Policy Integration for REDD+: Insights from Mexico

Jovanka Špirić,M Isabel Ramírez

doi:10.3390/f12081075

Abstract

This paper investigates how the horizontal and vertical policy integration for REDD+ has been conceptualized and unfolded in Mexico during the REDD+ readiness and early implementation phase (2008–2019). We used the document analysis and interviews with key actors to identify changes that REDD+ induced in forestry and agriculture sectors’ policy making and programs at the national level and in two REDD+ states, Campeche and Jalisco. The policy integration for REDD+ in Mexico is conceptualized as compatibility-within-a-framework, i.e., promotes coordination and compromises among the objectives of land-use policies endorsing sustainable rural development. The state environmental agencies play an active role in involving the agricultural authorities in formal and informal interactions. This resulted in the design (Campeche) and even implementation (Jalisco) of REDD+-aligned programs and instruments. The progress at the subnational level is hampered by the national agriculture and forestry agencies’ policy inertia and lack of resources. To support the subnational REDD+ policy integration advancement, more resources and powers should be made available to the state environmental authorities which would help them directly reach more international funding and include other important REDD+ actors and establish mutually accountable relationships with them.

Highlights

Public policies are a series of decisions and activities designed by the government, alone or together with other actors in the society, i.e., governance, to respond to a problem of social interest, such as deforestation and forest degradation [1]
The objective of this study is to investigate the policy integration for REDD+ in Mexico, both as a process and as a degree of vertical and horizontal integration of the forestry and agriculture sectors, the latter identified as causing most of the deforestation and forest degradation in Campeche and Jalisco, e.g., [28,29]
The jurisdictional approach to REDD+ under the IRE process in Mexico positively influenced the alignment of public policies for REDD+ at the subnational level

Summary

Introduction

Public policies are a series of decisions and activities designed by the government, alone or together with other actors in the society, i.e., governance, to respond to a problem of social interest, such as deforestation and forest degradation [1]. Deforestation and forest degradation are complex environmental problems, as it is difficult to disentangle their multiple-scale biophysical and societal causes, predict their consequences and reversibility, and know with certainty whether and when a forest will be clear-cut or disturbed. The drivers of deforestation and forest degradation are both internal and external to the forestry sector and operate at different scales, such as local migrations, national trends in urban development, and global markets for agricultural commodities [2]. Instead of improving deforestation and forest degradation, policies shift them over time, space, and environment, or even generate new environmental and social problems [5]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion