Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
(REDD+)
The costs and benefits of neoliberal forest-carbon conservation
Andreas Scheba
PhD student
Institute for Development Policy & Management
University of Manchester, UK
Abstract
Extensive deforestation and degradation of tropical forests rank among the most
significant global environmental concerns of the 21st century, representing a major
social, political, economic and environmental challenge. Tropical forests provide
multiple benefits at all spatial levels, and one of them, i.e. to sequester carbon from
the atmosphere, is currently under intense examination by global climate politics. A
new global approach, called reducing emissions from deforestation and forest
degradation, and enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD+), is based on the
neoliberal payments for ecosystem services concept and promises to cheaply and
quickly reduce global forestry-related emissions with potential biodiversity and
development benefits. Scholars have conceptualised REDD+ as a project of
environmental governance. In this paper, I build on this knowledge but add to the
debate by framing REDD+ as a project of neoliberalization of nature, which is a
particular form of environmental governance that has increasingly penetrated the
non-human world in the past 30 years. By showing how REDD+ relates to the
general processes of neoliberal environmental governance, I point at the reasons of
its emergence as well as at some of its potential outcomes that we may expect.
Instead of a win-win approach, as it is promoted by its advocates, this study suggests
that there might be several trade-offs between and within social and environmental
objectives.
II
1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1
2. REDD+ as neoliberal environmental governance ................................................ 4
2.1. A project of environmental governance ......................................................... 4
2.2. Neoliberal environmental governance ........................................................... 5
2.3. REDD+ as a form of neoliberal environmental governance ........................... 8
2.3.1. Growth, efficiency, development, democracy, sustainability ................... 8
2.4. Marketizing forest-carbon and other ecosystem services .............................. 9
2.5. Privatizing and propertizing forest-carbon ................................................... 11
2.6. De-/reregulation ........................................................................................... 12
2.7. Civil-society participation ............................................................................. 13
2.8. Cultivate neoliberal producer identities ........................................................ 14
3. Potential social and environmental outcomes .................................................... 15
3.1. Social outcomes .......................................................................................... 15
3.2. Environmental outcomes ............................................................................. 17
3.3. Contradictions and contestations ................................................................ 17
4. Conclusion: Trade-offs rather than win-win ........................................................ 19
III
1. INTRODUCTION
Tropical forests provide multiple benefits for socio-ecological systems at all levels.
They are important for millions of people in developing countries and their immediate
environments, providing them with food, feed, fuel, medicines, and places for cultural
and spiritual activities. They provide critical ecological benefits such as watershed
and soil protection, local climate regulation and host rich biodiversity. Tropical forests
are also critical for the global climate as they sequester carbon from the atmosphere
and therefore mitigate climate change (MEA, 2005).
With the evolution of human itself, anthropogenic transformation of tropical forests
has occurred ever since. However, the rate at which humankind has converted
forests to other land uses increased drastically with the shift from hunter/gatherers to
fixed field farming and even more in the era of industrial capitalism (Metz, 2009). A
growing population exerting rising per capita consumption under a system that is
based on infinite growth has placed ever-increasing demands on the Earth’s
ecosystems leading to a decisive enlargement of agricultural land, often at a
decrease of the world’s forests. This rapid destruction of tropical forests has, like the
destruction of our planet in general, dramatically accelerated in the past 50 years to
an extent never experienced before in human history (MEA, 2005). Scientists
estimated that in the 1990s an average amount of 16 million hectares of forests were
lost worldwide each year. In the last ten years, the estimated annual loss decreased
to an average of 13 million hectares. This is still an area the size of England.
Regional conservation efforts and large-scale rollouts of forest plantations, especially
in China, contributed to the reduction of global net forest loss over the last ten years
compared to the 1990s. However, the observed rates of deforestation and forest
degradation remain frighteningly high in many tropical countries. While one must be
cautious with figures, scientists state that forest loss in the last decade was highest in
South America with a recorded loss of around 4 million hectares per year with Africa
on the second place losing around 3.4 million hectares of forests per year (FAO,
2010).
Sometimes ‘an exploding human population’ in the ‘underdeveloped’ tropics
struggling to meet their food demands is mentioned as the obvious driver of forest
1
loss and degradation. This vulgar explanation misses, of course, the broader range
of processes and relations that underpin modern forest destruction. In fact, recent
studies show that increases in rural populations generally do not correlate with
increased forest loss (DeFries et al., 2010). In fact, the causes of deforestation and
forest degradation are often complex and encompass a variety of direct and
underlying drivers at different spatiotemporal scales (Geist and Lambin, 2001).
