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Advanced Review
Envisioning REDD+ in a
post-Paris era: between evolving
expectations and current practice
Esther Turnhout,
1
*Aarti Gupta,
2
Janice Weatherley-Singh,
2,3
Marjanneke J. Vijge,
2
Jessica de Koning,
4
Ingrid J. Visseren-Hamakers,
5
Martin Herold
4
and Markus Lederer
6
Edited by Louis Lebel, Domain Editor, and Mike Hulme, Editor-in-Chief
From its advent in 2005 within global climate change negotiations, reducing car-
bon emissions from deforestation and other forest-related activities (so-called
REDD+) has been experimented with in developing country contexts for over a
decade now, with a wide array of expectations coming to be associated with
it. Three consecutive conceptualizations are identifiable: carbon-centered, where
REDD+ is primarily a climate mitigation strategy; co-benefits-centered, where
REDD+ becomes a triple win solution for climate, biodiversity and communities;
and landscape-centered, where REDD+ activities are embedded in integrated
sustainable land-use approaches. In assessing such evolving expectations against
existing REDD+ experiences, a mixed picture emerges. Some expectations, spe-
cifically relating to forest carbon financing, are not being adequately met, while
others, notably the delivery of co-benefits, hold out more promise. Yet this also
highlights a potential paradox facing REDD+. While there is growing recognition
that co-benefit generation is key, and that piece-meal, forest-carbon focused
REDD+ interventions are unlikely to address the complex causes of tropical for-
est loss, forest carbon is still being foregrounded in measuring and reporting on
REDD+ performance, and in generating results-based payments (even as these
aspects remain challenging). This implies, however, that the future of REDD+
may lie not in one conceptualization coming to dominate, but rather in co-
existence of heterogeneous practices. REDD+ may end up as a patchwork of pro-
jects and practices with different foci and financing mechanisms. Although this
cannot prevent trade-offs, such a heterodox REDD+ may provide building blocks
for the polycentric governance of the world’s remaining tropical forests. © 2016
The Authors. WIREs Climate Change published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
How to cite this article:
WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e425. doi: 10.1002/wcc.425
*Correspondence to: esther.turnhout@wur.nl
1
Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group, Wageningen Uni-
versity, Wageningen, Netherlands
2
Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, Wagenin-
gen, Netherlands
3
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Brussels, Belgium
4
Laboratory of Geo Information and Remote Sensing, Wageningen
University, Wageningen, Netherlands
5
Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason
University, Fairfax, VA, USA
6
Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität
Münster, Munster, Germany
Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of inter-
est for this article.
1of13
© 2016 The Authors.
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published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
INTRODUCTION
In the collective global challenge posed by climate
change, the idea of reducing or avoiding carbon
emissions through forest conservation and sustaina-
ble use has attracted considerable attention. The
global mechanism REDD+ has been, arguably, the
most prominent site of multilateral political negotia-
tions and activities on the ground with regard to
mitigating forest-related carbon emissions. REDD+
stands for ‘reducing emissions from deforestation
and forest degradation in developing countries; and
the role of conservation, sustainable management of
forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in
developing countries.’
1
It has been negotiated under
the United Nations Framework Convention on Cli-
mate Change (UNFCCC) since 2005, as a mechanism
to compensate developing countries for their efforts
to reduce forest-related emissions.
2
Over the years,
multiple REDD+ activities have been initiated, with
bilateral and multilateral support from the World
Bank and the United Nations (UN) REDD program.
This has resulted in the development of national
REDD+ strategies and in execution of more than
1000 REDD+ activities on the ground in developing
countries by the end of 2015.
3
In initial debates on REDD+ (then referred to
as RED—Reducing Emissions from Deforestation),
reducing carbon emissions through preventing fur-
ther deforestation was portrayed as being relatively
simple and efficient compared to other climate
change mitigation strategies.
4
In this relatively simple
conceptualization, developing countries would
receive financial support for reducing emissions from
forest loss, calculated at the national level against an
established baseline or reference level. This attracted
a range of stakeholders, who were optimistic about
the potential of REDD+ to offer a win-win solution
for both climate and forests, and who considered
REDD+ as an unprecedented opportunity to bring
political attention and new financing for tropical for-
est conservation.
5,6
Almost in parallel, another conceptualization
emerged, which emphasized not a double but a
triple-win REDD+. In this vision, the emphasis was
not only on the potential of REDD+ to lower carbon
emissions and conserve forests, but also to improve
livelihoods of forest-dependent communities, thereby
facilitating poverty reduction and sustainable devel-
opment in countries in which REDD+ interventions
were to take place (so called ‘non-carbon or co-bene-
fits’). This triple win conceptualization also attracted
different stakeholders within the development com-
munity, who valued the benefits that REDD+ could
provide for forest communities,
7–9
and for its poten-
tial role in improving forest governance.
