon emissions (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018), providing possibilities for actors in developed countries to buy 'carbon credits' from poor countries (the logics of PES). Carbon verification and validation systems for compliance with specific standards for carbon sale thus respond to the neoliberal agenda of market imperatives (Sheng, 2020a(Sheng, , 2020b. ...
... Mainstream environmental conservation literature reveals how neoliberal conservation initiatives are often at odds with people centred accounts of their lived realities, underpinning livelihoods, human rights and autonomy of forest owners (local communities) (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018;Corbera, 2012). There are questions around land grabbing, land tenure conflicts, dispossessions, and displacement, shaped by power asymmetry in decision-making, and unclear benefit sharing mechanisms (Dunlap and Fairhead, 2014;Svarstad and Benjaminsen, 2017;Scheba and Scheba, 2017). ...
... It also obscures power relations that underline carbon trade 'value-chain' and local implications. Specifically, these render invisible local norms, practices and social relations at local level to the exclusion of local groups (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). There is evidence of spatial and ethnically differential outcomes of REDD+ activities (Hiratsuka et al., 2021), inadequate partnerships, and challenges of accountability (Shin et al., 2021;Angelsen et al., 2018). ...
... Rethinking power from an agentic lens considers the constant negotiation of power among actors who seek recognition through tactical positioning (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Mukono & Sambaiga, 2021). For instance, Scott's framing of "everyday resistance" has significantly influenced the political ecology problematization of everyday resistance in colonial-imposed conservation models (Asiyanbi, Ogar, & Akintoye, 2019;Holmes & Cavanagh, 2016;Lund & Saito-Jensen, 2013;Mukono & Sambaiga, 2021;Nepomuceno, Affonso, Fraser, & Torres, 2019;Neumann, 1998). ...
... It is interesting to underscore how the agency of recipients of REDD+ hosting communities reacted, intending to counter exclusions (Asiyanbi, Arhin, & Isyaku, 2017;Asiyanbi, 2018;Collins, 2019b). These theoretical and empirical demonstrations regarding REDD+ scholarship disclose how individual agency is configured, constrained, and discursively negotiated within REDD+ recipient communities (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Mukono & Sambaiga, 2021). ...
... For Fairhead et al. (2012:237), green grabbing entails 'the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends.' Cavanagh shows these tendencies as a continuum of the past invention and colonial and postcolonial accumulation production. Political ecologists following David Harvey acknowledge that commodifying nature to tackle capitalism has dominated the climate change agenda (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018). ...
Article
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This paper examines power as a conceptual lens for understanding Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus (REDD+) scholarship in the Global South. It focuses on the underlying argument that conservation problematization, practices, and execution are complex and variegated in shaping asymmetric power relations. This demonstrates that REDD + power framing is not unilinear but has theoretical commonalities and differences that need systematic documentation, yet scanty and discrete. Thus, it reexamines recent debates and theoretical trends on REDD+ through power approaches. It has shown that analysing the complexity of power relations reveals uneven power structures shaping REDD+ with associated inequitable relations. Also, the paper highlights specific ideas, strategies and initiatives by those powerful actors have produced in extending coloniality for controlling forest-landdependent communities and their actions to resist it. It showcases how current critical theories and policy debates are crucial for realizing a just and equitable conservation model in the Global South.
... It adds to the growing body of literature highlighting the complexities of power dynamics in REDD + and the associated ramifications of market-based mechanisms in REDD + practices (Astuti and McGregor, 2015;Fletcher et al., 2016). There are calls from critical scholars to explore multiple angles of power dynamics shaping conservation and REDD+, precisely, micro-practices of power and everyday practices of resistance of forest-dependent groups in negotiating rules and regulations for access and use of forest resources (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018;Scheba, 2014;Svarstad and Benjaminsen, 2017). However, as argued by Gay-Antaki (2016), the complexity of power relations observed in REDD + market-based carbon projects results in differentiated ramifications especially amongst marginalised forest-dependent groups. ...
... Market conservation solutions such as REDD + dominantly claim to have trickle-down ecosystem benefits tend to ignore social differentiation as they tend to view the community as homogeneous. With a few exceptions of studies that have focused on overt conflicts that have emerged in the course of implementing REDD+ in Tanzania Scheba and Rakotonarivo, 2016;Svarstad and Benjaminsen, 2017) There are ample studies that have analysed the limitations of managerial approaches (Adger et al. 2005) in shaping conservation interventions through neoliberal mechanisms leading to resistances (Cavanagh et al., 2015;Johnsen and Benjaminsen, 2017;Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). Holmgren (2013), provides a discursive practices shaping REDD+ that resembles 1980s narratives on tropical deforestation while experts as framed as actors of change and forest-dependent groups are imagined as subjects of necessary change. ...
... Studies in Tanzania by Scheba (2014), Benjaminsen and Kaarhus (2018), and Svarstad and Benjaminsen (2017) have been excellent in showing how REDD + has negatively affected social and cultural recognitions of the social actors that depend on forest resources. But these studies could do more to show how differently positioned excluded users resist REDD + schemes. ...
Article
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This paper provides an account of everyday discursive and material practises deployed by marginalised forest-dependent groups in the course of resisting the implementation of Reduced Emission from Deforestation and forest degradation (REDD + ) and conservation regulations. Available literature have documented extensively that REDD + market-based models across the Global South, and Tanzania in particular, have led to increasing inequality, injustices, and exclusions. Nevertheless, there is little attention to exploring how different social actors that are unequally positioned resist exclusions. The paper explores selected case studies of marginalised forest-dependent groups in Lindi, Southern Tanzania, who creatively work to negotiate unequal power relations through a range of encounters around REDD+. Our analysis shows unequal social, spatial, and environmental ramifications of market-based conservation policies and strategies that have led to different kinds of material and discursive resistance to challenge exclusions. In doing so, it provides critical context-specific realities from the Global South and, specifically, Tanzanian scholarship to focus on both the dynamics of power and resistance in socially differentiated forest-dependent groups affected by envisioned market-based and development model-led conservation regimes.
... From their perspective, PES will sustain or even aggravate inequity. Most notably, critical scholars claim that the financial valorization of nature is at odds with indigenous holistic worldviews and legitimizes "green grabbing", i.e. the eviction of local communities in the name of environmental preservation (ASIYANBI, 2016;BENJAMINSEN;KAARHUS, 2018;FAIRHEAD;LEACH;SCOONES, 2012;OSBORNE, 2015). ...
... From their perspective, PES will sustain or even aggravate inequity. Most notably, critical scholars claim that the financial valorization of nature is at odds with indigenous holistic worldviews and legitimizes "green grabbing", i.e. the eviction of local communities in the name of environmental preservation (ASIYANBI, 2016;BENJAMINSEN;KAARHUS, 2018;FAIRHEAD;LEACH;SCOONES, 2012;OSBORNE, 2015). ...
... Most notably, critical scholars show that the concerns of the local population are often ignored. The "imperial mode of living" (BRAND; WISSEN, 2012) is said to go against indigenous and traditional communities' worldviews because they perceive natural resources as sacred and inalienable (BENJAMINSEN; KAARHUS, 2018). In more practical terms, critical political ecology scholars claim that indigenous or local communities are often forcefully evicted or their lands are taken without consent, whenever they try to resist the economic valorization of their resources ("green grabbing", FAIRHEAD; LEACH; SCOONES, 2012; HUFTY; HAAKENSTAD, 2011, p. 8-9). ...
Article
Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are strongly criticized by political ecology scholars. Predominantly, their critique is rooted in notions of distributive justice, as they focus on the negative impact (e.g. land rights distribution) of PES for indigenous and other local communities. Many liberal supporters of PES do not deny that these problems are real. However, they put more emphasis on procedural justice and claim that PES may trigger an institutionalization of more inclusive dialogic procedures. As of yet, both strands of literature underestimate the impact of the postcolonial conditions in which many Pes projects are situated. This is where our article steps in. We investigate initial PES politics in Mato Grosso do Sul, a Brazilian province dominated by ongoing settler colonialism. Our research results indicate that the implementation of inclusive procedures in PES projects may partially mitigate the consequences of ongoing settler colonialism but that this more frequently fails because of its being embedded into the structures of a colonially shaped political economy. Although PES occasionally empower indigenous actors to confront local elites more effectively and strengthen the rights of indigenous women, the resulting transformations within the communities themselves are likely to weaken their political self-organization.
... Finally, there are explicitly endorsed less material objectives for requesting CoFMA status-community pride in their forests (as in Andikoni), fervent desire for autonomous management (Kojani), maintenance of traditional knowledge of cultivar diversity (communities supported by CFP), and the protection of sacred sites (as in Wingwi Mtemani). These motivations build on an economy of forest-dependency (Newton, Miller, Byenkya, & Agrawal, 2016;Walsh, 2007;Walsh, 2009), a history of customary forest management norms (Benjaminsen, 2014;Craster, 1913;Pakenham, 1947;Shao, 1992), a recognition of the forest as a safety net for vulnerable households (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Fagerholm, Käyhkö, & Van Eetvelde, 2013) and a source of spiritual power (sacred groves [misitu ya jadi, misitu ya mizimu] as described by Madeweya, Oka, & Matsumoto, 2004), all dynamics previously demonstrated across Zanzibar. While it is hard to quantify these cultural values invoking identity, security, recreation, spirituality and aesthetics (cf., Fagerholm et al., 2013), they appear to play a significant role in aligning community interests with HIMA objectives, as detected in exchanges during long walks with community members in 2015 and 2016 (see Gross-Camp, 2017 for Tanzania more generally). ...
... Regarding technical advice, shehia with registered CoFMAs receive help from the Forest Department with nursery development, mangrove planting, and woodlots. Finally, with respect to management, Forest Department personnel provide much-needed moral cover (cf., Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018) for committee members in punishing both insiders and outsiders for illegal offtake, and in some cases removing corrupt SCC members. As noted above, communities seeking CoFMA status appear to view one of more of these relatively tangible features, or "co-benefits," as motivating reasons for persisting with or joining the initiative. ...
... ORCID Monique Borgerhoff Mulder https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1117-5984 ENDNOTES 1 We acknowledge our account of considerable support for HIMA institutions differs strongly from that of Benjaminsen and Kaarhus (2018), but point to the very specific case of their single focal village (the only site of 45 on Unguja that rejected HIMA) and its particular relationship with an area protected for tourism. While some of our observations are consistent with their detailed ethnographic fieldwork, we find (at least on Pemba) the situation to be not simply one of resistance but entailing more complex and subtle strands (as outlined here). 2 In some cases sustainable forest management was favored by migrants returning from Oman (where they had been living since the 1964 Revolution) who envisaged restoring their villages to an equilibrium they or their parents remembered from prior to their departure from the island (cf. ...
