Social safeguards and co-benefits in REDD+: a review of the adjacent possible

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We provide a synthesis of recent scholarship on social safeguards and co-benefits in REDD+ with a focus on debates on: first, tenure security, and second, effective participation of local communities. Scholars have explored both proximate and long-term co-benefits of REDD+ interventions, with an emerging trend that links safeguards to improved social co-benefits. Proximate co-benefits include improved rural livelihoods and lower costs of implementation. Long-term co-benefits include greater adaptive capacity of local communities and increasing transparency and accountability in forest governance. Our review suggests that greater tenure security and effective participation of local communities in management will not only prevent adverse social outcomes, but will also enable better forest outcomes and improved capacity for forest governance.

Highlights

► Tenure insecurity and lack of effective participation prevent social co-benefits. ► REDD+ policies based on direct payment require tenure security to be effective. ► Participation of local communities will reduce costs of REDD+ implementation. ► Participation of civil society organizations at all scales will promote democracy. ► Tenure security and effective participation will improve local adaptive capacity.

Introduction

The explosion of scholarship on the social dimensions of REDD+ over the last three years has been driven by a combination of renewed international efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation since the failure of the Copenhagen UNFCCC Conference of Parties in 2009, effective mobilization by transnational activist networks to bring pressure to bear upon national and international institutions, and the rising threat to forests at the intersection of a global convergence of markets for land, energy, food, and fiber.

After the disappointment of Copenhagen, progress on REDD+ received a much-needed boost following crucial decisions taken during the 16th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC in December 2010, collectively known as the Cancun Agreements. At the meeting, the assembly agreed to a set of five activities that ‘contribute to mitigation actions in the forest sector’ subject to respective capabilities and national circumstances. At the same time, the Cancun agreements included clearly specified safeguards to prevent adverse social consequences, requesting developing country parties to address ‘the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, land tenure issues, forest governance issues, [and] gender considerations’ in developing and implementing national strategies and action plans. In particular, in Appendix I to Decision 1, the Cancun Agreements also laid down that mitigation actions in the forest sector must promote or support ‘[R]espect for the knowledge and rights of indigenous peoples and members of local communities’ and ensure ‘[T]he full and effective participation of relevant stakeholders, in particular indigenous peoples and local communities’ in such activities, although tenure rights and/or security was not specifically listed in Appendix 1. One year later, during the 17th Conference of Parties held in Durban, the assembly further decided to set up a system for developing country parties to provide a ‘summary of information on how all of the safeguards referred to in decision 1/CP.16, appendix I, are being addressed and respected throughout the implementation of the activities’ and asked the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice to submit a proposal for implementing this mechanism at the 18th Conference of Parties in 2012. The set of decisions in Durban, however, was broadly condemned by safeguard advocates, as it failed to develop performance indicators and left the national application of safeguards discretionary rather than mandatory.

At least on paper, these safeguards are a direct response to an outpouring of critique and protest from civil society organizations representing indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities in developing countries over the last several years. These critiques have mainly played on the potential and real adverse social consequences resulting from the ‘paradox’ of REDD+ [1]: that the infusion of financial value in forests is likely to encourage the dispossession of politically and economically marginal forest-dependent communities. Land grabbing is the primary concern if forest-based peoples do not have clear and secure property rights, if governance institutions are corrupt, and if law enforcement is weak. Even if land rights are ‘secure’, however, local people may be tempted or pressured to sell their land; local leaders may sell their community's carbon rights without understanding the consequences or sharing the benefits; and local people may be forced to give up livelihood activities without informed consent or compensation. This points to the importance of a wider suite of local governance and institutional issues beyond tenure that will shape the interaction between local communities, forests, and prospective financial flows generated by REDD+ [2]. Ultimately, effective REDD+ policies will depend on nested institutional arrangements that connect local, national, and global scales, and which create effective mechanisms for local communities to influence policy decisions at these higher scales [3].

Moving beyond a narrow imagination of co-benefits in material terms, recent scholarship has made great strides in conceptualizing safeguards and co-benefits as mutually constituted, with serious implications for the design of REDD+ activities [4, 5, 6]. Moving away from a negative perspective on safeguards as safety mechanisms to prevent adverse outcomes at the local level, new scholarship has stressed the power of safeguards in amplifying the comparative strengths of local communities that could be brought to bear upon the success of REDD+ in sequestering carbon while providing broader social co-benefits [7••, 8, 9]. Drawing on the experience of REDD+ pilot initiatives [10], integrated conservation and development projects [11], natural resource decentralization reforms [6], payments for ecosystem services programs [12], and community-based conservation policies [13••], scholars have demonstrated that the failure of local communities in securing access to benefits can be attributed in large measure to two factors: first, lack of tenure security, and second, inadequate avenues for local participation in designing and implementing interventions, shaping policies, and making and enforcing rules governing natural resources. These two aspects are the focus of current debates around social safeguards, and scholars, policy makers, and activists have argued that ensuring each of these safeguards are addressed will facilitate both proximate and long-term social co-benefits from REDD+, as well as enabling REDD+ to achieve its environmental and climate objectives. The social safeguards instituted in REDD+ thus would not only prevent negative outcomes but also enable positive outcomes. The proximate benefits include improved contributions of local forests to rural livelihoods as a result of secure tenure, as well as lower costs of implementation (and therefore, climate change mitigation) attendant from higher participation of local communities in forest protection and management [14]. The long-term benefits include improved adaptive capacity of local communities in dealing with climate variability and change as well as other stressors, and higher transparency and accountability resulting from greater involvement of civil society organizations and the development of translocal and transnational networks to influence forest governance. This article reviews the proximate and long-term social co-benefits accruing from the twin safeguards of tenure security and effective participation respectively (Table 1).

Section snippets

Tenure security

Much of the literature on tenure or social safeguards has focused on protecting the rights of forest-based peoples, particularly on the risks to local people if secure tenure over land and forests is not in place before REDD+ interventions [15, 16, 17, 18] or if REDD+ results in new restrictions on local people's forest and natural resource use and access [4, 9, 19]. Drawing on the growing body of scholarship linking local forest tenure and governance with sustainable forest management

Participation

Slowing deforestation in developing countries is seen as a cost-effective measure for mitigation of climate change through reduction of terrestrial carbon emissions [22, 40]. Recent scholarship has added to this economic raison d’être of REDD+ by pointing to the enormous savings possible through the recruitment of local communities as active participants in implementation. While multiple levels of governance are essential features of a future REDD+ governance regime, it is first necessary to

Conclusion

The renewed emphasis on social safeguards in debates around REDD+ can be attributed to the successful mobilization of indigenous and forest dwelling people around the world, facilitated by a transnational network of activists and civil society organizations. Initially, the focus of arguments around safeguards was on preventing or minimizing adverse social consequences for forest-dependent populations, which are also often the poorest and most vulnerable communities. Both the foci under

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

  • • of special interest

  • •• of outstanding interest

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