10
Conceptualizations of REDD+ have again
shifted in recent years, this time to include a land-
scape approach to REDD+, which emphasizes the
importance of governing landscapes (including for-
ests, agriculture and other land uses) from an inte-
grated perspective and including relevant
stakeholders and sectors.
11,12
In this third conceptu-
alization, REDD+ is envisioned to serve as a catalyst
for more integrated ‘climate smart development’
pathways in forested landscapes of tropical countries,
particularly at the sub-national or jurisdictional
level.
13–15
This, however, will require REDD+ to go
even further beyond the relatively simple focus on
reducing carbon emissions from deforestation that it
started with, and encompass a wide variety of co-
benefits in a wide variety of land uses.
16
Over the years, the shifting conceptions of
REDD+ have garnered not just support, but also crit-
icism. From the outset REDD+ has been fiercely
debated in both scholarly literature and policy
practice.
17–21
This article thus undertakes a timely
assessment of the current state-of-the-art understand-
ing of whether and how REDD+ has lived up to the
various expectations associated with it. It also
assesses what the gaps between evolving expectations
and experiences might imply for the future evolution
of REDD+ in a post-Paris era.
Such a stocktaking exercise is timely, given the
prominence accorded to REDD+ in Article 5 of the
agreement reached during the 21
st
Conference of the
Parties (COP 21) of the UNFCCC in Paris in 2015.
22
It is particularly important in light of the potential
role that forest-based mitigation is likely to play in
meeting the long-term climate change mitigation goal
of remaining ‘well below’2.
22
It is also relevant in
the context of meeting the Sustainable Development
Goals agreed in 2015, in particular Goal 15.2 that
aims to promote sustainable forest management,
restore degraded forests, and halt deforestation by
2020, which was linked to REDD+ at COP 21.
22,23
EVOLVING EXPECTATIONS AND
EXPERIENCES: ASSESSING THREE
CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF REDD+
We turn here to assessing the extent to which the
evolving expectations associated with the three con-
ceptualizations of carbon,co-benefit,and landscape-
centered REDD+ are being realized. In doing so, we
focus in particular on financing for REDD+, and the
establishment of national-level measuring, reporting,
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and verification (MRV) systems intended to report
on performance, as two necessary elements in con-
verting REDD+ into reality. We also touch upon
other aspects, as relevant, including REDD+ govern-
ance arrangements and its engagement (or not) with
broader deforestation drivers.
Carbon-Centered REDD+: Assessing
Expectations and Experiences
As we outline above, the first conceptualization of
REDD+ relates to its promise to provide an efficient
and effective way to reduce or avoid forest-related
carbon emissions and thereby mitigate climate
change, while at the same time conserving forests.
However, incentivizing this depends upon the estab-
lishment of a viable financial mechanism for REDD+.
The Warsaw Framework, agreed to at the UNFCCC
COP 19 in Warsaw, specifies that REDD+ finance
will support developing countries in three sequential
phases of REDD+ implementation: (1) readiness,
(2) demonstration activities, and (3) results-based
actions. This implies that, before payments for veri-
fied forest-carbon emissions reductions can flow,
some preparatory ex ante finance is needed for coun-
tries to ‘get ready for REDD+’through developing
national REDD+ strategies and establishing institu-
tional arrangements, and building technical capabil-
ities for, among others, setting up MRV systems.
24,25
Only then can result-based payments occur.
To date, about 90% of all REDD+ finance, for
such stages, has come from public sources.
26–28
This
has included, for instance, funding from the UN-
REDD programme, the World Bank’s Forest Carbon
Partnership Facility (FCPF); and national government
programmes, such as from Norway or Germany’s
REDD+ Early Movers Programme. In line with the
Warsaw rules, most of this finance has gone to
national governments in developing countries.
25,29
At
this moment, however, the level of finance is insuffi-
cient. Currently, pledged finance for REDD+ only
amounts to less than half the estimated supply of car-
bon credits, assuming a standard price of USD
5/tonne of CO
2
(a price used, for instance, by the
FCPF), and also assuming that all finance goes to
phase 3 to pay for verified reduced emissions and not
to preparatory capacity building.