Article
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What happens when conservation interventions ostensibly fail? We outline a REDD+ intervention on Zanzibar, Tanzania which is adapting to a failure to implement carbon compensation payments and to the increased global price of cloves. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods we provide preliminary evidence that well‐managed shehia (wards) with registered Community Forestry Management Agreements (CoFMAs) are slowing their rates of deforestation. We also find an increase in the number of shehia with CoFMAs despite the absence of carbon payments. Using this island‐wide case study we make inferences about the mechanisms whereby institutional expansion has occurred in ways consistent with cultural evolutionary dynamics of institutional change. We draw lessons for planning and practice that may help with the design of future conservation interventions and with bolstering the morale and effectiveness of disappointed partners.
... This commodification of forest carbon is presented as a qualitatively different in-situ approach to conservation -much like other ostensibly 'non-consumptive' forms of neoliberal conservation, including ecotourism, which have no less significant impacts on local socio-ecologies and resource relations. This is even more so as carbon alone -claims about co-benefits not withstandingbecomes valorized through a single-commodity logic similar to the valorization of timber under scientific forestry models (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018). Yet, the seemingly 'non-material' nature of carbon sequestration requires complex combinations of expertise, tools and strategies to assemble the carbon commodity -from accounting to forestry; from tools including maps, surveys, charts, remotely sensed images, stochastic formulas to strategies that variously seek to incentivize and discipline local populations (see Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018;Edstedt and Carton 2018;Isyaku 2017;Müller 2020). ...
... This is even more so as carbon alone -claims about co-benefits not withstandingbecomes valorized through a single-commodity logic similar to the valorization of timber under scientific forestry models (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018). Yet, the seemingly 'non-material' nature of carbon sequestration requires complex combinations of expertise, tools and strategies to assemble the carbon commodity -from accounting to forestry; from tools including maps, surveys, charts, remotely sensed images, stochastic formulas to strategies that variously seek to incentivize and discipline local populations (see Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018;Edstedt and Carton 2018;Isyaku 2017;Müller 2020). There are discipline forestry bureaucrats Stephan 2013;Asiyanbi 2015), and the enactment of sometimes violent, exclusionary forest protection measures (Asiyanbi 2016;Cavanagh et al. 2015;Vatn et al. 2017;Leach and Scoones 2015;Setyowati 2020). ...
... Such efforts early on in the life of REDD+ sought to provide assurance that these concerns were being dealt with explicitly and thoroughly and thereby helped legitimize the engagement in REDD+ by funders, implementing organizations, governments, and civil society organizations. Only much more recently has research shown that displacement, dispossession, exclusion and myriad other counter-productive outcomes have, in fact, occurred in many of the places where REDD+ has landed on the ground (Airey and Krause 2017;Asiyanbi 2016;Benjaminsen 2014;Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018;Chomba et al. 2016;Howson and Kindon 2015;Isyaku et al. 2017;Nuesiri 2017;Samndong and Kjosavik 2017;Scheba and Scheba 2017;Vatn et al. 2017;. Though predictable and predicted, the temporal delay in these effects allowed REDD+ to gain a foothold. ...
Article
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At this time of rapid global environmental change and demands for sweeping societal transformation, we call for greater scrutiny of the persistence of particular policies and ideas. In this Special Section we focus on REDD+, which for long has enjoyed remarkable global support in spite of poor outcomes and widespread criticisms. The central policy proposition of REDD+, that is, forest-based emissions reduction through market-based instruments and non-market means, are now carried forth under the new banner of Natural Climate Solutions. We examine REDD+ to understand how and why some environmental policies and ideas persist despite dubious impacts. We conceptualize policy persistence by drawing on three strands of political ecology literature - critical policy studies, assemblage studies, and political economy - that illuminate the dynamics of policy persistence in different yet complementary ways. We argue that the persistence of policies and policy ideas rests in a tentative balance of the counteracting processes of stabilization and contestation, which precipitate both intended and unintended outcomes. We show how the stabilization of REDD+ itself lends stability to broader ideas of forest-based climate change mitigation. We suggest that policy persistence is an area of political ecological research, which now calls for renewed engagement. Keywords: Policy persistence, REDD+, climate change mitigation, Natural Climate Solutions, political ecology
... However, identifying how such transformation can take place is a major challenge. Indeed, it has been shown that climate interventions represent opportunities for social transformation, but also for entrenchment of inequities and vulnerability (Nagoda, 2015;Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). ...
... There may be a tipping point after which the need for radical change overwhelms the capacity of local communities to "adapt" and outside intervention is required. Nevertheless, the case of REDD+ (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018) shows that climate measures often reinforce modernization of developmental values or worldviews through a commodification and separation of nature from society/discrete resources, leading to negative social transformations with regard to both equity and environmental stewardship. ...
... While projects represent opportunities for much needed investment and funding, they also enroll people into the ideas and values that frame the projects (such as commodification or private property), privilege some resource uses and users over others, as well as shift authority relations by recognizing the decision making of some actors more than others. For the case of REDD+, Benjaminsen and Kaarhus (2018) showed that ideas of commodification, private property, and maximizing monetary incomes (implicitly separating nature and society) are connected to particular types of politics and practices including the recentralization of decision-making. Here, climate interventions and forest management become a site of governing people, and in effect giving local populations the responsibility for solving global problems of climate change (Arora-Jonsson, 2011). ...
Article
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In this paper, we investigate the ways in which climate change-related interventions such as climate-smart agriculture (CSA) may open up—or close down—spaces for transformation. We explore the interface between worldviews, power relations and policy interventions, focusing in particular on the way that asymmetric gender and expert-farmer relations may be reinforced or contested through climate-smart agricultural interventions. It has been argued that fundamental changes required in the face of climate change can only take place through transformation across the personal, practical and political spheres. In particular, it is in the interaction between these spheres where spaces for transformation lie; for example, in the contesting of subjectivities casting farmers as passive recipients of expert advice, in the assumptions regarding what constitutes “good development”, and in how worldviews frame the way we see human-nature relations. Nevertheless, interventions like CSA are often focused mainly on changes to practices or technologies, rather than on how power relations or worldviews shape practices, food security and inequity. Through a case study of Hoima, Uganda, we examine the ways in which the implementation of climate-smart agriculture reinforces existing subjectivities and authority relations or opens up for new (and potentially more emancipatory) subjectivities. First, we describe food security and social inequality drawing on survey data from Hoima. Next, we examine how social actors such as farmers, project workers, local leaders, and government officials position particular farmers or practices as good/progressive or problematic/traditional. We then analyze how these subjectivities reflect authority relations, and the ways in which CSA reinforces or creates space for contesting these. We argue that a focus on commercial agriculture as “good” by many social actors also persists within CSA activities, and is intertwined with asymmetric gender and expert-farmer relations. Commercialization takes place within the need to increase agricultural production to feed growing urban populations. However, commercialization for the case of Uganda has also entailed state attempts to govern farmers through farmer associations, the institutional set-up through which CSA often works. A closer attention to these dynamics could potentially help create deeper transformational change through climate-smart agriculture and related climate change interventions.
... Cotula and Mayers, 2009;Larson et al, 2013;Sunderlin et al, 2014). Moreover, the carbon must be 'owned' (see e.g. , i.e. carbon right holders must be assigned (see also Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). Without formal clarification and recognition, carbon 2 service providers will not be able to exclude others from using the resource, cannot be kept accountable for resource management, and thus cannot be paid (Wunder, 2013: 234;see also Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). ...
... Investment in relationships with people of power may also entail offering them political support (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). When the Tanzania Constitution Review Commission arrived in Mitini during the national consultation process in 2013, Yunus and some of his fellow wageni were observed sitting on the first row dressed in CCM merchandise. ...
... Although the HIMA project took steps to formalize local communities' rights to carbon benefits, HIMA has not directly addressed the structural inequalities permeating the existing historical and political context in which it was implemented. This includes limited attention to the importance women and men in Zanzibar place on engaging in and cultivating social relationships as a strategy for not only accessing land and forest resources, but also as a means to sustain their lives in general (see also Wallevik, 2013;Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). Without due attention, the political and social structures that shape livelihood struggles at local level in Zanzibar are likely to trump HIMA's intention to ensure formal recognition of local communities as carbon right holders. ...
Thesis
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This thesis discusses REDD+ as an example of a highly ambitious global environmental policy framework conceived at international levels and implemented at local levels in forest communities across the Global South. The main objective is to investigate the encounter between the REDD+ global agenda, that is, the effort to reduce forest-based CO2 emissions and thereby mitigate climate change, and the pre-existing social contexts to which REDD+ is introduced, and which REDD+ aims to regulate, modify and change. Inspired by scholars working within two partly overlapping fields of research, Political Ecology and the Anthropology of Development, this investigation of REDD+ explores both the discursive powers inherent in REDD+ and the assumptions on which REDD+ is based, as well as the particularities of existing socially embedded practices, meanings and relationships at local level in Zanzibar. The analysis is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Zanzibar investigating the REDD+ project known as HIMA at multiple levels - both at the level of Mitini - one of the local communities invited by HIMA to join the REDD+ scheme, as well as at policy levels among project staff and policy makers in Zanzibar Town. Data was collected through observation at about 45 project-related meetings; and through numerous informal and more than 100 formal interviews with informants before, between and after these meetings. The researcher’s fluency in colloquial Swahili made direct data collection and participant observation possible. An investigation at multiple levels allowed for following the HIMA project at different stages in the implementation process, that is, from before its initiation in 2010 until after its end in 2014. The four individual papers that form part of this thesis provide insights into different elements and aspects of the REDD+ policy framework, and the different stages of the process of introducing REDD+ in Zanzibar. By discussing both how the various elements of the REDD+ policy framework are incorporated into practice and at times subverted by local actors, the four papers offer valuable insights into how REDD+ is both ‘constituted’ and ‘contested’ by the actors involved in its implementation. The papers demonstrate how the REDD+ policy framework is not introduced into a vacuum. When introduced to Zanzibar, REDD+ is conditioned and affected by historical and socio-political relations and experiences, local realities and embedded practices. These factors all have implications for the implementation of REDD+, and the level to which practical implementation is in line with the policy design and intentions. At a more general level, the thesis thus advances our understanding of why various interventions and development initiatives often do not deliver as planned. The papers also show that certain elements of the REDD+ policy framework have constituting and disciplining effects on the HIMA project. The procedure of carbon accounting, that is, the process of calculating changes in forest cover and carbon stocks, and furthermore translating these into measurable carbon units, was considered a technical necessity. Carbon accounting could hence not be discarded by the project, despite local project staff’s serious reservations about this type of practice. The thesis argues that by not taking into account the existing historical and socio-political context of local livelihood struggles, the HIMA project not only risks failing to achieve its expected goals of reduced forest loss and CO2 emissions, it also risks consolidating existing structural inequalities, exacerbating conflicts, and, moreover, creating new ones. Further, since the validation of the HIMA Carbon Project is still pending, and since HIMA has still not sold any carbon, the 45 local communities that have signed Community Forest Management Agreements with the Zanzibar government risk finding themselves in the precarious situation of having signed away their rights to use forest resources while receiving little or no revenues or compensation in return. In this way, REDD+ in Zanzibar has created new uncertainties and relations of dependence at local levels. I argue that the ethnographic material presented describing these processes provides new and empirically grounded insights into the broad variety of dilemmas project managers - as well as local communities - face when implementing PES-based REDD+ projects at local level.