However, urban growth and export of agricultural products mainly drive forest loss in
most tropical countries (DeFries et al., 2010). While in Africa small-scale agriculture
has continued to play a significant role, national economic development projects in
the form of logging and large-scale commercial agriculture targeted at meeting urban
based and international demands for food, feed and biofuels drive deforestation and
forest degradation in South America and several Asian countries (DeFries et al.,
2010; FAO, 2010). While analysts would commonly refer to economic, policy, market
and governance failures as the contributing factors to this ecological degradation, the
elephant in the room is undoubtedly global capitalism and its insatiable demand for
growth in consumption. The notion that wealthy countries have overcome forest
degradation due to modernised economic development obviously disguises their
ability to import forest and agricultural products while simply exporting the
environmental damage do developing countries (Jorgenson, 2010, Mansfield et al.,
2010).
Despite decades-long awareness of the enormous loss of tropical forests, vested
interests in the continuous accumulation of capital have made global attempts to
resolve the crisis ineffective. Instead, neoliberal reforms that increased private
sector-led extraction of vast profits at the costs of local communities living adjacent to
forests only contributed to the problem in many regions (Humphreys, 2006). While
powerful actors have appropriated large amounts of capital from the destruction of
forests, only little has remained in the hands of local people (Humphreys, 2006,
Larson and Ribot, 2007).
When Sir Stern’s famous report on the economics of climate change highlighted for
the first time their connection to climate change mitigation options, governments
suddenly became increasingly concerned about the matter and vocal in their pursuit
to sustainable forest management in the tropics (Karsenty, 2008). Studies referring to
2
Houghton (2005) and his estimates suggesting that 20% of annual global GHG
emissions could be caused by deforestation and forest degradation influenced global
policy makers as it pointed to the fact that tropical forests have turned from carbon
sinks into significant sources of emissions, and therefore also significant reduction
opportunities. The Stern (2006) report and its suggestion that reducing these kinds of
emissions is one of the cheapest and quickest mitigation options available, put
tropical forests finally on the top of the global agenda and quickly into negotiations
within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
It is within this context that reducing emissions from deforestation and forest
degradation, and conserving and enhancing forest carbon stocks and sustainably
managing forests (REDD+) has emerged as the contemporary proposed approach to
halt tropical forest loss and degradation (Corbera et al., 2010). While the issues
around emissions caused by forest loss and degradation have been excluded in the
Kyoto Protocol due to their complexity and uncertainties (Kanninen et al., 2007), a
joint submission by Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, supported by the Coalition
of Rainforest Countries, in 2005 initiated the process of incorporating this emissions
source in future agreements. Since then, the Bali Action Plan, the 2009 Copenhagen
climate summit and the latest Conference of the Parties in Cancun, Mexico, have all
embraced REDD+ as a key strategy to reduce global GHG emissions from tropical
forest loss and degradation, which are in the range of 12-17 % according to latest
estimates (van der Werf et al., 2009).
While negotiations about the mechanism continue, private companies, state
agencies, multilateral organisations, non-governmental organisations and local
community members have initiated more than 100 REDD+ pilot projects and the
number is increasing steadily (Cerbu et al., 2009, Hamilton et al., 2010). Some of
these projects have already generated carbon credits that are being sold on the
market. However, since carbon credits from REDD+ projects are not eligible in the
current compliance carbon market, they have been traded in the voluntary carbon
market (Hamilton et al., 2010). Besides this, a number of capacity-building activities
that are mainly financed by the UN-REDD programme and the World Bank’s Forest
Carbon Partnership have been launched to support and speed-up the process of
making REDD+ a reality in different countries (Thompson et al., 2011).
3
2. REDD+ AS NEOLIBERAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE
2.1. A project of environmental governance
So what is REDD+ exactly? Angelsen et al. (2009:2) define REDD+ as “an umbrella
term for local, national and global actions that reduce emissions from deforestation
and forest degradation, and enhance forest carbon stocks in developing countries”.
These actions are principally based on the valuing and trading of the carbon stored in
the forests. By enabling forest owners in developing countries to trade forest-carbon,
REDD+ proposes to make trees worth more standing than cut-down and therefore
halts their destruction. While REDD+ is focussed on the carbon stored in trees,
proponents argue that is has the potential to deliver co-benefits related to livelihoods
and biodiversity (Harvey et al., 2010).
Scholars conducting research on REDD+ commonly address issues of the scale and
scope of the mechanism, the monitoring, reporting and verification of carbon, the
source of financing, benefit-sharing agreements and governance arrangements
within the framework at the local, national and global level (Angelsen et al., 2009).
These are questions of government within REDD+ as they look at the “structures
through which decisions are made and resources are managed” (Thompson et al.,
2011:102). In a recent article, Thompson et al., (2011) successfully step back from
this level of enquiry, which, while important in its own rights, does not question the
broader processes and factors determining the parameters of REDD+. They argue
that the questions outlined in the beginning of this paragraph are questions framed
by REDD+ as a particular form of governance, which they understand as “a means of
aligning a diverse set of stakeholders around agree-upon objects to be governed,
tools of governance, and forms of environmental, economic and social knowledge”
(Thompson et al., 2011:102). In this sense REDD+ as a form of governance shapes
how the problem of tropical deforestation and degradation is framed as well as the
possible solutions. In their article, the authors then focus on three questions: What is
being governed, who is governing and how is that governance taking place?