28
Besides public
funding for REDD+, available private funding has
been disbursed through voluntary carbon markets. In
the absence of including forest credits in compliance
markets, where entities with legally set emission obli-
gations might use REDD+ offsets as one potentially
efficient and flexible way of reaching their targets,
voluntary carbon markets are currently the only
place wherein REDD+ credits are being traded. The
only state-driven market where forest offsets might
be used in the near future is California’s cap-and-
trade market that plans to include REDD+ offsets
from 2018 on.
The current financial situation of REDD+,
including public funding and the voluntary carbon
market, is a clear indication that the ambitions
related to REDD+ in providing payments for
avoiding or reducing emissions from forests may
not be realized. This is mirrored in the interna-
tional negotiations where no decision regarding the
finance of REDD+ has been made but instead the
compromise formula is being used that funds
should ‘come from a variety of sources, public and
private, bilateral and multilateral, including alterna-
tive sources.’
30
Consequently, as many studies have
pointed out, REDD+ will not be able to easily incen-
tivise change away from deforestation and forest deg-
radation because the opportunity costs are so high
that REDD+ is unable to compete with other, less
sustainable, land uses.
31–35
This implies that while
countries are getting ready for REDD+ and are pre-
paring to supply carbon credits, it is unclear what
exactly they are getting ready for, in terms of the
financial mechanisms to be put in place, the condi-
tions attached to it, and whether there will be suffi-
cient finance available.
36
According to Vijge et al.,
36
this has created a wait-and-see attitude among devel-
oping countries.
This also has implications for the widely held
view (and criticism) that REDD+ embodies a market-
based and neoliberal approach to environmental
governance, whereby forest carbon emissions are to
be valued and made into a tradable commodity.
37
The process of commodification implies commen-
suration across diverse types of carbon emissions,
regardless of the location, or social conditions of
their generation, so that they can be traded and
exchanged.
38
According to many, this is risky
because it could result in forests only being valued
for their carbon content, a process termed carbonifi-
cation
37
or carbonization,
36,39,40
thereby neglecting
local realities and the needs of forest-dependent com-
munities.
21,41,42
These criticisms resonate with
broader debates and critiques of a ‘Payments for Eco-
system Services’(PES) approach to environmental
governance. REDD+ is often seen as one of the most
prominent current examples of PES approaches, since
it aims to pay developing countries for providing the
environmental service of mitigating forest-related cli-
mate emissions.
43–45
Further criticism has emerged
about the potential of REDD+ to become an offset
mechanism for developed countries to compensate
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their own poor greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation
performance.
40,46
However, in the absence of a global compliance
market for forest carbon, and with the current low
demand for and price of carbon, the claim that
REDD+ is contributing to a large-scale commodifica-
tion of the forest remains empirically unfounded. In
fact, the forest is already very much commoditized
and has been brought under global extractivist mar-
kets, unrelated to REDD+.
19
Moreover, it has also
been argued that avoided emissions have not (yet)
been fully turned into a commensurable commodity
in REDD+: avoided emissions from forests are not all
treated the same, and the location and conditions of
production do matter.
38
Particularly at the project
level, as we discuss in more detail later, results-based
finance and carbon transactions do not yet take cen-
ter stage.
34
In addition to financing and marketization
aspects, the extent to which REDD+ will meet the
objectives of climate change mitigation depends also
on the development of carbon accounting methodol-
ogies, and the establishment of MRV systems. Car-
bon accounting has thus been centre stage in policy
and scholarly debates, on-the-ground interventions,
and REDD+ readiness activities.
47,48
Data and meth-
ods need to be robust for countries to report REDD+
performance since REDD+ result based payments
will only be granted on the basis of the adequate
measurement, reporting and verification of avoided
carbon emissions. As such, experts have suggested
that accounting and MRV systems need to stay
focused on carbon-related estimation only.
49
MRV relating to assessments of forest carbon
stocks and changes is, however, a complicated mat-
ter. As much scholarly analysis has documented,
monitoring and accounting technologies, approaches,
and technical and institutional capacities are une-
venly distributed across scales, domains and REDD+
countries.
40,50–57
The availability of robust and credi-
ble data, particularly in developing countries,
remains a key challenge, given uncertainties and
political considerations associated with calculating
baselines or reference levels against which to assess
REDD+ performance. This is also the case in deter-
mining the scale (national, sub-national, or local) at
which to account for avoided carbon emissions.
Despite such challenges, most technical MRV experts
increasingly believe that reliable systems that assess
stocks and flows of carbon at a national scale are fea-
sible and countries’forest monitoring capacities have
significantly improved.