... As Harvey (2005, p. 165) explains, commodification "presumes the existence of property rights over processes, things, and social relations, that a price can be put on them, and that they can be traded subject to legal contract". Likewise, commodification can be described as the incorporation of previously non-marketed processes, things or social relations into capitalist markets, the prioritization of their quantitative exchange value over their qualitative use value and the assignation to them of private property rights (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Büscher & Whande, 2007). ...
... The legal definition of private property rights is related to this, as it puts a legal boundary on a thing or entity. In conservation this involves the establishment of protected areas or the zoning of land use by legal norms, for instance, where zones for carbon sequestration and storage are bounded and separated from the rest of forest functions (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018). This can be critiqued as it encourages separation between human and non-human natures thereby encouraging the externalization and domination of nature by humanity (Büscher & Fletcher, 2020;Harvey, 1993;Smith, 2008). ...
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The creation of private protected areas (PPA) is commonly considered an instrument of neoliberal conservation, characterized by private management and commodification of nature for (eco)tourism and other market-based instruments (MBIs). PPAs are accused of reproducing social inequalities when entailing enclosure, exclusivity, land grabbing or dispossession. Yet PPAs exist in many different forms that enact these various processes in different ways. Our research explores this variegation in PPAs by offering a more nuanced understanding of the often complex and contradictory interconnections between processes of commodification and privatization different PPAs enact, as well as how PPAs are often operationalized differently in global south and north contexts. To develop this analysis, we draw on the conceptual framework of commodification proposed by Castree (2003) to investigate a number of PPAs located in the Serra de Tramuntana mountain range on the island of Mallorca in Spain. Our results show that commodification and privatization combine in different ways and to different degrees in the various PPAs in this area. Overall, we conclude, privatization appears more pervasive than commodification in this global north context, as compared to research concerning PPAs in the global south suggesting the presence of far more commodification in such lower-income contexts.
... In particular, the implementation of market-based governance is often mediated through international initiatives such as REDD+ 3 (e.g. Asiyanbi et al., 2017, Benjaminsen andKaarhus, 2018). These often relate to the work of international development agencies and global organisations advocating for market-based environmental governance (Scheba 2018). ...
... On a basic level, a re-transition to some form of common ownership may present an effective route to de-commodification. For instance, Benjaminsen and Kaarhus (2018) observed contestation by local communities to private property exclusion in Zanzibar, as it contradicted their local 'ndugu' relations based around nature-culture mutualism and reciprocity. A useful way to conceptualise this transition in the property rights structure is the distinction between property and possession presented by Heinsohn et al., (2013) in their theory of ownership (Gerber and Gerber, 2017). ...
... Literature has shown how politics in environmental governance in the Global South, and specifically, Tanzania, from geographers, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and critical theorists configures nature-society interactions (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018;Kisiaya, 2016;Lund and Saito-Jensen, 2013;Sunseri, 2005). Available studies have unfolded the assemblages of structural, everyday material, and discursive practices of externally imposed interventions (Benjaminsen et al., 2011;Gebara et al., 2019;Lund and Saito-Jensen, 2013;Neumann, 2017;Sunseri, 2009). ...
... Similar to colonial forestry governance models, even after sixty years of independence, Southern Tanzania continues to be used as an extractive zone of natural resources such as gases, fisheries, and forests for external urban needs and industrialization (Mukono and Sambaiga, 2021;Mustalahti et al., 2012;Scheba and Mustalahti, 2015;Scheba and Rakotonarivo, 2016). Southern Tanzania has been disciplined through global dictates to sequester carbon emissions done somewhere with limited compensations to cater to the opportunity costs (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). These environmentalities assemblages underlying REDD+ in Southern Tanzania and elsewhere render political forests production as indicated by Peluso, Lee, and Vandergeest (2001). ...
Article
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There is an emerging scholarly concern for reconstructing and engaging with diverse approaches that theorize the question of power. Scholars focusing on the Global South critically explore how power dynamics shaping forestry governances hold western colonial assumptions that erase complexities of nature-society relations. Yet, many studies have not systematically (re)conceptualized issues of knowledge-power nexus as an instrument of control and power through Foucauldian and coloniality lens in Tanzania. The review critically discusses politics and power by plotting it within environmentality and coloniality literature. It argues that postcolonial forestry governance is devoid of its colonial residue that seems to be visible in the current forestry governance regimes. It proposes an alternative critical constructivist approach that considers the role of knowledge production through which forest discourses as assemblages of power mechanisms are crucial in producing uneven social and ecological implications.
... First, highlighting the ongoing border dispute between Guyana and Suriname and internal disputes over land, I follow (Ramcilovik-Suominen, 2019) in arguing that REDD+ contributes to state territorialisation by showing how colonially rooted political contestation related to land rights in and between the two countries impedes the allocation of satisfactory land tenure necessary for REDD+. Substantial REDD+ research has highlighted the process through which local people and communities are threatened by, or are suffering from, the dispossession of land through REDD+ (see Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018;Chomba et al., 2016;Larson, 2011;Ramcilovik-Suominen, 2019). What remains unacknowledged is how states make their claim to land across borders more robust through REDD+. ...
... Hence, the effectiveness of forest governance through REDD+ hinges on the existence of subjects amenable to its governance. These subjects are represented as the ideal, rational neoliberal subject of homo economicus usually responsive to economic incentives (Foucault, 2008;Li, 2014), the actuality of which has already been challenged in the literature (see Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018;Gebara and Agrawal, 2017). ...
Article
In this paper, I argue that the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism , a globally driven, market-based environmental policy, is racialized in practice. Yet, consideration of how the uptake of these policies is challenged by racialized relations is insufficiently addressed in the neoliberal conservation literature. Colonial histories are sedimented in racialized subjectivities and land management practices where certain economic activities, geographical sites and interactions with the natural environment became the stronghold of different groups. In this paper, I demonstrate how the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism, one such globally driven, market-based environmental policy, is challenged by the legacy of these racialized land use practices and social relations rooted in the defining colonial period in Guyana and Suriname. I outline the relationship between the processes of politically demarcating forests and of shaping subjectivities, drawing attention to how these processes are impacted by REDD+. Through a focus on gold mining, explored here as a historically conditioned, economic relationship with the natural environment, I show how REDD+ contributes to state territorialisation, complicates pre-existing racialized subjectivities and increases the legibility of forests and their amenability to state management.
... The second body of literature, collected through using the second and third set of keywords, shows how the relational values people hold towards nature and each other are (re)negotiated when PES schemes are introduced [61,68,[77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84]. The introduction of PES often leads to changes in local cultural practices, such as the undermining of local norms and the local intrinsic motivation. ...
... The introduction of PES often leads to changes in local cultural practices, such as the undermining of local norms and the local intrinsic motivation. For example, Benjaminsen and Kaarhus argue that the commodification of a forest in Zanzibar, Tanzania, has undermined local communal norms, in my argument, part of habitus [81]. Such phenomena have often been described as the crowding out of intrinsic motivation [85], but they could be interpreted as processes in which the habitus is altered or has disappeared as individuals internalise different kinds of knowledge and information, such as 'environmental conservation for money', as they implement PES. ...
Article
Some authors have recently suggested a broadened perspective for the ecosystem services approach to include nature's contribution to people and relational values. This paper aims to develop the notion of relational values further by bringing in theoretical contributions from sociology: namely, the recursive relationship between structure and individual cultural practices, especially the notion of ‘habitus’ developed by Bourdieu. It argues that just as culture is shared and internalised as habitus, so too are relational values. Further, it reveals that the internalisation leads not only to the reproduction of routine cultural practices at the individual level but also to the establishment of new individual cultural practices contributing to structural change. The paper argues that symbolic power plays a key role in the sharing and internalisation process. With these sociological arguments, the paper aims to incorporate contribution from social theory, often ignored in the previous literature, and to enrich the ecosystem services literature.
... This oversight extends to the management of protected areas within farming landscapes, neglecting the essential ecological and social diversity and redundancy (Ban et al. 2013;Shumi et al. 2018;Ayivor et al. 2020). Notably, attempts such as expert-driven forest management for REDD+ in Zanzibar (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018) and conservation strategies in other systems (e.g. Appelt et al. 2022;Bocci 2023) have faltered in addressing these complexities. ...
Article
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Woody vegetation diversity is declining due to human-induced land-use changes, mainly agricultural expansion and intensification, deforestation, forest degradation and urbanisation. This loss challenges the resilience and sustainability of smallholder farming landscapes, in which woody vegetation plays an important role for the provision of multiple material and non-material benefits to people and nature. In this review, we examine the relevance and application of established social-ecological resilience principles to woody vegetation management and explore how the resilience of smallholder farming landscapes can be enhanced in the Global South. To this end, we conducted a qualitative review and purposefully selected scientific literature relevant to each resilience principle. Exemplified by different cases from across the Global South, we collate evidence for the significance of all principles for woody vegetation management. Our review also sheds light on widespread obstacles to sustainable woody vegetation management and landscape resilience, such as the pursuit of top-down and sectoral policies for agriculture and woody vegetation management, deep-rooted power dynamics and asymmetries, and the marginalisation of local people and their traditional knowledge systems. Applying resilience principles to woody vegetation management in smallholder farming landscapes therefore requires transformative changes that enable paradigm shifts, for example, through more genuine recognition of local people and their livelihoods, knowledge and experiences.