Thompson et al., (2011) describe how REDD+ derives its legitimacy to govern over a
number of different actors and stakeholders and transform a number of objects
including land cover, livelihoods activities, ecosystem services and governance
4
capacities in a variety of different settings by linking itself to the broader concern for
global wellbeing in the sense of mitigating global climate change. Furthermore, they
argue that REDD+ “oversimplifies the causality of deforestation and forest
degradation” (Thompson et al., 2011:103) by disproportionally blaming local
communities for forest damage while downplaying the role of other stakeholders or
historically produced structures that have been a major factor in contributing to forest
loss and degradation. In answering the other questions, they show how REDD+
government structures decide upon the forms of environmental, social and economic
knowledge that is being accepted as legitimate. Finally, REDD+ structures
considerably influence the level and form of participation of different stakeholders,
whereby it is noticed that full alignment of all stakeholders has not taken place,
which, if not addressed, will result in the mechanism being another example of
development and conservation projects marginalising already vulnerable people
(Thompson et al., 2011).
While their framing of REDD+ as an environmental governance project has been a
refreshing reading and an important contribution to the debate, I would argue that the
authors have not addressed one very important question: why has REDD+ come into
place. Moreover, they have also not addressed some important processes that are
driving the REDD+ governance project. In the following sections, I therefore want to
add to their initial accomplishment by framing the actions under REDD+ as a
neoliberal environmental governance project. In doing so, I want to provide a better
understanding of why REDD+ has come into place, as well as of its most dominant
processes and some of its likely outcomes to socio-ecological systems.
2.2. Neoliberal environmental governance
Before going into details of neoliberal environmental governance, it seems pertinent
to me to first clarify what ‘neoliberalism’, of which this form of environmental
governance obviously is part, actually means. This clarification will not be a definite
one since neoliberalism is a debated term that has different meanings and
applications to many. However, according to Castree (2010), neoliberalism can be
thought of in terms of ‘three p’s’: philosophy, program and practice.
5
Neoliberalism as a philosophy embraces the maximisation of the “independence of
both real and institutional-juridical individuals”, money-mediated markets, where price
signals and competition lead to the most efficient coordination of resources among
diverse needs, and the freedom of expression and electoral democracy as political
and civil liberties. Neoliberalism as a policy program, which notably is necessarily a
state-led project, typically includes one or several of the following seven dimensions
along which society-wide changes shall be pursuit: privatization, marketization, state
roll-back or deregulation, market-friendly reregulation, use of market proxies in the
residual state sector, strong encouragement of ‘flanking mechanisms’ in civil society
and creation of ‘free’, ‘self-sufficient’ and self-governing individuals and communities.
As a practice, neoliberalism has been translated into a variety of measures
influenced by path dependency, contingent couples, unplanned adaptations, organic
mutations, and resistance. Because of this hybrid character of “actually existing”
neoliberal policy measures, neoliberalism can best be conceptualised as “a set of
interconnected local, regional, and national neoliberalizations” rather than a singular
‘thing’ (Castree, 2010).
Opposed to a commonly held belief, neoliberalism is therefore not a homogeneous
thing that uniformly transforms the globe. Rather it is a spatiotemporally variable
process comprised of multiple yet interconnected neoliberalizations in the plural that
are organised at different spatial scales (Castree, 2010). The geographical
constitution of neoliberalism and its geographically distinct outcomes (Mansfield,
2004) are very diverse and related to path dependency, heterogeneity and
divergence that take on a variety of particularities in each specific context. Scholars
therefore speak of “actually existing neoliberalism” (Brenner and Theodore, 2002,
Castree, 2008a). In studying “actually existing neoliberalism”, analysts have called for
identifying the commonly shared systemic features (e.g. privatisation, marketisation,
de- and reregulation) as well as the local particularities of the process including its
varied institutional forms, diverse socio-political effects and multiple contradictions
(Bakker, 2010, Castree, 2010).
Neoliberal environmental governance can then be regarded to form part of this wider
neoliberal ideology, which is seen to be the latest ‘shell of capitalism’ (Castree, 2008)
that has considerably influenced and transformed the social, cultural and political
6
spheres of life in the last 30 years. A variety of sectors once seen as ‘noncommercial’ have been transformed and incorporated into market logics and
neoliberal institutional dynamics. The non-human world represents a key one among
those sectors (Castree, 2008b, Liverman and Vilas, 2006).
