Carbon Forestry Projects Research Articles

Three Ways of Seeing a Forest: On the Social Life of Economization in Indian Carbon Forestry

Irrespective of controversies and frustrated efforts, carbon forestry—the sequestering of greenhouse gases in forests—remains a key element of climate change mitigation. Carbon forestry drives regularly rely on a market-based conservation framework, where forest dwellers are remunerated for their service of maintaining forests through dedicated financial instruments routing global funds. In this article, I turn to India’s first large-scale carbon forestry project, situated in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, and trace how carbon forestry plots are subjected to different temporal trajectories on different levels. I show that the marketing of emission reduction certificates (CER), underpinning carbon forestry, posits emergent forests as permanent sinks. The administrative procedures of this Indian carbon forestry project, however, aim at providing for these forests for sixty years. Finally, I show that villagers perceive a sense of closure, suspending dedicated care and governance routines as the project appears to dismantle and future payments become uncertain. I argue that these different temporal registers not only reveal contradictions within carbon forestry approaches but they also highlight the fragility of attempts to economize forests through supposedly green financial instruments and, therefore, the limited impact of what might appear as neoliberal agendas, in time.

Whose climate? Whose forest? Power struggles in a contested carbon forestry project in Uganda

The voluntary carbon offset market is legitimated in climate policy debates at the global level and has incentivized a large number of afforestation and reforestation projects that have produced new power relations at the local level. This paper aims to critically examine how a contested Gold Standard certified project in Western Uganda has been justified, opposed and adapted during its implementation. Using a political ecology approach, this article sheds new light on the complexity of global-local interlinkages regarding carbon forestry projects and examines discursive power struggles. Taking a social constructivist perspective, I assume that due to their different values and experiences, actors have differing perceptions of the tensions and power relations arising during the carbon forestry project. Building on interviews and project-relevant certification documents, practices, narratives and counter-narratives were analyzed. The results show that while local actors were excluded from the forest, local communities and civil society actors have resisted against the company's management regime. Although the company remains the most powerful actor, more collaborative and moderate practices have lowered the conflict level. The case study shows that carbon markets need to be legitimated not only at the global level but also during the implementation in interaction with local constituencies.

Forestry Decentralization in the Context of Global Carbon Priorities: New Challenges for Subnational Governments

The recent emphasis on the role of tropical forests in facing climate change has made forest decentralization debates more relevant than ever. Discussions on multilevel governance, polycentricity, and nested approaches to governance surround the central question, ever more pertinent considering global environmental change, of who holds the mandate over forests. Different levels of government, as well as private and civil society actors (companies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), indigenous peoples and local communities), compete over the rights of ownership, administration and management of forest landscapes – decisions with a crucial impact on land use, land use change and the future of forests. Understanding the relations among different levels of governance, and government specifically, is essential to understand how carbon forestry has engaged with decentralization and the role of subnational governments (SNGs) in developing practical land use solutions. We draw on current trends in the forestry decentralization literature to ask: (i) has carbon forestry opened new opportunities for SNGs to support the sustainable governance of forest landscapes?; (ii) have meaningful powers been assigned to SNGs in support of democratic processes of decision-making over forest landscapes? And (iii) is carbon forestry influencing the relationships between levels of government in a way that challenges unequal power relations? By examining carbon forestry projects and forestry decentralization processes across five countries (Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Tanzania and Vietnam) with carbon forestry initiatives, we demonstrate how the role of SNGs is circumscribed by existing forestry decentralization trends. Decentralization initiatives in recent decades have provided SNGs with new mandates to manage forests, but new attributions do not always imply meaningful powers. The implementation of carbon forestry projects is moulded by pre-existing power relations that shape the impacts of forestry decentralization on livelihoods and forest ecosystems. We find that carbon forestry, with both centralizing and decentralizing tendencies, operates within the spaces left by existing power dynamics that mould the way transfers of power are put into practice. Jurisdictional approaches will need to negotiate with this context to be able to push forward sustainable pathways.