... Some of the KMP activities are provided in Fig 2 below. 080033-4 The KMP is also expected to meet CCB gold standards to achieve all criteria on climate, community, and biodiversity [26]. The KMP has been audited by The SCS Greenhouse Gas Verification Program (Certificate No. SCS-GHG-0041) and has expected CCB benefits including Climate, such as 1) Through prevented forest degradation and deforestation, reduction of forest fires, and peat drainage, an annual average of 7,451,846 tonnes of GHG emissions are reduced; 2) Ecological improvement at the landscape scale by restoring the ecosystem. ...
Conference Paper
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Climate change is becoming a major threat that massively increases the negative impacts on ecosystemdegradation, and biodiversity loss, and will affect socio-economic systems around the world. Indonesia is among one ofthe top emitters of global greenhouse gases (GHG) and CO2 emissions that mainly come from the forestry and energysectors. The carbon pricing scheme is related to the ecosystem restoration business that is managed by the landconcession holder in a form of a company. This study is aimed to identify the role of an ecosystem restoration companyto reduce carbon emissions and how the company implemented a carbon pricing scheme in their business. Weinterviewed and assessed the Katingan Mentaya Project (KMP), organized by PT. Rimba Makmur Utama (PT. RMU) isone of the ecosystem restoration companies that has implemented carbon pricing activities in Indonesia. We interviewedThe Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PT. RMU and disseminated questionnaire that was responded by 12 staff ofPT.RMU. The result shows that the KMP activities have share benefits to the community, climate, and biodiversity. Theproject help to conserve and restore the degraded peat-swamp forest, influence the local economy, and help to support thetraditional livelihoods to use the forest resources sustainably. To gain profit, PT. RMU has sold the carbon certificate in acarbon voluntary market in business to business scheme. The carbon value in the KMP project area is worth from USD152 million to USD 228 million.
... The logic of compensation, in accordance with a form of ecological modernisation, does not so much address the causes of the damage (to reduce them or fight against them) as it does their consequences on the environment, the populations and even institutions. In doing so, it responds to the problems without dealing with the causes and even competes with socially-embedded norms that prove to be useful for environmental preservation (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). Finally, it allows what poses a problem to keep functioning in spite of everything, as Fletcher states with regard to the persistence of neoliberal conservation in spite of its glaring ineffectiveness (2023). ...
Article
The radical school identifies development as a core strategy for enduring disaster risk reduction. Simultaneously, development policies pursued by neoextractivism States often result in social and territorial dynamics that recompose risk situations without necessarily reducing them. They sometimes even intensify them. The city of Esmeraldas perfectly illustrates the detrimental effects when it comes to the risks of a voluntarist State policy based on oil revenue. Esmeraldas hosts infrastructures that are strategic for the country, for oil processing and export from the Oriente oil fields. The periods of government under Correa’s presidency (2007–2017) saw a momentum of compensatory investments (linked to the exploitation of primary resources) and pro-development (with respect to marginal territories catching up), which particularly concerned Esmeraldas. Analysis shows that the considerable sums invested in the city for these reasons resulted in the urban territory evolving without a shared vision. Ultimately, risk situations were recomposed (in certain cases intensified); the colossal economic resources that were mobilised did not give rise to progress commensurate with investments (the development objective remained intact); ways of managing territories and also development and compensatory funds remained structurally asymmetrical, cultivating subordination that constituted one of the long-term props shoring up risks in Esmeraldas.
... For Tsing (2016), the process of commercially sorting matsutake mushrooms removes the linkages between the harvester and the consumer of the fungi, transforming these mushrooms into commodities, only to them to be transformed again with the cultural practice of gifting matsutake in Japanese culture. Follow-the-thing research examines these sorts of transformations in social relations along the supply chain alongside a large body of literature discussing how commodification crowds out the social relations from entities beyond mushrooms (see Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Opel, 2004). ...
Thesis
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This thesis explores processes of opportunism and socio-political change following so-called “natural” disasters through a multi-sited case study of the post-wildfire morel mushroom (Morchella sp.) harvest in Western Canada. Morels are edible fungi which fruit en masse the first spring season following large wildfires in western North America. This work follows harvesters who picked morels after the 2016 Horse River wildfire on Treaty 8 territory (near Fort McMurray, Alberta), and the 2018 Shovel Lake wildfire on Nadleh Whut’en, Stellat’en, and Nak’azdli Whut’en Territories (British Columbia). Thinking with and beyond the concepts of disaster capitalism and disaster colonialism, this thesis extends analyses of post-disaster change from considerations of states and large corporations to smaller-scale actors. As such, I consider the roles of hobbyist local harvesters, precarious pieceworkers in the wild mushroom industry, Indigenous Guardians of the Land, and forest ecologies more broadly. I demonstrate that while disaster capitalism and disaster colonialism are pervasive in the post-disaster landscape, they are not inevitable. Instead, I argue that post-disaster opportunity is emergent, contingent, and includes possibilities for reworking, resistance, and resurgence. In this work, I argue that settler-colonial aims to subsume nature produce the ecological conditions which make the commercial mushroom harvest possible. This industry, in turn, disproportionately benefits settler harvesters over Indigenous Nations and forest ecologies. I also demonstrate that the materiality of wildfire memories affects different groups’ capacities to harvest mushrooms, influence others, and define the ethical standards of the harvest. Finally, I examine how settler claims to post-disaster opportunity on Indigenous lands¬ are connected to broader affective “settler common sense” and “white possessive” claims to adventure, freedom and commerce. Together, these findings demonstrate how the concurrent and often contradicting post-disaster opportunism demonstrated by small-scale actors relate to broader politics about natural disasters, environmental politics, resource extraction, and Indigenous governance within Canada and in other settler-colonial contexts.
... In the Ngoyla-Mintom REDD+ project, the Cameroonian government facilitated REDD+ implementation by setting up a regulatory framework in which local people were allowed to create legal entities and manage forest locally [91]. Benjaminsen and Kaarhus [92] gave evidence from Tanzania about a national organization acting as a 'carbon aggregator' to help local communities reduce high opportunity costs. Wells et al. [81] and Shames et al. [93] showed that public administrations also provide technical support to facilitate project activities, e.g., providing seedlings, giving advice on pests and diseases, or holding training workshops. ...
Article
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Forest ecosystems provide various services that are crucial to human beings, in which carbon sequestration and storage is one of them with the most market potential and is usually governed by market-based instruments (MBIs). MBIs do not operate alone but in the hybrid governance arrangements. While the importance of public institutions has been identified, there is still a need to examine the specific role of public institutions in the market-oriented mechanism. Our work seeks answers to this question. This meta-study presents an up-to-date picture of MBIs targeted at forest carbon, in which 88 mechanisms are synthesized in a quantitative database. We analyze and discuss policy design features of these mechanisms and group them into nine types of MBIs. We find that many instruments coexist and/or interact with other instruments. In light of these results, we introduce the concept of policy mix and argue that the interplay among policy instruments can be complementary or interdependent. Using cluster analysis to identify underlying patterns, we reconfirm previous findings that there are distinct differences between public and private PES schemes, but also recognize a new cluster and label it as a ‘legally binding mechanism’. We discover that the role of public institutions is pronounced in the forest carbon mechanisms, and they can be the buyer, seller, regulator, coordinator, intermediary, and facilitator. Besides, public institutions tend to play an increasing role in the future climate policy arena. We believe that public institutions should stand out and create enabling conditions for private governance and finance.
... How these axes of difference then become sites of conflict, as well as opportunities for organizing across alliances, has not been considered by the NETs literature, but lessons from other examples are useful here. Forest carbon projects have increased intra-community conflicts between richer and poorer households or those with power and access and those without; between men and women; between generations; and between different ethnic groups (Baynes et al. 2015;Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018;Kemerink-Seyoum et al. 2018). There have also been risks of conflict within wider landscapes (Schmid 2022), with negative impacts on overall democratic decision-making among forest-dependent communities (Chomba 2017;Ece, Murombedzi, and Ribot 2017). ...
Article
Negative emissions technologies (NETs) for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are increasingly important responses to achieve global climate change targets, but to date, there has been insufficient attention to land-based NETs (including afforestation, biochar, and other measures) as an agrarian challenge for the global South. This paper explores the implications of different NETs for land, labor, capital, and politics in rural spaces and contributes to articulating agrarian climate justice by demonstrating the potentially unjust implications of many NETs. The paper concludes with how these measures might be designed to be less negative for rural peoples in future implementation.
... REDD+ seeks to provide monetary payments to local actors for their contributions to reducing deforestation and rehabilitation of deforested areas (den Besten et al., 2019;MLNR, 2016b;Saeed et al., 2018). Despite its potential, critics argue REDD+ interventions tend to be too top-down and are bound to reproduce inequality because they rarely pay attention to actual needs of forest-dependent communities' (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Saeed et al., 2018). One way to connect communities' needs to REDD+ interventions, and other initiatives that seek to overcomes FALUCs would be to understand local communities' experiences, underlying motivations and the local politics that drive them to farm in forest reserves. ...