A growing number of scholars have argued that over the last decades neoliberal
ideas have increasingly penetrated the ‘environment’ or the ‘nonhuman’ world (i.e.
socially mediated things, materials and dynamics), from carbon trading to fisheries to
forests and so on (Castree, 2008b, Liverman and Vilas, 2006, Bakker, 2010, Heynen
et al., 2007). These scholars have examined transformations altering socio-natures,
and have commonly referred to this phenomenon as neoliberal environmental
governance or neoliberalization of nature. At its very core the neoliberalization of
nature can be seen as a contemporary social, cultural, political, environmental and
economic strategy consisting of ‘ecological fixes’ to mediate the inherent
contradictions between capitalism and nature while fostering economic growth.
Furthermore, scholars critical of the neoliberalization of nature understand
environmental governance “not as the ‘governance of nature’ but as ‘governance
through nature’ – that is, as the reflection and projection of economic and political
power via decisions about the design, manipulation and control of socio-natural
processes” (Bridge and Perreault, 2009:492, emphasis original). Neoliberal
environmental governance is then a project “about both the social organisation of
decision making with respect to environment, and the production of social order via
the administration of nature” (Bridge and Perreault, 2009:477, emphasis original).
In the next sections I will argue that REDD+ should be seen and analysed as a
project of neoliberal environmental governance. I will aim to legitimize my claims by
showing how the general dimensions of neoliberal environmental governance as
identified by Castree (2010) serve as useful lines of enquiry into the actions under
REDD+.
7
2.3. REDD+ as a form of neoliberal environmental governance
2.3.1. Growth, efficiency, development, democracy, sustainability
Advocates of neoliberal environmental governance promote the increasing
penetration of neoliberal ideas into the environment by arguing that this will bring
general benefits to the global well-being in the form of economic growth, economic
efficiency, economic and social development for disadvantaged communities,
democracy and environmental sustainability (Castree, 2010:16).
Proponents of REDD+ have advocated the mechanism as a cost-effective way to
reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, because no new technologies are required
except maybe for the monitoring of forest-carbon changes (Stern, 2006; Corbera et
al., 2010). REDD+ contributes to the continuation of economic growth in developed
countries, as it is very likely to allow them, if not immediately then in the longer term,
to meet their emission reduction targets more cost-effectively by offsetting domestic
reductions with reductions made in the South (Clements, 2010, Wertz-Kanounnikoff
and Angelsen, 2009). Alongside the cost-efficient reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions, environmental sustainability and the economic and social development for
local communities in tropical countries in the form of livelihood and biodiversity
benefits are other important arguments that are often proclaimed by its proponents
(Hirsch et al., 2010, Clements, 2010, Harvey et al., 2010).
Incentives to protect tropical forests are presumed to have the additional
benefit of leading to protection of ecosystems and species. Furthermore, the
compensation of people, groups, or countries for their efforts to reduce
deforestation and forest conversion is a potential stimulus for economic
development at local and national levels (Hirsch et al., 2010:3).
It is predicted that financial flows for greenhouse gas emission reductions from
REDD+ could reach up to US$30 billion a year. This significant North-South
flow of funds could reward a meaningful reduction of carbon emissions and
could also support new, pro-poor development, help conserve biodiversity and
secure vital ecosystem services (UN-REDD, 2009b).
Finally, proponents of REDD+ argue that the mechanism may also contribute
8
to better governance in developing countries and promote democracy:
REDD+ can also lead to direct social benefits, such as jobs, livelihoods, land
tenure clarification, carbon payments, enhanced participation in decisionmaking and improved governance (UN-REDD, 2009a).
REDD+ is therefore promoted as a win-win strategy, a means to meet several
objectives
concurrently
including
growth,
efficiency,
social
and
economic
development in disadvantaged communities, environmental sustainability and
democracy. How proponents see and promote REDD+ gives us already a good
understanding of the mechanism as a form of neoliberal environmental governance
(Castree, 2010). However, Castree (2010) identified seven neoliberalization
processes that often form part of neoliberal environmental governance projects.
Important to note is that by no means all of these dimensions have to be present in
order for us to speak about the neoliberalization of nature. Nevertheless, in the next
section I will show how REDD+ seems to encompass a number of these dimensions,
which makes me believe that we can think of it as a project of neoliberal
environmental governance.
2.4. Marketizing forest-carbon and other ecosystem services
Neoliberal environmental governance includes the marketization of nature. This
means that natural asses should ‘generate a stream of revenue’ for its legal owners
(Castree, 2010). The idea that the conservation of ecosystem services, such as
carbon sequestration, can be achieved by selling them has long been promoted and
is known as payments for ecosystem services, of which REDD+ forms part (McAfee,
1999, Ferraro and Kiss, 2003).
The economic recognition of ecological functions as valuable and scarce
services for human well-being has led to efforts to tangibly valorize these
services through payments for ecosystem services (PES). The core idea
consists in beneficiaries of ecosystem services making direct contractual quid
pro quo payments to local land managers in return for adopting land and
resource uses that secure ecosystem conservation and restoration (Wunder,
2007 in Wunder and Wertz-Kanounnikoff, 2009).