56
A growing body of work in the critical social
sciences has highlighted, however, the political
implications of the debates around carbon account-
ing and MRV systems, including those pertaining to
issues of data availability, reliability and integration.
Such writings note the political salience that account-
ing rules and outcomes acquire when financial
rewards become linked to them,
54,58
even though
they continue to be framed as technical matters to be
negotiated and institutionalized within expert set-
tings.
40,50
A related strand of work notes that the
requirements for stringent MRV systems may also
lead to unequal access to REDD+ interventions in
developing countries, as some countries have greater
capacity to establish such systems and/or to negotiate
their content.
50
Combined with the current focus on
carbon and the mostly national scale used to balance
stocks and flows of carbon, this would suggest that
through MRV systems, REDD+ may end up reprodu-
cing existing inequalities between experts and admin-
istrators and local forest dependent actors.
Taking into account the issues discussed in rela-
tion to carbon-centered REDD+, it is evident that the
early win-win enthusiasm for REDD+ was exagger-
ated: it has not proven to be a simple and efficient
way to mitigate climate change or conserve tropical
forests. We turn next to the second conceptualization
of REDD+, where the focus shifts from carbon to
also include co-benefits.
Co-Benefit-Centered REDD+: Assessing
Expectations and Experiences
As we pointed out above, from early on, REDD+
was expected to not only help to mitigate climate
change and conserve forests but also to deliver envi-
ronmental and social benefits, such as contributing to
livelihoods, sustainable development, enhanced gov-
ernance, and biodiversity conservation. These are
referred to collectively as co-benefits or REDD+ safe-
guards.
11,12,59
There is an important but subtle dif-
ference between these two notions: while the idea of
safeguards (anchored in the UNFCCC guidance on
REDD+) focuses on the prevention of harm, a push
for co-benefits from REDD+ requires it to do more
good, thus creating a positive externality.
Although there are currently no specificREDD+
payments linked to co-benefits at the international
level, countries are strongly encouraged to actively
pursue such benefits in their national-level REDD+
implementation according to their specific needs,
interests and national circumstances.
60
This call is
also reflected in several policy documents at the
national level, suggesting widespread support for the
importance of co-benefits, including through invol-
ving local communities in the design and monitoring
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of REDD+.
61
However, the rather centralized design
of REDD+ as specified in the UNFCCC Warsaw
Framework may prevent such benefits from being
realized in practice.
20,62
Some argue that the financial
resources that will flow to developing countries may
incentivize national governance to recentralize forest
governance, thereby undermining any potential posi-
tive effects of earlier decentralization efforts. Others
stress that decentralization of forest management is
not necessarily favorable to local communities and
only works better under very specific circum-
stances.
63
Some go further in supporting current
recentralization efforts and calling for a stronger
national involvement in REDD+ governance, given
that formerly decentralized governance arrangements
are seen, in such a view, as problematic in generating
co-benefits.
64
What is evident is that it will be up to
national governments to decide to what extent and
how local actors receive results-based payments from
REDD+. As such, concerns persist that REDD+ funds
will remain at national (rather than subnational or
local) levels.
20,62,65–67
Extensive REDD+ literature has also demon-
strated that the delivery of co-benefits requires appro-
priate governance arrangements, including
institutional and contract design.
68,69
Doing this
effectively and equitably, however, remains a chal-
lenge, particularly for poorer countries where govern-
ance is weak, corruption often prevalent and
enforcement feeble.
10,58,70,71
REDD+ can therefore
also be seen as a large-scale governance experiment
or an attempt at state building in those areas where
the state has historically been weak.
72
Similarly,
while stakeholder participation is mentioned in most
project documents and minimum requirements of
free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) in imple-
menting REDD+ projects are mostly adhered to, the
participation of local communities in the decision-
making and design of REDD+ projects varies signifi-
cantly across projects.
73
Furthermore, when ques-
tions of access and inclusion stem from contested
land tenure-related national policies, REDD+ inter-
ventions cannot resolve these.
74–76
Initial assessments
do demonstrate, however, that socioeconomic bene-
fits are limited when REDD+ implementation disre-
gards the skills, interests and potential of local actors
through top-down, predefined development
strategies.
77
Notwithstanding these problems and challenges
facing the implementation of REDD+ with broader
benefits, there are clear signs that co-benefits are
being taken seriously in the implementation of
REDD+. This means that to date, there is little evi-
dence of extensive carbonization occurring in
practice. In contrast, some research has shown that
the potential to generate biodiversity and community
benefits are among the most important reasons for
the selection of specific areas for REDD+ demonstra-
tion activities.