Thesis
Scientists and policymakers are waking to the menacing impacts of deforestation on biodiversity and the livelihoods of the over one billion people reliant on forests. Concurrently, an upward trend in population and its corresponding rise in the global demand for feed, food, fuel, and fibre exerts new demands on limited land resources available to multiple stakeholders. As the competition over land intensifies, many farmers in the tropics employ several strategies to cultivate areas designated as forest reserves for their livelihoods, leading to further deforestation and conflicts with state forestry agencies. Moreover, despite decades of investments in institutions to directly fund smallholder farmers’ participation in rehabilitating deforested landscapes, little is known about the reach and performance of existing financial incentive mechanisms. This dissertation adds to filling these knowledge gaps based on qualitative case studies embedded in multiple analytical and data collection approaches in Ghana, which loses near 2% (135,000 ha) of its forests annually despite several efforts to overcome the challenge. Following a brief introduction and clarification of conceptual underpinning in Chapter 1, the knowledge gaps are addressed with three empirical publications (chapters 2-4). Chapter two examines why and how farmers in forest communities gain and secure access to their farmlands within forest reserves to produce food and cash crops against state law. Through process-net maps, focus group discussions, interviews, and field observation, data were gathered through an extended field stay in Ghana’s Juabeso district. The findings unbridle the multiple structural and relational mechanisms farmers apply to evade state attempts to rein in illegal farming in the area and how institutional deficiencies, notably corruption and elite capture of farming benefits by native chiefs, reinforce farming in forest reserves. The chapter discusses the broader implications of the findings for the Ghanaian government’s attempts to accelerate forest landscape rehabilitation, noting that such efforts will need to adapt to the multiple struggles and latent actor interests to succeed. Chapter three disentangles the narratives and experiences of forest communities and compares them with the current assumptions underlying forest policy in Ghana from the perspective of the most dominant forest policy actors. The results contend with current assumptions that portray forest communities as environmentally destructive. Alternatively, it reveals that while several factors combine to drive forest-dependent communities to cultivate forest reserves, the challenge of food insecurity is paramount but unconveyed to the forest policy arena. The chapter proposes a novel concept of food security corridors (FSCs) as a meta-narrative for harmonising competing actor interests in forest reserves. The chapter also discusses the feasibility of FSCs and calls for further efforts to refine and pilot the concept in the global search for solutions to forest and agriculture land-use conflicts in the tropics. Chapter four examines the governance of Ghana’s Forest Plantation Development Fund as an incentive system instituted to attract smallholders into landscape rehabilitation based on interviews with tree growers, forestry officials and NGO staff. The study revealed that the legal provisions instituted to ensure the fund’s transparent operation were not implemented by fund administrators. Many stakeholders were clueless about the Fund and could neither access nor demand accountability in its administration. The chapter clarifies the information needs of various fund stakeholders, such as eligibility criteria, funding cycles, annual inflows and outflows, and a list of beneficiaries. It also discusses the implications of the findings, including mechanisms required to trigger the transparent running of the fund by its administrators. The thesis reveals new patterns of perennial land competition between state and traditional institutions. It demonstrates how prevailing institutional challenges reinforce this competition and enable unsustainable land use to flourish. At the same, it points to lapses in governance, including state failure to evolve its forest policies to meet changing demands and needs among contemporary actors and how the same challenges curtail access and ability to support forestation rehabilitation efforts in Ghana. Overall, the thesis notes that while tackling farming in forest reserves can be challenging due to its multiple drivers and the competing actor interests, FSCs have the potential to serve as an entry point that enables government and other actors to resolve their differences and find lasting solutions that enable local communities to achieve their livelihoods needs while contributing to sustainable land use. However, for this potential to be realised, actors need to invest in refining and piloting FSCs in specific localities.
... Furthermore, this phenomenon is characterized by increasingly uncontrolled global warming (Palacios Peñaranda et al. 2019;Olorunfemi et al. 2019). The role of humans, especially the control of the local community over forest carbon needs to be properly monitored (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018;Etemesi et al. 2018;Gu et al. 2022). The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has a very significant contribution to the occurrence of various global environmental problems (Rajashekar et al. 2018;Yin et al. 2019). ...
Article
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Marimpan LS, Purwanto RH, Wardhana W, Sumardi. 2022. Carbon storage potential of Eucalyptus urophylla at several density levels and forest management types in dry land ecosystems. Biodiversitas 23: 2830-2837. Tropical forests can store high amounts of carbon because they have suitable environmental factors. Furthermore, they are different from others that grow in dry areas, which tend to experience limited rainfall. Ampupu (Eucalyptus urophylla) is an endemic tree in East Nusa Tenggara, which is continuously damaged. This is caused by various anthropogenic activities, which increase along with the population around the forest. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the carbon content stored in natural forest areas of E. urophylla at different density levels and land use types. Field inventory was carried out in the study location using the stratified sampling method, after which the density levels were divided into three groups, viz. high, medium, and low. Sampling was then carried out in 3 different land-use areas, including production, protection, and conservation forests. Furthermore, a total of 90 plots were used, where each land-use type consists of 30 plots with a size of 25 m × 40 m. The results showed that the carbon content at the low, medium and high-density levels were 108.20, 185.24, and 291.33 MgCha-1, respectively. Values of 211.91, 214.69, and 221.14 MgCha-1 were also obtained from the production, protection, and conservation forests, respectively. Based on the results, the natural forests of E. urophylla have a significant effect on carbon sequestration in East Nusa Tenggara.
... However, the fact that Switzerland promotes REDD+ (BAFU 2019b), an international convention aiming to limit deforestation in the Global South, which is ultimately based on the commodification of forests and the "value" of their carbon (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018), conflicts with this assessment. The Western idea of commodification is thus represented abroad by Switzerland via this convention, which often contradicts norms of local cultures and thereby interferes with the values of local communities (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018). Therefore, while forests in Switzerland are highly decommodified, the Swiss federal level promotes the commodification of forests in the Global South, leading to an ambiguous situation. ...
Article
Politische Entscheidungsträger:innen formulieren zunehmend Strategien, u. a. die (holzbasierte) Bioökonomie, die darauf abzielen, die Wirtschaft auf nachhaltigere Grundlagen zu stellen. Auch die Schweiz hat, wie zahlreiche europäische Länder, verschiedene Konzepte entwickelt und Gesetze verabschiedet, die den Weg zu einer nachhaltigeren Wirtschaft ebnen sollen. Die Entscheidungen haben auch Auswirkungen auf die Waldpolitik, als ein Sektor, der zu einer nachhaltigen Wirtschaft beiträgt. Beispielsweise kann die verstärkte Nutzung von Holz für die Bioenergieproduktion, ein zentraler Punkt von Bioökonomiestrategien, den Wald unter Druck setzen, da sie zu einem grösseren Konsum an Holzprodukten führt. Entwicklungen in anderen Politikfeldern, die mit der nachhaltigen Wirtschaft in Verbindung stehen, können den Wald ebenfalls negativ beeinflussen, insbesondere solche in der Landwirtschaft und im Energiesektor. Dies geschieht beispielsweise, wenn Energieinfrastrukturen, wie Windräder, in Wäldern errichtet werden, was mit der grundsätzlichen Konkurrenz um knappe Flächen in der dicht besiedelten Schweiz zusammenhängt. In den verschiedenen Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien spielt der Wald also entweder eine Schlüsselrolle, etwa durch die vom Bund geförderte Bereitstellung des nachwachsenden Rohstoffs Holz oder er ist von Strategien aus anderen Sektoren betroffen. Vor diesem Hintergrund beschäftige ich mich in der vorliegenden Arbeit mit Zielkonflikten im Schweizer Wald – also sich teils widersprechender Ziele verschiedener Politikfelder –, die sich auf dem Weg zu einer nachhaltigen Wirtschaft ergeben können. Ich analysiere die aktuelle Situation und befasse mich mit Konflikten, die aufgrund verschiedener Ansprüche, die an den Wald gestellt werden, sowie der gesetzlich vorgeschriebenen Multifunktionalität im Waldgesetz aktuell auftreten bzw. in Zukunft höchstwahrscheinlich auftreten werden. Konkret analysiere ich dabei in vier Forschungsartikeln vier unterschiedliche, gleichwohl zusammenhängende Themen. Die Artikel werden durch die übergreifende Forschungsfrage verknüpft, die die Rolle von Akteur:innen und Institutionen für eine nachhaltige Waldbewirtschaftung im Rahmen der Transition zu einer nachhaltigen Wirtschaft untersucht. Der Forschungsrahmen, auf dem diese Arbeit aufbaut, basiert auf der Metatheorie Critical Realism. Critical Realism hebt die dialektische Beziehung von Akteur:innen und Institutionen hervor und dient als wissenschaftliches Paradigma. Darüber hinaus zeigt der Forschungsrahmen Verknüpfungen zwischen den vier Forschungsartikeln und ihrem jeweiligen Fokus auf Akteur:innen und/oder Institutionen auf. Empirisch bediene ich mich qualitativen und quantitativen Methoden, in Form einer Online-Befragung und standardisierten Fragebögen sowie Expert:inneninterviews und Literaturrecherchen. Um den Schweizer Waldsektor und Degrowth zu verknüpfen, führe ich zudem eine konzeptionelle Diskussion durch. Thematisch analysiere ich erstens, welche Rolle der Wald im Rahmen der gesetzlichen Multifunktionalität in der Schweiz zu erfüllen hat und wie diese mit der zunehmenden Nichtbewirtschaftung des Waldes durch Kleinwaldbesitzer:innen im Widerspruch steht. Da die Nichtbewirtschaftung die Multifunktionalität gefährdet, schlage ich anschliessend ein hypothetisches Programm vor, das zu einer Übertragung von Eigentumsrechten führen könnte, um eine nachhaltige Waldbewirtschaftung zu gewährleisten, die allen (gesetzlichen) Ansprüchen gerecht wird. Zweitens gebe ich in dieser Arbeit einen umfassenden Überblick über bestehende (und zukünftige) Zielkonflikte im Schweizer Wald, indem die Einschätzungen relevanter Waldakteur:innen präsentiert werden. Dabei lege ich ihre Präferenzen und Bewertungen von Politikinstrumenten dar, die ihrer Meinung nach am besten geeignet sind, die von ihnen identifizierten Zielkonflikte zu lösen. Drittens beschäftige ich mich mit einem Zielkonflikt bezüglich der Kohlenstoffspeicherung, nämlich ob eine verstärkte Holzernte zur Speicherung von Kohlenstoff in Holzprodukten oder eine verstärkte Kohlenstoffspeicherung im Wald eine vorteilhaftere Klimaschutzmassnahme ist. Im Rahmen der Untersuchung setze ich mich mit der Lage im Kanton Luzern auseinander, die aufgrund der vielen Privatwaldbesitzer:innen als ein Extremfall innerhalb der Schweiz angesehen werden kann. Ich analysiere den Fall, indem ich die Präferenzen der Akteur:innen sowie ihre Stellung und ihren Einfluss innerhalb des Netzwerks der Waldakteur:innen erfasse. Viertens untersuche ich die Rolle des Waldsektors aus Sicht von Degrowth (Postwachstum). Bei Degrowth handelt es sich um ein Konzept, das auf den Zielkonflikt zwischen Wirtschaftswachstum und Nachhaltigkeit hinweist. Dabei verknüpfe ich erstmals die Idee von Degrowth mit dem Waldsektor, wobei die Schweiz als Fallbeispiel dient. Dabei zeige ich auf, dass der Schweizer Forstsektor bereits bestimmten Degrowth-Prinzipien folgt, während es in anderen Bereichen Diskrepanzen gibt. Insgesamt trage ich mit dieser Arbeit zu einem besseren Verständnis von Zielkonflikten im Wald bei, die durch den Weg zu einer nachhaltigeren Wirtschaft entstehen (können) und präsentiere auch mögliche Lösungsvorschläge. Dabei zeige ich auf, dass Konflikte meistens entstehen, wenn andere (wirtschaftliche) Zweige Ansprüche auf die traditionelle Nutzung von Waldressourcen oder -flächen stellen. Ferner beleuchte ich spezifische Zielkonflikte genauer: Hinsichtlich des Konflikts zwischen der Nichtbewirtschaftung von Wäldern und Multifunktionalität schlage ich ein Schenkungsprogramm vor, das auf unterschiedlichen Politikinstrumenten fusst – von informationellen bis hin zu regulativen. Dies könnte zu einer Übertragung von Eigentumsrechten und folglich klareren Zuständigkeiten führen, um eine nachhaltige Bewirtschaftung zu gewährleisten. Bezüglich der Frage, ob vermehrt Kohlenstoff in Holzprodukten oder im stehenden Wald gespeichert werden soll, zeige ich auf, dass die Akteure in Luzern eindeutig die Kohlenstoffspeicherung in Holzprodukten bevorzugen. Des Weiteren analysiere ich die Rolle des Waldsektors anhand von Degrowth-Prinzipien – die auf dem grundlegenden Konflikt zwischen Wirtschaftswachstum und Nachhaltigkeit beruht –, indem ich den Schweizer Waldsektor mit Degrowth-Prinzipien verknüpfe und damit einen Gegenentwurf zu den vielen wachstumsbasierten Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien, wie der holzbasierten Bioökonomie, präsentiere.