9
The basic idea behind REDD+ as a form of payments for ecosystem services
suggests that forest owners often receive few economic benefits from sustainable
land uses. In fact, the benefits received to maintain forests are frequently less than
the benefits they would receive from alternative (unsustainable) land uses such as
conversion to cropland or pasture. But the switch to unsustainable land uses would
halt, or at least reduce, the provision of carbon sequestration and other ecosystem
services; hence negatively affect the population (service users) benefitting from
them. Therefore, in order to avoid the shift from sustainable to unsustainable land
uses, payments by the service users shall make the sustainable option more
attractive and valuable to the ecosystem manager, thus inducing them to adopt it
(Kanninen et al., 2007).
A core idea behind underlying REDD+ is to make performance-based
payments, that is, to pay forest owners and users to reduce emissions and
increase removals. Such payments for environmental (or ecosystem) services
(PES) has its merits: it provides strong incentives directly to forest owners and
users to manage forests better and clear less forestland. PES will fully
compensate carbon rights holders that find forest conservation more lucrative
than the alternatives. They simply sell forest carbon credits and less cattle,
coffee, cocoa or charcoal (Angelsen et al., 2009:xii).
Under the REDD+ governance project, carbon credits will be produced by avoiding
emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and by promoting sustainable
forest management or conservation. In this way, forest-carbon is decontextualized
ecologically and disembedded socially, via processes of commodification (Castree,
2003), and treated as an independent and external source of value subject to
monetization and sale (Corbera and Brown, 2010). How the production of the
REDD+ carbon credits shall take place (scale and scope of the mechanism, the
methodologies and technologies used for monitoring, verifying and reporting the
carbon), and how the benefits from the sales of REDD+ carbon credits will be
distributed are major concerns among scholars and key elements in the
contemporary literature on REDD+ (Seymour and Forwand, 2010, Angelsen et al.,
2009).
10
2.5. Privatizing and propertizing forest-carbon
Another dimension of neoliberal environmental governance is the assignment of
ownership in, or use of, nature (Castree, 2010). Castree (2010:18) identifies three
ways this can happen: when state bodies ‘loan’ their sovereign rights, where an
established rights regime outside the real of the state is fundamentally altered by
policy-makers, and where no recognised rights regime currently exists.
The question of ownership of forests and/or forest-carbon is one of the most
significant that policy makers and project proponents need to address to make
REDD+ work (Lyster, 2011, Angelsen et al., 2009). Tropical forests tend to be in
remote areas where legal and customary ownership as well as usufruct rights are not
clearly defined, accepted, enforced or even in conflict with each other and therefore
disputed (Ebeling and Yasue, 2008, Kanninen et al., 2007, Peskett and Brockhaus,
2009).
Among the broad, cross-sectoral policies, forest and land tenure stands out as
a key issue in both global and national REDD+ debates. Tenure in forests is
often unclear and subject to dispute, and this will often constrain the 3E+
outcomes of REDD+ policies. In spite of attention paid to the problem of
insecure tenure to date, little progress has been made toward clarifying tenure
arrangements. This is essential for the long-term success of REDD+ and to
exploit the full range of policy instruments. Tenure reforms take time and can
be politically controversial (Angelsen et al., 2009:xv).
In order to work, REDD+ necessarily has to address issues of ownership of forestcarbon. As a neoliberal environmental governance project it therefore sets out to
reform property rights regimes in participating countries. Questions around social and
environmental safeguards are particularly pressing in this regard. Especially the role
of indigenous people and how they are recognised as owners and managers of the
forest, and its carbon, occupies scholars and policy makers from Brazil to Indonesia
and in between (Angelsen et al., 2009; Lyster, 2011).
11
2.6. De-/reregulation
Through considerable state efforts, neoliberal environmental governance projects
involve the deregulation and reregulation of environmental domains. New markets
are often established or existing markets are altered. State-led government
institutions are typically transformed into more dispersed forms of governance
arrangements that include a number of different private and public actors (Castree,
2010).
REDD+ is a governance process with multiple actors, interests and activities,
involving several sources of formal and informal power and authority (UN
bodies, multilateral organisations, governments, but also community and
indigenous organisations), which all influence each other and may or may not
coincide in their interests and vision regarding how such strategy of forest and
climate governance should actually look like in the near future. REDD+
exemplifies how a scientifically informed policy idea […] permeates through
multiple spheres of decision-making and organisation, creates contested
interests and claims, and translates into multiple implementation actions
running ahead of policy processes and state-driven decisions (Corbera and
Schroeder, 2011:90).