78
Furthermore, though actual poverty
reduction impacts of REDD+ projects remain
limited,
73
most REDD+ projects focus more strongly
on socioeconomic and environmental co-benefits
than on carbon benefits.
34
This is also evident from the fact that only
around 20% of the REDD+ projects are currently
engaged in actual carbon transactions and of these,
only a few rely solely on finances from such transac-
tions.
34
Moreover, 81% of all REDD+ projects that
involve carbon transactions are also certified by a
standard for co-benefits such as the Climate, Com-
munity Biodiversity standard (CCB), the Forest Stew-
ardship Council (FSC) or Rainforest Alliance.
79
In
part, this can be explained by the fact that many
REDD+ projects already existed as nature conserva-
tion or integrated conservation and development pro-
jects prior to the introduction of REDD+.
75
According to some, however, this state of affairs
raises questions about the additionality of REDD+,
and hence the effectiveness of REDD+ as a climate
mitigation strategy.
34
Thus, to date, we see implementation of REDD+
based on different sources of financing, which target
the delivery of a wide variety of social, economic,
and biodiversity benefits without an exclusive focus
on carbon. In light of the future financial prospects
for REDD+ vis-à-vis carbon benefits noted above,
this diversity of funding may prove a useful strategy
for securing the necessary financing for diverse
REDD+ interventions, while at the same time ensur-
ing the delivery of co-benefits.
70
Such a strategy
would also fit well with recent developments within
REDD+ negotiations in an international context,
where it is increasingly linked to sustainable develop-
ment imperatives. In the Paris Agreement, for exam-
ple, the link between REDD+ and the sustainable
development goals is noted,
22,23
and current donor
preferences also reflect a strong emphasis on securing
social and sustainable development benefits from
REDD+.
In considering the prospects that REDD+ will
generate co-benefits, a related issue has been whether
such benefits are also to be monitored, reported on,
and verified, at what level, and to what end. To date,
the mainstream understanding (also within the
UNFCCCC) has been that co-benefits are important
for REDD+, but are not to be included in MRV sys-
tems. Although they may be included as safeguards
or conditions for payment, they will not be used to
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determine the payment itself. Indeed, this seems to be
the dominant trend in practice as well, given that
there are very few initiatives designed explicitly to
monitor co-benefits.
55,61,80
Furthermore, most developing countries, even
those with relatively advanced forest monitoring sys-
tems, lack the capacity to implement co-benefit and
community-based monitoring.
55,81
Capacities for
social monitoring that covers, among others, rights,
participation and other social benefits, and environ-
mental monitoring that includes biodiversity, soil,
water and other ecosystem services are sometimes in
place, but they have usually been developed by differ-
ent expert communities who remain largely discon-
nected from each other.
9,11
There are some
suggestions to aim for such interdisciplinary integra-
tion, at least for environmental aspects. Scholars have
noted, for example, that many of the same remotely
sensed and field-based datasets that are being lever-
aged to measure changes in forest carbon emissions
can also be used to assess changes in biodiversity,
hydrology and water resources, and soil resources.
However, this may not be possible for social para-
meters. Thus, while it may be possible to take advan-
tage of multiple data streams, including field
measurements from community-based monitoring,
and remote sensing data analysis,
81
and use them for
inter-calibration and validation,
82,83
there remains a
problematic disconnect between the widely available
large-area data on forest change derived from remote
sensing
84
and the fine-scale data needed to monitor pro-
cesses and changes in social conditions.
55
While some
observers assess that progress in this realm has been
made,
56
another observed tendency is for governments
and other actors to shy away from taking on monitor-
ing tasks in situations where key datasets are missing
and basic capacities need to be established, unless there
are clear (financial) incentives to do so. Finally, the issue
of sovereign decision-making comes up again, as gov-
ernments in tropical forest countries rightly claim that
co-benefits are also not systematically measured or
linked to any financial transfers in countries of the
global North. This suggests that debates relating to
accounting for REDD+ (both for carbon, but also for
co-benefits that go beyond carbon) are likely to con-
tinue in the foreseeable future.
In sum, therefore, existing experience highlights
that, while on the project-level, REDD+ is character-
ized by a strong focus on co-benefits, developments
relating to finance and MRV systems continue to be
primarily concerned with carbon. Results-based pay-
ments are to be granted relative to avoided carbon
emissions documented through sufficient and credible
evidence generated by accounting and MRV. If co-
benefits remain excluded from the accounting and
financing architectures of REDD+ and are not seen
as results to be awarded with payments, REDD+
may yet result, in certain instances, in a carboniza-
tion of forest governance.