... Adaptation interventions focused on cash-crops as a way to increase economic return have reduced women participation in household decision-making in those places where the crops associated to women are those for domestic consumption. In forest conservation and restoration, too restricted rules of REDD+ that do not include traditional uses from local communities can hamper women and girls traditional activities in National Parks and get them even punished (Benjaminsen and Kaarhus 2018). Furthermore, women work in reforestation projects may end up subsidising carbon projects because the incorporation of women into social programs create unwaged and unpaid activities via "women's work that at the same time increase women burden of work" (Gay-Antaki 2016). ...
Technical Report
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ENGLISH ONLY UN Women Expert Group Meeting 'Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes'
... Climate crisis that too restricted rules of REDD+ 1 that do not include traditional uses from local communities can hamper women and girls traditional activities in National Parks and they may get even punished (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018). Furthermore, women work in reforestation projects may end up subsidising carbon projects -primarily aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissionswhen the incorporation of women into social programs creates unwaged «women work» that increases their workload but fails to increase their economic opportunities (Gay-Antaki, 2016). ...
Article
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The impacts of climate change on people are not homogeneous, with some social groups being more heavily affected than others. This is due to the existence of a differential and contextual vulnerability that most often is related to inequality. In this sense, gender is a key axis of social inequality that intersects with other systems of power and marginalization to cause unequal experiences of climate change vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Thus, a gender analysis in climate change research examines structures and relationships of power. In this article, I provide some examples of differential impacts of climate change and how feminist studies make visible the underlying causes of vulnerability as well as the agency of marginalised actors to propose alternatives.
... At the same time, the forests haveas in the Lao uplandshad an important security functions for the state (see also, Peluso and Vandergeest, 2011). Whereas these strategies have capitalized on stabilized or decreasing forests (through timber extraction or conversion of forests into mining, agricultural or hydropower concessions), green state and international institutions increasingly aim to commodify increasing forests, hence, forests' ecological function for carbon sequestration and biodiversity (see also, Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). These strategies largely neglect the social functions, that is, the immediate livelihood dimension of multifunctional landscapes, including forests, for local people (Dressler et al., 2016). ...
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Increasing forest cover through reforestation and forest regrowth constitutes an essential contribution to mitigating the climate crisis, especially in the tropics. The Southeast Asian country of Lao PDR is on the brink of a forest transition, that is, a shift from net deforestation to net increases in forest area. This process is, however, contested and this article sheds light to power and politics in forest transitions and the implications for forests and people in Lao PDR and beyond. We develop a conceptual framework rooted in political ecology and critical state theory to identify visions and strategies by institutional actors that aim to transform the forests in particular ways, reflect on their power resources and synthesize three development projects from these strategies. We identify an antecedent dominant extractivist development project, focused on state-led timber extraction and large-scale land acquisitions. We argue that green development strategies that commodify forests through offsetting schemes, results-based payments from REDD+ and industrial tree plantations are increasingly mobilized to complement and modernize this extractivist development trajectory. Whereas these strategies align in their focus on land sparing to intensify agricultural and forest production, on the margins, we carve out an alternative livelihoods-based development project that supports extensive agroecological practices (including shifting cultivation) and integrates forests into multifunctional landscapes, re-centering local interests in reforestation approaches. The research therefore contributes to a more complex understanding of power and politics in forest transition research as well as a nuanced understanding of forest politics in political ecology.
... Several authors argue that market-based mechanisms lead to the transformation of previously untradeable ecological processes into tradable commodities that are subject to decreasing state regulation (Allen, 2018;Holmes, 2015). Benjaminsen and Kaarhus (2018), for example, define commodification as the process whereby domains previously governed by non-market values and norms are now incorporated into markets (see also Bakker, 2005). Büscher and Whande (2007) argue that commodification entails the prioritization of the quantitative exchange value of goods and services, determined in monetary terms, over their qualitative, intrinsic or use value. ...
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... The issues must be approached not in an isolated or specific strategy but at multiple scales, covering the different roles played by different stakeholders in a global economy (June et al., 2006). In addition, the fact that markets have not properly worked in most cases must be considered because of the negative consequences for nature and for the humans who depend on it (e.g., Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Murray, Lenzen, & Murray, 2014). ...
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Landscape restoration has evolved to recover large areas of degraded ecosystems through a globally coordinated governance system to connect economic development with local livelihood improvements. The Brazilian government set an ambitious target to restore 12 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. This thesis examines how stakeholders manage multi-scalar relations of governance and institutional systems for restoration in the Brazilian Amazon in order to explore how performance and outcomes are socially and geographically embedded in hybrid power dynamics. I demonstrate these processes across the diverse roles of state, market actors, communities, and individuals, through the application of global production networks, feminist political ecology, and forest landscape restoration frameworks to advance the environmental governance literature. As an empirical representation, the research focuses on case studies in the southeastern Amazon. The governance of the restoration network in Brazil is formed by a myriad of forces connecting disparate stakeholders, involving regulations, global funding, actor-specific decision-making, community participation, and technological developments. Formal institutions commonly take a highly technical approach, and excessive bureaucratization has decentralized responsibility, but not authority, from the governments. However, the dispersed nature of restoration networks across multiple stakeholders illustrates alternative levels of engagement, beyond the state’s power. Innovative seed supply and direct seeding have initiated approaches based on local knowledge in the Amazon. Diverse community groups are adapting local institutions for restoration with significant livelihood improvements, including indigenous and women's participation in seed collection. Community-based models are feasible for matching the plant material sources required to achieve Brazil's restoration pledge with considerable and positive socioeconomic outcomes.
... La legitimidad puede considerarse como el "reconocimiento social del poder político para crear y aplicar normas jurídicas" (Hernández, 2009: 156), es decir, consiste en la creencia de que obedecer el orden creado y respaldado por el Estado corresponde al bien común (Mazzuca, 2012; Monterroso y Barry, 2012), con la finalidad de garantizar la eficacia de la acción política (Scharpf, 2005). Varios autores consideran que la participación efectiva de la sociedad y el esquema de gobernanza legitiman los esquemas políticos que atienden las acciones de REDD+ en México (Balderas y Skutsch, 2014;Libert y Trench, 2016;Benjaminsen y Kaarhus, 2018). Aunque es importante considerar que la gobernanza que hace hincapié en las interacciones entre los niveles políticos y sociales como base de la convivencia social, no necesariamente atiende al gobierno, sino a los actores que aceptan una norma (Libert et al., 2018). ...
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El objetivo del estudio es realizar una revisión del estado actual de la legalidad en la participación social y propiedad forestal reconocidas en la Estrategia Nacional para la Reducción de Emisiones por Deforestación y Degradación forestal (ENAREDD+), a fin de identificar los principales desafíos jurídicos y políticos que pudieran constituir áreas de oportunidad en el éxito de los principios de REDD+ en México. Se realizó una revisión de la literatura sobre el tema, de la ENAREDD+ y del marco jurídico asociados con la participación social y la propiedad forestal. Los principales hallazgos muestran que existe un reconocimiento distinto de los actores en la participación social y los alcances de la propiedad forestal al interior de la ENAREDD+, así como en el marco jurídico vigente, que pudieran cuestionar la legalidad forestal en México.
... Numerous carbon forestry schemes have been shown to interrupt and limit local resource use, entrench existing local inequalities, or destabilize local economies, while promised local incentives commonly fail to materialize in any significant way (Chomba, Kariuki, Lund, & Sinclair, 2016;Leach & Scoones, 2015;Milne et al., 2019). In marketbased schemes in particular, the promise of efficiency drives the pursuit of economies of scale, which often manifest in biases against smallholders and attempts to cluster up local communities in ways that privilege dominant groups and divert benefits away from the poorest (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Isyaku, Arhin, & Asiyanbi, 2017). ...
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Recent IPCC assessments highlight a key role for large‐scale carbon removal in meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement. This focus on removal, also referred to as negative emissions, is suggestive of novel opportunities, risks, and challenges in addressing climate change, but tends to build on the narrow techno‐economic framings that characterize integrated assessment modeling. While the discussion on negative emissions bears important parallels to a wider and older literature on carbon sequestration and carbon sinks, this earlier scholarship—particularly from the critical social sciences—is seldom engaged with by the negative emissions research community. In this article, we survey this “long history” of carbon removal and seek to draw out lessons for ongoing research and the emerging public debate on negative emissions. We argue that research and policy on negative emissions should proceed not just from projections of the future, but also from an acknowledgement of past controversies, successes and failures. In particular, our review calls attention to the irreducibly political character of carbon removal imaginaries and accounting practices and urges acknowledgement of past experiences with the implementation of (small‐scale) carbon sequestration projects. Our review in this way highlights the importance of seeing continuity in the carbon removal discussion and calls for more engagement with existing social science scholarship on the subject. Acknowledging continuity and embracing an interdisciplinary research agenda on carbon removal are important aspects in making climate change mitigation research more responsible, and a precondition to avoid repeating past mistakes and failures. This article is categorized under: • The Carbon Economy and Climate Mitigation > Benefits of Mitigation
... Other studies conducted on REDD+ suggests that, the policy poses more threats to communities than benefits as it was assumed in the REDD+ plans (see Scheba and Rakotonarivo, 2016;Scheba and Scheba, 2017;Lund et al. 2017;Benjaminsen and Kaarhus, 2018). Lund et al. (2017) for example concluded that large investment by donors in REDD= in Tanzania have benefited mainly government departments, academia, consultants and conservation NGOs. ...