Linking notions of justice and project outcomes in carbon offset forestry projects: Insights from a comparative study in Uganda

Over the last 20 years, Uganda has emerged as a testing ground for the various modes of carbon forestry used in Africa. Carbon forestry initiatives in Uganda raise questions of justice, given that people with comparatively negligible carbon footprints are affected by land use changes initiated by the desire of wealthy people, firms, and countries to reduce their more extensive carbon footprints. This paper examines the notions of justice local people express in relation to two contrasting carbon forestry projects in Uganda, the Mount Elgon Uganda Wildlife Authority – Forests Absorbing Carbon Emissions (UWA-FACE) project and Trees for Global Benefit (TFGB). UWA-FACE closed down its initial operations at Mount Elgon after 10 years as a result of deep controversies and negative international publicity, whereas TFGB is regarded by many as an exemplary design for smallholder carbon forestry in Africa. Our approach builds upon an emerging strand in the literature, of empirical analyses of local people’s notions of justice related to environmental interventions. The main contribution of the paper is to examine how people’s notions of justice have influenced divergent project outcomes in these cases. In particular, we highlight the relative success of TFGB in the way it meets people’s primarily distributional concerns, apparently without significantly challenging prevalent expectations of recognition or procedural justice. In contrast, we illuminate how controversy across the range of justice dimensions in UWA-FACE at Mount Elgon ultimately led to the project’s decline. This paper therefore explores how attention to notions of justice can contribute to a fuller understanding of the reactions of people to carbon forestry projects, as well as the pathways and ultimate outcomes of such interventions.

A political ecology of REDD+: Property rights, militarised protectionism, and carbonised exclusion in Cross River

This paper offers a critical assessment of REDD+ in Nigeria through a political ecology perspective. Focusing on questions of property rights and resource access, it maps the discursive articulations and contestations through which carbon rights are being determined. It also shows how these articulations and contestations are linked to land and forest rights, and how they shape everyday access to the forest. Evidence from the Nigerian case suggests that factors that complicate rights and undermine access to resources for forest communities under REDD+ are immanent to the contested terrain constituted in part by REDD+ proposals, proponents’ discourses and practices geared towards securing the forest for REDD+. Efforts to secure property rights and guarantee the permanence of REDD+ forests align with economic, ecological and ideological aspirations of state and non-state actors to produce a regime of militarised protectionism. I demonstrate how, in addition to its material and symbolic facilitation of the emergent carbon forestry economy, militarised protectionism as a regime of exclusion also constitutes collateral political economies of ‘more-than-carbon’ forest resources (such as timber and non-timber forest products) which perpetuate capital accumulation by the elites. It is this kind of exclusion–accumulation dialectic, legitimised by carbon forestry claims that this paper describes as carbonised exclusion. The paper thus furthers debates on the political ecology of REDD+ and other carbon forestry projects, while productively engaging technocentric literature on REDD+ and property rights.

Time for Decarbonization of Conservation and Development Projects? The Political Ecology of Carbon Projects

The globe's first carbon projects were designed and implemented approximately 20 years ago following scientific insights that emissions of greenhouse gases needed to be mitigated. Visible in some of these early projects were the important aspects of social governance and local benefit sharing. The projects promised to be a panacea to environmental, social and economic problems in remote rural areas of developing countries. However, it took another decade before a wave of hundreds of carbon projects were launched. Many of the projects were offered under the mechanism of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, plus the role of conservation, sustainable forest management and carbon enhancement), as well as under a variety of voluntary schemes and national programs, public-private partnerships, and forestry-based investment initiatives. As decision-makers prepare the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climatic Change in Paris (COP21), Earthscan has released a book entitled `Carbon conflicts and forest landscapes in Africa', edited by Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones. According to the editors, the focus of the book is on what happens on the ground when carbon forestry projects arrive, what types of projects work, and, equally important, what doesn’t work.

Tradeoffs in carbon commodification: A political ecology of common property forest governance

Carbon markets have gained traction worldwide as an ostensibly win–win solution to climate change, providing low-cost emission reductions in the Global North and sustainable development in the Global South. However, sustainable development and livelihood co-benefits have largely failed to materialize in a range of carbon offset projects, particularly those in forest communities. While some scholars explain this failure as an outcome of fundamental tradeoffs between market efficiency and sustainable development, others argue that institutions of common property land tenure can resolve tradeoffs and generate important co-benefits for local communities. Using a political ecology approach, integrating insights of Karl Polanyi and Noel Castree on the commodification of nature and evidence from a carbon forestry project in Chiapas, Mexico, this article grapples with the ways in which carbon market requirements shape forest governance within common property tenure arrangements. I argue that the centralization of forest governance and decision making into the hands of project implementers and brokers, the necessity for legible land rights and boundaries, and the technical requirements for measurement, calculation, and monitoring of carbon have reshaped forest governance in ways that have undermined the social and ecological benefits often associated with common property management schemes. This research therefore demonstrates that so-called tradeoffs between market efficiency and equitable sustainable development goals may not be inherent to carbon forestry and calls into question the reliance on disembedding market mechanisms for climate change mitigation in forest ecosystems. As such, this work has important implications for REDD+.