36
This suggests that in practice, rather than gener-
ating triple wins, REDD+ interventions are likely to be
characterized by trade-offs between forest conserva-
tion, climate change mitigation, and local development
and livelihood benefits.
85–88
For example, research has
shown that the forests to be conserved when aiming
for maximum carbon emission reduction impact will
not always be the most urgent areas for biodiversity
conservation.
89–93
Fears are also being raised that the
establishment of REDD+ related conservation areas
will lead to the expulsion of local forest dependant
people as was recently observed in Lao PDR.
94
As we have discussed in this section, the imple-
mentation of co-benefit-centered REDD+ reveals a
mixed picture, with evidence of REDD+ taking co-
befits into account at the project level, but at the
same time, a persistence of trade-offs and a continued
foregrounding of carbon in REDD+ finance and
MRV systems. We turn next to the expectations and
current experiences with the newest conceptualiza-
tion: landscape-centered REDD+.
Landscape-Centered REDD+: Assessing
Expectations and Experiences
As we noted in the introduction, the third, most
recent, conceptualization of REDD+ widens its scope
of activities and/or the context within which it is to
be conceived and implemented considerably. In this
third, landscape-centered conceptualization of REDD+,
the linkages between forests and other forms of
land use, particularly agriculture, come to the fore,
with concurrent extensive focus on engaging relevant
stakeholders beyond traditional forest-related multi-
level decision-making arrangements.
95–97
This
implies that REDD+ decision-making has to go
beyond forest-related ministries and departments
8,98
and become integrated with other policy areas that
affect stocks and flows of forest carbon, including
drivers of deforestation.
53,65
The most important direct driver of tropical
deforestation is commercial agriculture, in particular
large-scale industrial agriculture.
99–102
Commercial
logging, selective logging activities, illegal logging,
fuel wood collection, and charcoal production are
other known drivers. So far, however, REDD+ has
not been able to effectively address the political econ-
omy underlying these drivers, among others because
decision-makers prioritize short-term economic
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priorities and entrenched powerful interests.
103–105
The problem of conflicting government agendas
undermining REDD+ policies is well documented,
especially in relation to land tenure,
76,106
and eco-
nomic activities such as infrastructure development
and mining.
107
Even in Indonesia, a forerunner of
REDD+ with strong political support,
108
there is
opposition to zero-deforestation pledges by palm oil
companies because of the potential socio-economic
impacts. The consequence is that, even if forest poli-
cies are effective in enhancing carbon stocks, they are
likely to ultimately fail because the drivers of defor-
estation remain unaddressed.
109
Those advocating for a landscape approach to
REDD+ note that for it to be able to address drivers,
REDD+ needs to be situated within the broader con-
text of multi-level climate, forest, and biodiversity
policies, and the broader dynamics of land use in
forested landscapes in tropical countries.
2
Specifi-
cally, such a conceptualization envisions REDD+
becoming integrated into wider decision-making
about land use, beyond that pertaining directly to
forests. Our current state of understanding with
regard to such an approach in practice includes, pre-
dominantly, initiatives for cross-sectoral integration in
national contexts such as Indonesia and Brazil. In both
these contexts, the expansion of industrial agriculture
is a significant driver of deforestation, and land-use
decision-making is heavily influenced by large and
powerful agribusiness companies.
78,110
REDD+ imple-
mentation in these contexts has thus also been charac-
terized by efforts to incentivize agricultural private
sector stakeholders to reduce their land-use emissions
and impacts on deforestation, including through
involvement in developing Nationally Appropriate
Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) under the auspices of
the UNFCCC.
111
Such initiatives have taken the form
of zero deforestation commitments, agricultural com-
modity roundtables, or deforestation-free supply
chains, which are intended to be implemented in a
landscape across commodity production areas.
102,112
Less well documented to date are examples of
landscape approaches to REDD+ being tried in con-
texts where agribusiness companies do not play a
substantial role, and where deforestation is driven by
small-scale or subsistence agriculture. While in some
such cases, local REDD+ projects may be scaled-up
and may influence decision-making across agricul-
tural and multifunctional landscapes, most REDD+
projects are insufficiently connected with national or
jurisdictional approaches to stimulate such broader
change.