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Climate change poses challenge to the global society. Different measures have been set off in an attempt to address the problem. Among the recent adopted options is the "Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation" (REDD+). However, little evidence exists on how options such as REDD+ may impact on forest-dependent communities. Drawing evidences from a forest-dependant community in Kilosa, this study reveals the impact of REDD+ on community access and benefit from forest resources. The study used a qualitative approach to investigate local people's perceptions of REDD+. About 33 respondents comprising village members, local leaders and forest managers were interviewed. Results from this study indicate that, REDD+ has limited the ways village members used to access and benefit from forest resources and therefore jeopardized their wellbeing. This study concludes that any measure taken to improve forest management should take into consideration forest-dependent communities' contextual situation in order to enhance the wellbeing of community members.
... A number of concerns regarding the conservation of forests by reducing deforestation and forest degradation rates as envisioned by REDD proponents have been voiced. Among others, these relate to the technological difficulties in quantifying and monitoring carbon contents and compliance with conservation agreements (Herold et al., 2011;Olander, Galik, & Kissinger, 2012); the risk of managing for carbon conservation only to the detriment of other ecosystem functions, as well as biodiversity ( Harrison et al., 2012;Paoli et al., 2010); unclear sources of permanent funds to ensure conservation beyond the end of project contracts (May & Millikan, 2010;Peskett, Schreckenberg, & Brown, 2011); the displacement of environmentally harmful activities to other areas not covered by conservation agreements, also known as "leakage" (Atmadja & Verchot, 2012;Kuik, 2014); the challenges in distributing payments equitably among local people in forest communities, considering that communities are far from homogenous actors (Kariuki, Birner, & Chomba, 2018;Krause, Col- len, & Nicholas, 2013); the problem that much deforestation is already illegal anyway and payments for not breaking the law would be legally and morally questionable (Angelsen, 2008;Pearce, 2008); more general ethical and moral concerns about changing people's relationships with the natural environment through the adoption of a utilitarian logic implicit in REDD and PES (Benjaminsen & Kaarhus, 2018;Sconfienza, 2017); and concerns about changing rural people's relationships with the state (Gebara & Agrawal, 2017). ...
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One of the most contentious issues surrounding the forest conservation program REDD+ is the question whether it should be funded via international carbon markets. The controversy between market supporters and opponents has been especially marked in the public debate in Brazil, one of the main potential beneficiaries of REDD+ payments. In a remarkable shift of policy, the Brazilian Federal Government gave up its long-standing opposition to market-based funding in the run-up to the COP15, following several years of competition between two main discourse coalitions and their preferred story lines. These were analyzed here with discourse network analytical techniques. Brazil's policy change may in part be explained by the failure of market opponents to employ positive arguments about alternative funding mechanisms, such as a public fund model; and by the increasing discursive dominance of a third emerging discourse coalition, which adopted major arguments of both sides in the debate. The research presented here thus provides more general insights on the dynamics of public debates, discourse coalitions, and the impacts of discursive strategies on policy-making, as well as on the value of discourse network analysis as a research method.
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The power to shape and control space is core to Geographical analysis and is the focus of this Part III. This chapter analyses the reality engineered at El Quimbo and how infrastructure has been used to inscribe knowledge onto space. It shows how the detachment of the spheres of life enshrined in the EIA, materialised with the project’s realisation.
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The article investigates the impact of REDD+ programs on indigenous livelihoods. Referring to Ferdinand Tönnies’ distinction, it argues that the involvement of indigenous groups with REDD+ fosters a transition from locally oriented, self-sustaining “communities” towards individualistic and market-oriented “societies” that are integrated into the global REDD+ architecture. Although international REDD+ initiatives attempt to integrate indigenous perspectives with the help of consultative procedures, the necessary conditions for a context-sensitive transformation remain unfulfilled, as long as indigenous groups do not obtain secure property titles for their lands. The inherent contradictions of the prevailing REDD+ approach create social tensions and dilemmas both for the participating indigenous groups and the initiators of these projects. Based on semi-structured interviews and participant observations, these dynamics are illustrated by the interplay between indigenous groups, public officials, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and international REDD+ financers in Mato Grosso (Brazil).
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Climate change impacts are being felt across sectors in all regions of the world, and adaptation projects are being implemented to reduce climate risks and existing vulnerabilities. Climate adaptation actions also have significant synergies and tradeoffs with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 5 on gender equality. Questions are increasingly being raised about the gendered and climate justice implications of different adaptation options. This paper investigates if reported climate change adaptation actions are contributing to advancing the goal of gender equality (SDG 5) or not. It focuses on linkages between individual targets of SDG 5 and climate change adaptation actions for nine major sectors where transformative climate actions are envisaged. The assessment is based on evidence of adaptation actions documented in 319 relevant research publications published during 2014–2020. Positive links to nine targets under SDG 5 are found in adaptation actions that are consciously designed to advance gender equality. However, in four sectors—ocean and coastal ecosystems; mountain ecosystems; poverty, livelihood, sustainable development; and industrial system transitions, we find more negative links than positive links. For adaptation actions to have positive impacts on gender equality, gender-focused targets must be intentionally brought in at the prioritisation, designing, planning, and implementation stages. An SDG 5+ approach, which takes into consideration intersectionality and gender aspects beyond women alone, can help adaptation actions move towards meeting gender equality and other climate justice goals. This reflexive approach is especially critical now, as we approach the mid-point in the timeline for achieving the SDGs.
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Forests are under immense stress globally. Economic growth is one reason for this: its impacts can lead to deforestation and put tremendous harvesting pressure on forests. In light of increasingly popular – and growth-based – bioeconomy strategies, the need for more wood is likely to accelerate. Degrowth, in contrast, rejects economic growth as the central economic principle, arguing that the material throughput of countries in the Global North must shrink to achieve global sustainability. Although the concept has gained importance, there have been no attempts to link degrowth with the forest sector. This article argues that degrowth principles are beneficial for basing the forest sector on sustainable grounds, while the degrowth movement also needs to define its relationship to the forest. Against this backdrop, this contribution sets the cornerstone by linking the Swiss forest sector to central degrowth principles, and discussing possible interrelations and mismatches. Finally, a future research agenda for degrowth and the forest sector is presented.
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Energy saved through efficiency and conservation efforts is often framed as a “resource” in climate change mitigation policies because of the ways such “negawatts” can cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This research uses a case study of a US state alternative energy portfolio standard under which negawatts have been turned into new sources of profits for investor-owned electricity companies. Using archival policymaking data and analytical tools commonly used in the study of more traditional subsurface resources like fossil fuels, this paper analyzes how such companies have come to profit from negawatts. I show that, under this portfolio standard, negawatts are largely embedded in electricity customers’ private spaces, presenting a private property problem for capital accumulation similar to the challenge faced by capital seeking to extract more traditional subsurface resources. I argue that electricity companies resolve the negawatt private property problem in two ways. First, they discursively move negawatts out of private spaces through comparisons with resources like oil and gas. Second, the portfolio standard itself can be seen as granting electricity companies an enhanced spatial monopoly on negawatt extraction that functions like a mining concession. These discourses and regulations create a new and growing resource frontier which is likely to be a key accumulation space in the low-carbon economy. I conclude with recommendations for a more socially just and “deeper” politics of energy efficiency extraction.
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The policy framework known as Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is based on the underlying idea of creating economic incentives for forest conservation and CO2 emission reductions. This article explores what happens when REDD+, as a globally conceived environmental policy framework, is translated into practice in Zanzibar. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among actors involved in the policy translation process, the article investigates how these actors receive, interpret and give meaning to the introduction of REDD+. With the concept of institutional bricolage as an overarching perspective, the article engages in a discussion of what factors provide legitimacy to REDD+ at policy level in Zanzibar, and moreover, why certain elements of the REDD+ policy framework are incorporated into practice while others are discarded. The article demonstrates how actors make creative use of the resources available, but only within a spectrum that allows for reinvention of established practices and acceptable ways of doing. The article concludes that although the process of carbon accounting represents a ‘technical necessity’ of the REDD+ policy framework, it lack the legitimacy necessary to become durable. REDD+ in Zanzibar is thus at risk of becoming yet another example of a ‘conservation fad’ – an approach that initially invoked a widely shared enthusiasm, but later was dubbed a failure and abandoned.
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The policy framework known as Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is based on the underlying idea of creating economic incentives for forest conservation and CO2 emission reductions. This article explores what happens when REDD+, as a globally conceived environmental policy framework, is translated into practice in Zanzibar. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among actors involved in the policy translation process, the article investigates how these actors receive, interpret and give meaning to the introduction of REDD+. With the concept of institutional bricolage as an overarching perspective, the article engages in a discussion of what factors provide legitimacy to REDD+ at policy level in Zanzibar, and moreover, why certain elements of the REDD+ policy framework are incorporated into practice while others are discarded. The article demonstrates how actors make creative use of the resources available, but only within a spectrum that allows for reinvention of established practices and acceptable ways of doing. The article concludes that although the process of carbon accounting represents a ‘technical necessity’ of the REDD+ policy framework, it lack the legitimacy necessary to become durable. REDD+ in Zanzibar is thus at risk of becoming yet another example of a ‘conservation fad’ – an approach that initially invoked a widely shared enthusiasm, but later was dubbed a failure and abandoned.
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This article provides a case study of a project in Kondoa, Tanzania under the programme Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). It demonstrates how a success narrative came to dominate presentations about the project as a multi-win involving not only climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, but also benefits for local people and poverty reduction. Based on repeated fieldwork using qualitative methods, we find that there is lack of evidence to substantiate the success claims. These claims are in particular based on the assertion that a component of ‘conservation agriculture’ was successfully implemented as compensation for forest enclosure. Gaps between claims and evidence are often exhibited in the scholarship on political ecologies of conservation in Africa, as well as by observers of development aid projects. But how can such gaps be explained? We suggest taking the interests of the actors behind the project as a point of departure, including how individuals as well as organisations have stakes in marketing a success narrative. Furthermore, we argue that an unsubstantiated success narrative of an aid project can be maintained only when there is a lack of structures to ensure independent and adequate examinations of the project by evaluators and researchers. In this case, Norway was the funder of the project, and as the dominant funder of REDD, the Norwegian government has a particular interest in reproducing REDD success narratives, since the credibility of the country’s climate mitigation policy depends on REDD being a success. In addition, the case study demonstrates how ‘success projects’ emerge in the wake of new development fads.
