Reduced Emissions for Deforestation and Degradation: A Critical Review

Abstract

“Reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD) is emerging as a major new climate change mechanism that could deeply impact the financial, social and institutional dynamics of deforestation, conservation, and development in many developing countries. It has the potential to influence global forest governance in a socially acceptable way. The mechanism as it stands needs much improvement to avoid the pitfalls of earlier forest governance mechanisms. The research, at this stage, is not sufficient to improve it. Most of the literature is fairly slanted towards technical issues and the prospective design of the scheme or normative opposition to it. Despite this copious amounts of scholarly and advocacy work, there is too little attention focused on the social and governance dimensions of the proposals. Author’s Note Forests are crucial in the struggle for sustainable development. Not only do they have a role in the preservation of global ecological systems, but moreover they are especially important for supporting the livelihoods of local populations. When forests were first addressed in the context of climate change, they were assessed in mostly financial and technical terms. We think there is a need to insert a social perspective into the debate, taking into account the lessons learned from many years of intervening in developing countries‟ forests. Engineers who have designed REDD as a brilliant, but top-down, scheme for tropical forests conservation seem to have forgotten such lessons. Without addressing deforestation, climate objectives cannot be reached. But further, drawing from years of work on forests, we see that without considering the impacts on local societies and the lessons learned from development aid REDD cannot succeed. This paper is part of the effort to ensure REDD will prevail in social terms.