34,113
Other key stakeholders that influence land-use
decision-making are the regional authorities or
provincial governments, who influence decision-
making within their jurisdictional areas. Again, Brazil
and Indonesia are often cited as examples where
regional authorities have taken a leading role in
exploring landscape approaches,
110,114
particularly
because regions from both countries were involved
early on in the Governor’s Climate and Forest (GCF)
taskforce. These early jurisdictional approaches are
now catalyzing new initiatives such as Low Emission
Rural Development (LEDR), which recommends
combining efforts led by regional governments to
decrease land-based emissions across a particular
jurisdictional area, with efforts by the agricultural
private sector to decrease emissions. Another, similar,
conceptualization is the ‘green economy’approach,
through the creation of ‘productive, profitable, and
sustainable landscapes that sequester and store more
carbon and will enable enhanced delivery of environ-
mental services.’
115
For REDD+ this would imply the
development of business models that are in line with
sustainable forest management practice, thereby
shifting the focus of REDD+ from a conservation to
a sustainable livelihood strategy.
116
Despite these initiatives, practice to date sug-
gests that REDD+ has so far not effectively
adopted a landscape approach. In general, plans to
link REDD+ to other policy sectors such as agricul-
ture, for example, remain vague
39
and the discon-
nect in policy, research and practice between the
forest and agriculture sector remains one of key
areas overlooked in REDD+.
117,118
This means
that the hoped-for transformational change
towards landscape approaches to REDD+, as a
trigger for more climate-smart development path-
ways, will remain difficult, at least in the short to
medium term.
34,103,105
The enormity of the challenge should not be
underestimated. Landscape-level REDD+ may also
require integrated accounting and MRV systems that
go beyond existing demands of forest carbon (and
non-carbon) monitoring, to also assessing the
dynamics of carbon stocks and flows in a landscape.
However, the typical complexities of land-based sys-
tems, including different human impacts, past land
uses, and unforeseen events such as fires and extreme
weather events make assessment of their mitigation
potential complicated, adding considerable complex-
ity to accounting and MRV systems. Moreover, crop-
land, grassland and forestland are currently being
treated separately in the IPCC land use accounting
guidelines, which will make integration of such dif-
ferent land uses difficult.
119
Also the issue of co-
benefits will be further complicated in a landscape
approach, as the variety of stakeholders, land uses,
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and non-co-benefits derived from land will be more
diverse.
In relation to finance, adopting a landscape
approach could further catalyse the already discerni-
ble trend to combine different sources of funding in
REDD+. For example, REDD+ could be aligned with
existing private flows and development finance.
120
One approach has been to promote new value chains
of non-timber forest products that can enhance local
incomes while conserving forests.
121
Agricultural
value chains too, particularly of tropical commodities
(e.g., cocoa and coffee) may be integrated in REDD
+.
110,122
If REDD+ will be able to establish relation-
ships with other markets and financial instruments,
its impacts can be significant.
28
However, it is impor-
tant to recognize that the complexity of REDD+ will
nonetheless increase. Specifically, the distribution of
benefits and financial rewards is likely to become
increasingly demanding, complicated and difficult to
justify. Although scholars and policy practitioners
continue to debate policy integration in REDD
+,
123,124
the fact that the Paris Agreement does not
mention agriculture shows that an integrated, land-
scape approach to REDD+ is likely to remain politi-
cally contested and is still a long way to go.
23
CONCLUSION: THE REDD+
PARADOX AND MERITS OF
HETEROGENEITY
Our review of the expectations and experiences asso-
ciated with diverse and evolving conceptualizations
of REDD+ provide a portrait of the challenges and
opportunities facing REDD+ implementation in a
post-Paris era. We have shown that the current level
of financing is insufficient, and that currently no
compliance market for forest carbon credits exists.
As such, we can conclude that the expectations that
carbon-centered REDD+ would be a simple and effi-
cient mechanism for climate mitigation are not cur-
rently being met. At the same time, there is a
growing recognition that REDD+ needs to generate
co-benefits. Even as their delivery is challenging and
there are signs of trade-offs between climate, biodi-
versity and social benefits, our review shows that
REDD+ projects do take co-benefits into account and
there is little evidence that carbon concerns are sys-
tematically dominating at the expense of commu-
nities and their livelihoods. Thus, while there is
arguably still much to be desired in this area, experi-
ences so far allow for cautious optimism that the
expectations of co-benefits-centered REDD+ can be
furthered. This also suggests that the fears that
REDD+ would contribute to large-scale commodifi-
cation and carbonization of the forest at the expense
of communities and co-benefits have not
materialized.