Proponents of REDD+ have repeatedly pointed out that REDD+ projects must be
embedded in good governance structures that ensure credibility, reliability,
transparency and participatory decision-making processes (Ebeling and Yasue,
2008, Kanninen et al., 2007). Reforming the forestry sector in tropical countries by
devolving power to local governance institutions has therefore been supported by a
number of studies as it is seen to be the best way to use and manage forests
sustainably and equitably (Sandbrook et al., 2010). According to a recent study by
(Chhatre and Agrawal, 2009) that analysed carbon storage and livelihoods benefits
of forests governance regimes across 80 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America,
“transfer of ownership over larger forest commons patches to local communities,
coupled with payments for improved carbon storage can contribute to climate change
mitigation without adversely affecting local livelihoods”.
12
REDD+ readiness activities therefore aim to promote regulatory and institutional
reforms in REDD+ countries. Most of the tropical forests are government owned but
managed as common property for multiple uses or effectively governed by logging
companies through timber concessions (Agrawal et al., 2008). In the context of
ongoing decentralization of forest management and the substantial role of logging
companies (Agrawal et al., 2008), there is a call for the inter-sectoral collaboration
and coordination of various stakeholders since forest management is not just an
environmental issue but strongly affected by sectors such as agriculture, mining and
infrastructure development (Angelsen et al., 2009; Clements, 2010; Corbera et al.,
2010; Seymour and Forwand, 2010).
Channelling funds and power to local communities who should operate as the
providers and sellers of REDD+ carbon credits sounds promising to many (Hayes
and Persha, 2010, Chhatre and Agrawal, 2009) but it has also been questioned.
Decentralization and devolution of power could fail to conserve forests in extensive
agricultural frontiers where REDD+ really matters, says Wunder (2010). Therefore,
analysts seem to agree that a middle ground between central state and local
communities need to be found. Macro-policy reforms targeted at avoiding forest
degradation and loss are required but equal attention to strong local forest
management institutions must be given if REDD+ is to succeed (Agrawal et al.,
2010).
2.7. Civil-society participation
Neoliberal environmental governance strongly encourages the participation of civil
society organisations that may operate either outside or within the market to fill a
potential vacuum that is created by insufficient state regulation (Castree, 2010).
Because REDD+ is an evolving governance project and currently not yet integrated
into the compliance emissions reduction agreements, we can observe the significant
role of civil-society organisations in implementing REDD+ pilot projects in different
locations. As climate negotiations around REDD+ continue, non-governmental
organisations and local community members have initiated a number of REDD+ pilot
projects (Cerbu et al., 2011, Hamilton et al., 2010). A study by Cerbu et al. (2011)
recorded an inventory of all REDD+ demonstration and national readiness activities
13
that have been in operation by October 2009. They counted a total of 282 actors that
were involved in REDD+ demonstration activities. From these 282 actors, civilsociety organisations made up 36% and the private sector 27.3%. According to their
study, among the organisations with the greatest involvement were well-known, big
environmental ngos such as the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International,
Fauna and Flora International, Nature Conservancy and the World Land Trust. Many
of these projects have started to generate carbon credits that are being sold on the
voluntary carbon market (Hamilton et al., 2010).
2.8. Cultivate neoliberal producer identities
In order for neoliberal markets to work, neoliberal discourse must succeed in
transforming owners and producers of natural resources to take on a neoliberal
ideology and to collaborate with other stakeholders, who might be potentially located
at different spatial scales. Besides consumers, regulators, intermediaries and other
stakeholders local producers need to embrace the neoliberal project, even if not
always willingly (Castree, 2010). “Consent, after all, must be constructed: it is never
suddenly or spontaneously achieved” (Castree, 2010:30).
With regard to REDD+ a wide variety of stakeholders that includes forest-dependent
and indigenous people, agriculturalists, small-scale farmers, timber companies and
ranch operators needs to be aligned to the governance project. The UN-REDD
programme and the World Bank through its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility aim to
take on a lead role in convening a broad range of stakeholders in a number of
different countries. Through REDD+ readiness activities the necessary ‘capacity’
shall be established. This involves among other activities the dissemination of certain
types of social, economic and environmental knowledge. Certain ways of framing the
problem and options to how to address it are promoted while simultaneously closing
off alternatives that are deemed to be unfeasible or illegitimate (Thompson et al.,
2011).
REDD+ as a governance project seems to encompass almost all dimensions of
neoliberal environmental governance as identified by Castree (2010). I therefore
argue, that REDD+ should be framed as a neoliberal environmental governance
project. In this sense, we should understand REDD+ as certain type of ‘fix’ to a socio14
environmental crisis. It has come about as a form of an environmental fix that does
not aim to address the fundamental structures and drivers of ecological degradation.
Instead, it aims to bring certain efforts required to overcome the crisis on the surface
into the logics of capital accumulation. We should now look at some previous
examples of this form of governance in order to predict what kinds of outcomes we
might expect from REDD+.
