Five years of REDD+ governance: The use of market mechanisms as a response to anthropogenic climate change

Abstract

Forest ecosystems worldwide are increasingly subjected to human intervention, leading commentators to argue that forests should be viewed as anthropogenic ecosystems. REDD+ is an emerging inter-governmental policy instrument aimed at both reducing deforestation and forest degradation and combatting climate change, whereby developed countries pay developing countries to reduce their forest-based emissions. The paper details a five-year research project to evaluate REDD+ quality of governance and develop governance standards for the mechanism. Quality of governance was evaluated in five key international institutional elements: the REDD+ related negotiations in the global climate talks; the support and funding agencies UN-REDD, Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), Forest Investment Programme (FIP) and the REDD+ Partnership. This research was complemented by national level governance assessments and related standards setting initiatives in Nepal and Papua New Guinea. The researchers conclude that REDD+ confronts a number of challenges, notably around resources for capacity building, and benefit sharing. In addition, the lack of provisions for changing behaviour and solving the problem of forest-based emissions in the current safeguards render them inadequate to the task of delivering quality of governance. In the absence of consistent governance standards, REDD+ will only partially be successful in combatting climate change in the Anthropocene.