Linking Mitigation and Adaptation in Carbon Forestry Projects: Evidence from Belize

Summary Committed action to deal with climate change requires reducing greenhouse gas emissions, i.e., mitigation, as well as dealing with its ensuing consequences, i.e., adaptation. To date, most policies and projects have promoted mitigation and adaptation separately, and they have very rarely considered integrating these two objectives. In this article, we develop a multi-dimensional framework to explore the extent to which climate mitigation forestry projects bring adaptation concerns into their design and implementation phases, using three Belizean projects as case-study material. We demonstrate that linking mitigation and adaptation has not been possible, because the mandate of forest carbon markets does not incorporate adaptation concerns. The projects’ contribution to forest ecosystems’ adaptation, for instance, by reducing human encroachments and by increasing ecosystem connectivity, has been limited. The projects’ contribution to improve local livelihoods has also been limited, and projects have even been contested by neighboring communities on the grounds of tenure conflicts and food security concerns. Furthermore, the projects’ mitigation potential is constrained by their poor additionality and lack of rigorous enforcement. We then conclude that the integration of mitigation and adaptation in Belize’s carbon forestry projects remains a laudable but elusive goal. Consequently, we request climate change donors to refrain from providing support to narrowly designed projects and we urge them instead to promote more holistic and territorial-based approaches targeting both mitigation and adaptation goals.

Participation dynamics and institutional change in the Scolel Té carbon forestry project, Chiapas, Mexico

Carbon forestry has become a cornerstone of attempted climate change mitigation in developing countries. As such, dozens of projects have been developed to supply carbon offsets to both voluntary and regulated carbon markets. In this paper we shed further light on the effects of such projects on communities and households by studying the implementation of a carbon forestry project in four communities in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. The project pays farmers to carry out a number of tree-planting activities depending on the local agro-ecological systems. We investigate how such activities have been promoted in and adopted by communities and we identify a series of community-based, institutional, resource management and asset-related factors that explain farmers’ willingness to participate in the projects. Our analysis highlights a number of shared motivations for joining the project but varied levels of understanding about the project rationale. We also show how community norms, access to land tenure, financial and physical assets differ among participants and non-participants which translates in increasing inequalities in access to income and to other development projects. However, we also demonstrate that project activities, as currently designed, motivate some farmers to participate because of the potential of the project to act as a mechanism to bridge existing social divides through cooperation in the project and therefore financially and politically benefit from participation. Overall, the paper demonstrates that the project contributes to transforming local livelihoods and institutions, unfortunately not always as originally designed.

Environmental narratives and politics in Tanzania's Rufiji Delta: A reply to Burgess et al.

This reply is in response to Burgess et al.’s Commentary on our original article, “The REDD Menace: Resurgent protectionism in Tanzania's mangrove forests.” Their commentary, we argue, shifts the focus from WWF's past conservation work and environmental narratives in the Rufiji Delta North, the subject of our article, to its current forest carbon inventory work. We do not comment on WWF's new work. Our principal concern remains on the environmental narratives crafted by WWF that were used to justify attempts to remove Warufiji small-scale rice farmers from the mangrove forests in the Rufiji Delta North. We emphasize the political implications of designating forest areas for carbon forestry and REDD projects in terms of forest dependent people's land and livelihood rights. We argue from environmental historical and social justice perspectives that the Warufiji should be counted among the winners, not the losers, in the green value chains currently under construction.