3. POTENTIAL SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL OUTCOMES
3.1. Social outcomes
What might be some of the outcomes REDD+ will bring us? REDD+ aims to solve
the crisis of deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics by bringing forestrycarbon into the constantly renewed capital circulation process in the form of
commodities (Kosoy and Corbera, 2010, Corbera and Brown, 2010). Treating
forestry-carbon as capital, which is value in process (Marx, 1976) is a way of
avoiding a systemic crisis (and conserving the current system) as it opens up new
spaces for profit making to states and companies while promoting ‘sustainable
development’ (Büscher et al., forthcoming). Conservation, in the past often
understood as the frontier to capital expansion, has under neoliberalism become
intensively about opening-up new spaces for surplus generation while positing the
preservation of ecosystems (Büscher et al., forthcoming, Brockington et al., 2008)
Proponents of REDD+ stimulate certain neoliberal discourses and actions to
convince conservationists and the wider public about the merits for nature and
society by fuelling economic growth.
Some argue that neoliberal environmental ideology transforms how humans perceive
and relate to nature by disciplining society-nature relations and people as consumers
of these relations. Kosoy and Corbera (2010) portray how Marx’s concept of
commodity fetishism may inform what payments for ecosystem services within the
realm of capitalist conservation could mean to us. They illustrate how the
commodification of ecosystem services involves three important stages: the framing
of ecological functions as a commodity subject to trade (separating it from the whole
ecosystem), the establishment and assigning of a standard unit of exchange for this
15
commodity and linking providers and users of this commodity in a market or marketlike exchange.
To commodify and value forests based on their carbon intake in purely monetary
terms, brings forth a number of contradictions related to the representativeness of its
natural materiality (Büscher, forthcoming) and ignores the existence of multiple
languages of valuation practised by different stakeholders located in multiple settings
(Kosoy and Corbera, 2010; Thompson et al., 2011). Moral, aesthetic and ethical
dimensions of nature are sidelined, which eventually undermines other logics of
conservation, such as environmental stewardship and collective obligations, and
could end up being counterproductive in the long-term if, for instance, payments
cease (Corbera et al., 2007, Swart, 2003). Vatn (2005, 2010) argues that the
incorporation of market logics into conservation could modify behavioural patterns
and motivations in a way that individualism and competitions is prioritised over
community and reciprocity values. REDD+ conceptually separates forest-carbon from
society only to reconnect it later by reductively constructing it and encompassing it
within the carbon economy (Corbera and Brown, 2010).
Vatn (2010) suggests that economic valuation processes and market schemes are
not ideologically neutral. In contrary, they are culturally constructed and act as value
articulating institutions. These processes can be used as vehicles to articulate certain
notions of property and ownership, rationalities and perceptions of nature. In contrast
to proponents who claim that payments are usually provided on the basis of ethical,
spiritual and aesthetic motivations (Ferraro and Kiss, 2003) critics argue that
institutional frameworks are used to serve capital accumulation (Vatn, 2010). They
use markets to imagine and legitimise existent social orders (Heynen et al., 2007)
According to Büscher and Dressler (forthcoming, emphasis original) these processes
can lead to a shift in emphasis from local constructions of nature by communities to
what it should mean for communities in terms of commodity resources. In the face of
increasing penetration of neoliberal markets into all facets of life, there often seems
to be no alternative but to subject, which, however, decreases the options available
for local communities to determine their own resource-based livelihoods.
16
From experience with other neoliberal environmental governance projects, we have
all reasons to fear that REDD+ will not result in win-win outcomes but instead in
unequal access to tropical forests, and that it might benefit the private sector
disproportionally while disadvantaging the poor and powerless (Castree, 2010;
Hirsch et al., 2010). Principles of social equity and justice have proven to be hardly
attainable in neoliberal conservation practices (Dressler et al., 2010). The danger
certainly exists that if REDD+ does not sufficiently address unequal power structures
and inequalities within communities, it could reinforce and intensify existing
unevenness (Corbera et al., 2007; Corbera et al., 2010; Kosoy and Corbera, 2010;
Sandbrook et al., 2010). Poor or otherwise marginalised people risk remaining on the
backside and poverty and inequality could increase within communities. Some early
experiences have already shown that REDD+ reinforced state and private sector
control as projects are top-down, limit stakeholder participation and alienate
indigenous people from the benefits, which are often captured by state agencies and
international conservation organisations (Griffiths, 2008, Melick, 2010).
3.2. Environmental outcomes
Neoliberal environmental policies of the past have had mixed environmental
outcomes. They have not just been negative, or truly positive. They have proven that
they are able to overcome ecological destruction of some form, however, only if
private property rights and market pricing principles are sufficiently met (Castree,
2010). Ineffective institutional and technical arrangements of REDD+ pose then
serious threats to sustainable forest conservation as real environmental solutions
could be jeopardized in the course of profit-making motives. This could be
manifested for instance in the (un)deliberate production of false carbon credits due to
wrong assumptions or measurements (Melick, 2010). Aside from this, treating forestcarbon as a commodity entails the risk of transforming it purely according to profitmaking motives, which could result in the use of bioengineering to create more
efficient ‘forests such as large-scale monoculture plantations of carbon-rich trees at
the expense of biodiversity.