However, before such a conclusion can be justi-
fied, we need to reconsider the relation between these
two conceptualizations of REDD+ and their imple-
mentation. Carbon-centered REDD+ implementation
has not yet materialized at scale, partially because of
a lack of stringent and well-functioning compliance
markets for carbon trading in recent years, and a via-
ble price for carbon. These financial constraints have
created a situation in which the trading of carbon
credits is limited and takes place only in the volun-
tary market. However, in a post-Paris context, this
could be set to change as article 6 of the Paris Agree-
ment envisions a new ‘sustainable development
mechanism.’Whether this will include REDD+ as a
market-based offset mechanism is an open issue and
remains very contested in the context of the
UNFCCC.
125
Nonetheless, such a mechanism is likely to
again foreground carbon. REDD+ continues to have
a strong focus on carbon as the basis for results-
based payments, based on systems that can measure,
report and verify outcomes, and there is currently no
indication that the delivery of co-benefits may
become included in MRV systems or in payments.
Consequently, if and when results-based payments
occur at scale, a potential carbonization of forest
governance remains a possibility. This implies an
emerging paradox for REDD+, where the failure to
meet carbon-related financial expectations has cre-
ated optimism about (at least) the delivery of co-ben-
efits, yet where attempts to meet such financial
expectations, for example, by establishing a global
REDD+ financial mechanism, may risk existing
achievements with respect to co-benefits.
The third, newest conceptualization of
landscape-centered REDD+ also needs to be consid-
ered in this light, since it requires REDD+ to take
into account an even wider variety of carbon and
non-carbon benefits, land-uses and actors. There is
recognition of the importance of going beyond car-
bon and beyond forests even in the (more technical)
REDD+ literature that addresses carbon accounting
and MRV challenges. However, such acknowledg-
ment is routinely tempered by arguments that high-
light existing financial and data hurdles to making
even a carbon-centered REDD+ work.
8,49
While a
REDD+ that goes well beyond generating carbon
benefits is likely to be seen as more legitimate by a
broader group of actors, the potential for such a con-
ceptualization of REDD+ to be operational and
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effective remains rather limited, given the current
focus on carbon in finance and monitoring.
126
As
such, a carbon-centered REDD+ may increase the
likelihood of effectively resolving data and financial
issues, but not without risking delivery of co-benefits.
In light of this, with regard to the potential for
REDD+ to become a catalyst for sustainable land-
scapes and more ‘climate-smart development,’our
review highlights that such conceptualizations can
only further exacerbate the REDD+ paradox.
This suggests that, rather than asking whether
and how REDD+ can overcome implementation chal-
lenges associated with ever-broader conceptualizations,
the more pertinent question becomes whether broader
conceptualizations are desirable in the first place, and
at what cost. Addressing this requires viewing the dif-
ferent concerns associated with REDD+ as more than
just implementation challenges, but rather as a politi-
cally contested question of what REDD+ should be.
In considering what REDD+ should be, and its
future evolution, our assessment suggests that a prag-
matic and heterogeneous approach to conceptualiz-
ing and implementing REDD+ is likely to prevail.
REDD+ interventions will (continue to) use forest
carbon accounting data as the basis for financial
rewards, while proactively incorporating co-benefits
as safeguards and as conditions for payments. Such a
pragmatic approach does not place carbon and non-
carbon benefits on equal footing from a global
REDD+ policy, MRV or financing perspective and it
maintains distinctions between forests and the wider
landscapes in which they are situated.
In view of the diversity of REDD+ expectations
and experiences discussed in our review, the idea of
REDD+ serving as one coherent, integrated, top-down
global financial mechanism with one (set of ) objectives,
is unlikely to come to pass. Instead, REDD+ may well
remain a patchwork of different initiatives driven by
distinct conceptualizations and associated objectives,
with a focus on carbon, co-benefits or landscapes, as
relevant (aligned with the merits of a more polycentric
approach to governance).
127
This implies, nonetheless,
that the paradoxes, dilemmas and trade-offs across
diverse conceptualizations of REDD+ will remain.
However, as long as there remains scope for context-
specific variation and adaptation, including prioritiza-
tion of co-benefits, such a pragmatic, polycentric
approach may still enable REDD+ to make a distinctive
and important contribution to keeping forests and their
multi-functionality on the international agenda.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Aarti Gupta and Ingrid J. Visseren-Hamakers have been supported by the Interdisciplinary Research and Edu-
cation Fund of Wageningen University (INREF). Jessica de Koning has been supported by the Production Ecol-
ogy & Resource Conservation (PERC) graduate school and the strategic funds of the department of
Environmental Sciences of Wageningen University. Martin Herold has been supported by the Norwegian
Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the German International Climate Initiative (IKI)
through CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+, and the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees
and Agroforestry (CRP-FTA) with financial support from the CGIAR Fund.
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