Not all baselines are created equal: A Q methodology analysis of stakeholder perspectives of additionality in a carbon forestry offset project in Costa Rica

This paper uses a Q methodology for analyzing actor subjectivity in order to examine the extent to which differently situated actors agree or disagree about baseline constructions of land-use change, and the potential role of offsets in an indigenous community. In so doing, this study aims to accomplish three goals. First, it examines the level of convergence or divergence between actors concerning the land-use claims embedded within offset procedures. Second, it examines discursive alignments within actors by gauging how one's view of land-use change correlates with one's understanding of the goal of the offset project itself. Finally, the paper assesses the extent to which a level of discursive agreement is needed for project cooperation. The results show points of radical divergence between indigenous and non-indigenous experts involved in implementing the offset project, as well as points of pragmatic optimism regarding offsets and markets in affecting land-use change. Results indicate that discursive disagreement concerning basic understandings of land-use change and project goals did not preclude collaboration. The strong divergences between actors over the causes of land-use change, and the nature and intent of the offset project, suggest that truly collaborative offset implementation is illusory.

Tracking the Fault Lines of Pro‐Poor Carbon Forestry

AbstractReducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) has been given a principal role in post‐Kyoto, climate change agreements. Resulting markets and mechanisms for carbon forestry offsets could generate considerable global revenues for both forest conservation and sustainable rural development; or they may impose political and economic pressures on forest governance that threaten indigenous and rural peoples’ rights. Some inherent challenges to developing carbon forestry projects that support rural peoples’ welfare are reviewed. The experience of Scolel Te’, a carbon forestry project for Mexican indigenous farmers, suggests how projects can be adapted for smallholder provision of carbon services on benign terms and still meet the demands of carbon markets. However, carbon sales alone have not supported investments in knowledge development, institutional learning, and strategic farmer participation needed for significant political or economic change. This supports critiques that policies based on economic valuations of environmental services are unlikely to support social and equity objectives.

Realizing Carbon's Value: Discourse and Calculation in the Production of Carbon Forestry Offsets in Costa Rica

: This article examines the relation between discourse and value in the production of a carbon forestry offset project among indigenous smallholders in Costa Rica. By analyzing a pivotal cost–benefit calculation that changed the trajectory of the project, this article makes two principal claims. First, the intelligibility of the calculation is grounded in a discursive formation that is emergent from a history of development projects in the region, where particular ways of speaking about the relation between indigenous bodies and agriculture have allowed carbon's commodification to emerge as a desirable project. Second, the calculations resulted in quantified representations of space that were necessary for the offset to become useful within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. In this case, the forestry offset's use value derived from quantified representations of agricultural space; a process that opened some forms of land use for receiving carbon while foreclosing on others.

A New Solution to a Persistent Problem: Addressing Tropical Deforestation with Carbon Forestry Offset Projects

La deforestación de los bosques tropicales se ha convertido en una parte integral en las políticas de negociación sobre cambio climático. Los proyectos forestales de carbono se presentan a la comunidad internacional como un nuevo mecanismo para mitigar el cambio climático pero también para aumentar la cobertura de bosques y contribuir al desarrollo rural. En el Perú amazónico el cambio de uso del suelo por prácticas agrícolas es la principal causa de deforestación. Este estudio identifica los factores que influyen en las prácticas del uso del suelo y las implicaciones para los proyectos forestales de carbono. No obstante, antes de que estos proyectos puedan ser implementados, es esencial que los factores claves de deforestación como los problemas asociados a la legitimidad de la tenencia de la tierra, la debilidad de la aplicación de políticas forestales y la falta de iniciativas financieras para la adopción de alternativas de uso de la tierra, sean analizados con profundidad.

Foreword for the Special Issue on Carbon Markets in Small-scale Forestry

Climate change is an issue of global concern. The international community has formed policies that establish market-based mechanisms as a principal means of achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and climate change mitigation. Carbon markets—markets associated with the trade of greenhouse gas emissions offsets and regulator-issued permits (mandatory/regulated and voluntary) to emit greenhouse gases—have thus evolved over the last 5 years to be large and important centres of economic activity. Forests feature prominently in carbon markets, primarily as sinks for the sequestration of greenhouse gas emissions and the production of tradeable carbon offsets. There is a great opportunity to use carbon offsets as a complementary source of financial returns to promote sustainable forest management—particularly in the context of small-scale forestry—and enhance livelihoods, rehabilitate ecosystem services and contribute to the development of communities more resilient to the effects of climate change. However, to date less than 1% of all carbon offset projects globally have involved forest management; most have involved making industrial processes cleaner or the development of renewable energy. This special issue of Small-scale Forestry presents research on some of the reasons for the dearth of small-scale forest-related carbon offset projects globally, and investigates the implications for improved carbon forestry policy. There are various factors constraining the development of more carbon forestry projects. Some relate to the administrative and technical difficulties involved with engaging in carbon markets. A complex policy malaise frames the way forests feature in carbon markets, with different rules and provisions made for how offsets can be generated through planted versus natural forests, and forests located in developing countries versus forests located in developed countries. Some of the papers in this special issue proffer frameworks and explanations about carbon