3.3. Contradictions and contestations
When neoliberal environmental governance projects are implemented in practice,
they confront a number of contradictory and contentious forces. Scholars have
17
highlighted the various forms neoliberal environmental policy takes on in practice
depending on the specificities of nature and the spatiotemporal context. They have
argued that it commonly confronts, a Polanyian ‘double movement’, which is the
resistance from significant sections of society (Castree, 2008).
The on-site outcome of REDD+ in a particular country is therefore shaped by
different material and ideological forces from parts of society trying to intervene in the
design and implementation process. The diverse societal groups usually have
different understandings of the policy and agendas motivating their interventions.
Their individual objectives may often well be in conflict with each other (McAfee and
Shapiro, 2010). Out of the diverse viewpoints and contestations, opportunities for
recalibration and –modification of the processes emerge and PES schemes will take
on very site-specific forms. National state agencies, local landowners, rural
communities and social movements are able to counter initial designs and discourses
and substantially modify the final structure of a national PES program (Bakker, 2010;
McAfee and Shapiro, 2010).
Aside from social forces, the commodification of ecosystem services confronts
considerable forces arising from the materiality of nature. For REDD+ to work
forestry-carbon needs do be decontextualized ecologically and treated as an
independent unit, an external source of value subject to measuring, monetization and
sale (Corbera and Brown, 2010). This, however, represents an immense difficult
task, which takes on a central place in technical debates by REDD+ advocates. For a
stable market in REDD+ to operate, it requires a credible scientific methodology to
measure the value of the commodity and make it commensurable with others of its
kind. Due to the immense complexity of forest ecosystems, the processes of
commodification and itemisation are very problematic as they aim to simplify and split
ecosystems into independent, bounded units. Resistance in this regard stems from
the materiality of ecosystems that do not allow to be easily split up into independent
units for trade (Kosoy and Corbera, 2010).
18
4. CONCLUSION: TRADE-OFFS RATHER THAN WIN-WIN
I began my paper by outlining tropical deforestation and forest degradation as a
socio-environmental crisis that has dramatically intensified over the past 50 years as
a consequence of production and consumption patterns of global capitalism. I then
presented the context in which REDD+ has emerged as today’s most significant
approach to halt tropical deforestation and forest degradation. After Stern’s famous
report on the economics of climate change framed these processes as a means to
quickly and cheaply reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, policy makers around
the world put this socio-environmental crisis on the top of the global agenda.
In the second section of this paper, I drew on a recent paper by Thompson et al.
(2011), which successfully framed REDD+ as a project of environmental governance.
The authors highlight that REDD+ as a form of environmental governance
determines how the problem of tropical deforestation and degradation and possible
solutions are framed, while alternative options are being neglected. Building on this, I
proposed to regard REDD+ as neoliberal environmental governance, which is a
particular form of environmental governance that has increasingly penetrated the
non-human world over the past 30 years. Drawing on recent work by Castree (2010)
I aimed to show how REDD+ seems to relate to a number of general dimensions of
neoliberal environmental governance, which led me to point at some of the potential
outcomes we might expect from this project.
From the findings of this study, I believe we need to regard REDD+ as an
environmental fix that is part of a larger project called neoliberalization of nature.
REDD+ does not aim to address the fundamental drivers causing tropical
deforestation and degradation; instead it aims to solve this socio-environmental crisis
by bringing conservation efforts into the logics of capital accumulation, therefore
opening-up new spaces for profit generation. Experiences from similar projects point
at the potential uneven outcomes, the risks of alienating and marginalizing people
due to power imbalances and economic premises that do not go well with principles
of social justice and equity. While REDD+ proponents promote the mechanism as a
win-win strategy with numerous positive social and environmental outcomes, my
study proposes that there are likely to be trade-offs within and between
19
environmental and social objectives instead. These are, however, only theoretical
conclusions that might point at important avenues for future empirical research. Only
rigorous and sophisticated empirical research can reveal how REDD+ unfolds on the
ground in particular places, at different times.
However, drawing once again on Bridge and Perreault (2009), I want to emphasise
that as a form of neoliberal environmental governance, REDD+ should not be seen
as governance of tropical forests but as governance through tropical forests. In this
sense, REDD+ as a project transforms both environment and society dialectically in a
way that favours existing social orders rather than challenging them. If the
widespread calls by advocates for the adherence to human rights can shape the
mechanism in a way that it delivers long term socially and ecologically just outcomes,
should be thoroughly questioned. As Marx (1976:344) famously brought to bear:
“Between equal rights, force decides”. Therefore, only if power imbalances, larger
economic structures and fundamental social and ecological injustices are tackled, the
socio-ecological crisis of tropical deforestation and forest degradation can be
overcome in a social and ecological just way. I sincerely doubt that REDD+ is going
to deliver.
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