Abstract
Payments for ecosystem services (PES) typically reward landowners for managing their land to provide ecosystem services that would not otherwise be provided. REDD+—Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation—is a form of PES aimed at decreasing carbon emissions from forest conversion and extraction in lower-income countries. A key challenge for REDD+ occurs when it is implemented at a group, rather than an individual landowner, level. Whilst achieving a group-level reduction relies on individuals changing their interaction with the forest, incentives are not aligned explicitly at the individual level. Rather, payments are made to a defined group as a single entity in exchange for verified reduced forest loss, as per a PES scheme. In this paper, we explore how REDD+ has been implemented in one multiple-village pilot in Tanzania with the village defining the group. Our findings suggest that considerable attention has been paid towards monitoring, reporting, verification (MRV), and equity. No explicit mechanism ensures individual compliance with the village-level PES, and few villages allocate funds for explicit enforcement efforts to protect the forest from illegal activities undertaken by individual group members or by outsiders. However, the development of village-level institutions, “social fencing,” and a shared future through equal REDD+ payments, factor into decisions that influence the level of compliance at the village level that the program will eventually achieve.
Highlights
Deforestation and forest degradation contribute approximately 10%–12% of total CO2 emissions [1,2], whilst Africa’s relatively high rate of forest degradation and deforestation accounts for approximately 70% of the continent’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [3,4]
A key yet neglected issue for REDD+ is the change in incentives that are created for individual forest-dependent households when a REDD+ scheme is introduced at a group level, as is frequently the case for village-owned or -managed forests, and for many Payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes, in lower-income countries [7]
We focus on: village-level decisions over how REDD+ funds are allocated within a village; the extent to which implementation of the REDD+ scheme accounts for group versus individual decisions; and whether the allocation of funds is linked to pressures on the REDD+ forest
Summary
Deforestation and forest degradation contribute approximately 10%–12% of total CO2 emissions [1,2], whilst Africa’s relatively high rate of forest degradation and deforestation accounts for approximately 70% of the continent’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [3,4]. A key yet neglected issue for REDD+ is the change in incentives that are created for individual forest-dependent households when a REDD+ scheme is introduced at a group level, as is frequently the case for village-owned or -managed forests, and for many PES schemes, in lower-income countries [7]. Because the payment is contingent on a particular set of actions, the landowner has an incentive to comply without any external enforcement Operating from this basis of payments to induce changes in forest use behavior, early discussions of REDD+ as a new PES in the policy and academic literature focused on implementation issues including monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV); permanence; additionality; and leakage, for example [5,9,10,11,12,13]. This paper is relevant to REDD+ but to other forms of payments for environmental services (PES) and to general payment-as-compensation policies, in lower-income countries, where payments are made at the group level and the group determines how these payments are allocated amongst individuals and group-level projects
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