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This paper offers a critical assessment of REDD+ in Nigeria through a political ecology perspective. Focusing on questions of property rights and resource access, it maps the discursive articulations and contestations through which carbon rights are being determined. It also shows how these articulations and contestations are linked to land and forest rights, and how they shape everyday access to the forest. Evidence from the Nigerian case suggests that factors that complicate rights and undermine access to resources for forest communities under REDD+ are immanent to the contested terrain constituted in part by REDD+ proposals, proponents’ discourses and practices geared towards securing the forest for REDD+. Efforts to secure property rights and guarantee the permanence of REDD+ forests align with economic, ecological and ideological aspirations of state and non-state actors to produce a regime of militarised protectionism. I demonstrate how, in addition to its material and symbolic facilitation of the emergent carbon forestry economy, militarised protectionism as a regime of exclusion also constitutes collateral political economies of ‘more-than-carbon’ forest resources (such as timber and non-timber forest products) which perpetuate capital accumulation by the elites. It is this kind of exclusion–accumulation dialectic, legitimised by carbon forestry claims that this paper describes as carbonised exclusion. The paper thus furthers debates on the political ecology of REDD+ and other carbon forestry projects, while productively engaging technocentric literature on REDD+ and property rights.
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Introduction This chapter seeks to critically reflect on social equity in carbon forestry using the case of Uganda and a range of projects within it. It takes as a starting point the assertion that carbon forestry projects should not be evaluated in isolation, without reference to both the comparative experiences of the different carbon project types, or without an understanding of the social conditions of forestry governance in any particular country. In keeping with this sentiment, Roth and Dressler (2012) argue for empirical analysis that accounts for the particularities of 'place,' in this case Uganda, that shape market-oriented conservation in practice and expose the 'messiness' of such ventures. The insights here draw from 6 months of fieldwork conducted in 2012 in Uganda toward a PhD in human geography. I identified and explored the ways that three REDD+ projects, three afforestation/reforestation Clean Development Mechanism (A/R CDM) projects, and three voluntary carbon market (VCM) forestry offset projects (or prospective projects) emerged as part of a new transna-tional 'assemblage' of forestry governance in Uganda. The focus of the research was more explicitly on governance changes, and thus the reflections here cannot substitute for longitudinal studies of individual projects. I took this approach for the reason that, while generalizations with regard to 'the state of carbon forestry' are challenging—as with much qualitative research (Bryman 2012)—they are well worth pursuing for the insights they provide. The common thread identified among these projects is the provision of carbon funding for forestry-related activities, yet the projects have continuities and discontinuities with each other, not least in the ways they draw differing combinations of state and non-state actors into particular projects, and thereby into the broader environmental governance sphere in Uganda. Indeed, while REDD+ is
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REDD+ is an ambition to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the Global South. This ambition has generated unprecedented commitment of political support and financial funds for the forest-development sector. Many academics and people-centered advocacy organizations have conceptualized REDD+ as an example of ''green grabbing " and have voiced fears of a potential global rush for land and trees. In this paper we argue that, in practice and up until now, REDD+ resembles longstanding dynamics of the development and conservation industry, where the promise of change becomes a discursive commodity that is constantly reproduced and used to generate value and appropriate financial resources. We thus argue for a re-conceptualization of REDD+ as a conservation fad within the broader political economy of development and conservation. We derive this argument from a study that compares the emergence of REDD+ in Tanzania with that of a previous forest-policy model called Participatory Forest Management. Our study describes how the advent of REDD+ implies change at the discursive level, but also continuity and repetitiveness in terms of the initial promises and expectations leading to substantial donor financing, pilot project activities, and policy development and implementation processes. In both epochs, these have achieved little in terms of changing actual forest management and use on the ground outside selected pilot project sites, but have sustained the livelihoods of actors within the development and conservation industry, including academics. Given that there are still many who look to REDD+ in the hope of addressing global climate change, despite less than hoped for financial support at the global level, our study provides an important starting point for questioning the uses of the finances for REDD+ that are actually amassed.
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Increasingly, one hears furtive whispers in the halls of conservation: "REDD+ is dead; it's time to cut our losses and move on." In a recent Conservation Biology editorial, Redford, Padoch and Sunderland (2013) identify REDD+ (Reduced Emissions through avoided Deforestation and forest Degradation) as one of the latest in a long line of conservation "fads," defined as "approaches that are embraced enthusiastically and then abandoned" (2013: 437). They caution: "we must take such fads more seriously, to work collectively to develop learning organizations. . .and study where new ideas come from. why they are adopted, why they are dropped, and what residual learning remains" (2013: 438). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
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Reductions of Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is one example of a globally important environmental intervention implemented throughout the global South. This article investigates the possibilities for rural villagers to influence these interventions, and thus negotiate access to forest resources at the local level. Based on data from ethnographic fieldwork in Zanzibar, the article explores a process where representatives from one village and forest authorities negotiate a Community Forest Management Agreement that will be part of a future REDD scheme in Zanzibar. The article reviews the multiple local responses to this pre-REDD process and discusses factors that contribute to shaping these responses. Local claims about ‘lost land’ and ‘disappearing benefits’ are at the core of what villagers want to see redressed by taking part in the REDD project. But despite the seemingly great local expectations towards the arrival of the project, as well as the project's self-presentation as participatory, villagers soon realize that their influence on the project is marginal. After attempting to voice their concerns through negotiation, villagers experience that the ahistorical and apolitical approach of the project forces them into more resistance-like behaviour – complicating the distinction between consent and non-consent to the project. Inspired by Foucault's conception of power and the tensions between different knowledge, logics and practices at project vs. village level, the article seeks to contribute to furthering our theoretical reflections and understanding of ‘project'–‘village’ dynamics in external environmental interventions with a global agenda, where REDD is just one example.
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Coastal areas across the globe are experiencing alarming levels of degradation, including in East Africa. In response, marine conservation efforts in the region are on the rise, many of which claim community empowerment as an essential goal. At the same time, research from geography and cognate disciplines has been working to detail the ways in which conservation practices in Africa can negatively impact communities living in and around protected areas. However, due in part to the much more recent history of coastal conservation, much of this important research is focused on land-based ecosystems. This paper adds to the burgeoning literature on coastal conservation efforts in the region by presenting findings from a case study of a World Bank-funded project in the Menai Bay Conservation Area (MBCA), in Zanzibar, Tanzania. This study combines interview-based fieldwork and a review of policy literature to conclude that while the project in MBCA maintains a strong rhetoric of community involvement, the goal of achieving community empowerment remains elusive.
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Carbon forestry represents a degree of continuity and discontinuity with traditional conservation practices, rescripting forestry management/governance and land access through projects on the ground in variegated, context-dependent ways. Utilising the comparative lens of two distinct projects operating on state-led protected areas in the east of Uganda, and focusing on their contested boundaries, this paper reflects on these dynamics and tries to make sense of the implications for the rural communities within the project vicinities. The projects and their framings reassert the claims to territory of the state in different ways which are contingent upon and emergent from the local institutional and historical context, or ‘legacies of the land’, which can be seen in context to be disputed and contested. Whilst it must be said that there can be selectively progressive elements within carbon forestry initiatives, it can be observed that techno-centric interventions, which depoliticise their local contexts and selectively transnationalise access to land and forestry resources, can further marginalise local communities in the process.
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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.
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The originality of the REDD proposal is its incentives-based mechanism designed to reward the governments of developing countries for their performance in reducing deforestation as measured against a baseline. This mechanism is founded on the hypothesis that developing countries ‘pay’ an opportunity cost to conserve their forests and would prefer other choices and convert their wooden lands to other uses. The basic idea is, therefore, to pay rents to these countries to compensate for the anticipated foregone revenues. The reference to the theory of incentives (in its principal–agent version) is implicit but clear. In this REDD-related framework, the Government is taken as any economic agent who behaves rationally i.e. taking decisions after comparing the relative prices associated to various alternatives, then deciding to take action and implementing effective measures to tackle deforestation and shift the nation-wide development path.
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New supranational environmental institutions, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the 'green' World Bank, reflect attempts to regulate international flows of 'natural capital' by means of an approach I call 'green developmentalism: These institutions are sources of eco-development dollars and of a new 'global' discourse, a postneoliberal environmental-economic paradigm. By the logic of this paradigm, nature is constructed as a world currency and ecosystems are recoded as warehouses of genetic resources for biotechnology industries. Nature would earn its own right to survive through international trade in ecosystem services and permits to pollute, access to tourism and research sites, and exports of timber, minerals, and intellectual property rights to traditional crop varieties and shamans' recipes. I contend that green developmentalism, with its promise of market solutions to environmental problems, is blunting the North-South disputes that have embroiled international environmental institutions. But by valuing local nature in relation to international markets-denominating diversity in dollars, euros, or yen-green developmentalism abstracts nature from its spatial and social contexts and reinforces the claims of global elites to the greatest share of the earth's biomass and all it contains. Meanwhile, the CBD has become a gathering ground for transnational coalitions of indigenous, peasant, and NGO opponents of 'biopiracy' and the patenting of living things, and advocates of international environmental justice. They have begun to put forward counterdiscourses and alternative practices to those of green developmentalism.
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Creating a mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) in tropical developing countries has become, from 2005 onward, a central element in international climate protection discourse. The goal is to create financial incentives for forest protection by making avoided deforestation a tradable good that can be sold on the carbon market or to government funds. A discourse-analytical perspective on the process of commodification and market creation is developed in order to assess how avoided deforestation is being made tradable. Going beyond existing approaches, such a perspective enables us to highlight the contestedness and contingency of the commodification and market creation process. The extent to which on-going qualification and commensuration practices can result in a disentanglement of avoided deforestation as tradable good is discussed, and one of the consequences of a successful commodification of avoiding deforestation – the carbonification of forests – is highlighted. The version which has been published in Environmental Politics Volume 21, 2012 - Issue 4can be found here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09644016.2012.688357
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Nearly all countries worldwide are now experimenting with decentralization. Their motivations are diverse. Many countries are decentralizing because they believe this can help stimulate economic growth or reduce rural poverty, goals central government interventions have failed to achieve. Some countries see it as a way to strengthen civil society and deepen democracy. Some perceive it as a way to off-load expensive responsibilities onto lower level governments. Thus, decentralization is seen as a solution to many different kinds of problems. This report examines the origins and implications decentralization from a political economy perspective, with a focus on its promise and limitations. It explores why countries have often chosen not to decentralize, even when evidence suggests that doing so would be in the interests of the government. It seeks to explain why since the early 1980s many countries have undertaken some form of decentralization. This report also evaluates the evidence to understand where decentralization has considerable promise and where it does not. It identifies conditions needed for decentralization to succeed. It identifies the ways in which decentralization can promote rural development. And it names the goals which decentralization will probably not help achieve.
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