Opportunities for Small-Scale Forestry in Carbon Markets

This paper presents an explanatory framework of how greenhouse gas emissions offsets produced from natural and planted forests (‘carbon forestry’) feature in voluntary and regulated carbon markets. An introduction to the convoluted policy malaise surrounding the use of forests in regulated carbon markets is also presented. Whilst there are many opportunities and potential benefits of using forests to produce offsets, relatively few carbon forestry projects currently exist, particularly in regulated carbon markets. This seems due to financial, institutional and administrative obstacles, with prohibitive transaction costs often cited as the most prominent constraint to expanded carbon forestry development. The papers in this special issue present a wide coverage of carbon forestry development policy issues. The special issue provides a unique insight into the state of carbon forestry globally and highlights the pressing need for policy and market reform to facilitate more sustainable carbon forestry development.

Small holder’s carbon forestry project in Haryana India: issues and challenges

The small scale forestry carbon project in Haryana, India has been registered as a Clean Development Project (CDM) activity and is the first such projects from India. Developed under the Kyoto Protocol of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the projects aims at restoring heavily degraded sandune affected private lands and contribute to climate change mitigation. The project is expected to sequester 234,584 tons of carbon dioxide (tCO 2 ) in 20 years project cycle with an average annual sequestration of 11,729 (tCO 2 ) per year. The project is expected to have a total carbon stock of 385,253.1 ton Carbon (tC) in the project life span of 20 years as against 7,920.6 (tC) in the baseline scenario. The carbon credits earned from the project is supposed to provide additional incentives to the smallholders who have formed a cooperative society for this purpose. This paper addresses the issues and challenges in developing the project activity and also discusses the lessons learned in the process. The project is supposed to help in poverty alleviation and has become a success story for rehabilitating degraded lands in semi arid regions of India through plantation forestry.

Offsetting Benefits? Analyzing Access to Forest Carbon

Emissions trading has created new forms of exchangeable property which become commodities when traded in markets designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and mitigate climate change. This paper analyzes a set of social processes which influence who benefits from reductions in emissions generated by primary production from forest ecosystems. Informed by commodification literature, and property and access theory, we suggest that farmers and rural communities cannot derive full benefits from carbon sequestration because they lack key structural and relational mechanisms, such as capital, knowledge, expertise, technology, and, in some cases, even labour. We illustrate this argument by examining three ongoing carbon-forestry projects in China, Ecuador, and Mexico and we highlight its implications for future forestry mitigation projects and programmes.

Participant Perceptions of Risk and Benefit in Carbon Forestry: Evidence From Central Tanzania

This article addresses forestry projects attempting to register with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Advocates argue that forestry projects have significant potential for sequestering carbon, contributing to livelihood improvements, and promoting sustainable development in developing countries—especially African countries with predominately agrarian economies and relatively high GHG emissions from land-use change. Through a comparison of two carbon-forestry projects in central Tanzania, we investigated both the livelihood effects of these projects and the risk and benefit perceptions of project administrators and the government. Both projects have been unable to gain national government approval, and we find evidence of mixed benefits for local communities. Village communities participating in one program consistently identified environmental and social benefits of planting trees locally and judged them as more important than carbon payments. A key variable is ownership, as villagers that have forfeited their land to a plantation have little stake in the program, whereas villagers participating in a community-based program own their trees. Our results suggest that enhancing ties to local ownership can contribute to sustainable development while better enhancing the potential of the carbon market to work for the rural poor in developing countries.

Small-scale forest carbon projects: Adapting CDM to low-income communities

Given the decision to include small-scale sinks projects implemented by low-income communities in the clean development mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, the paper explores some of the basic governance conditions that such carbon forestry projects will have to meet if they are to be successfully put in practice. To date there are no validated small-scale sinks projects and investors have shown little interest in financing such projects, possibly to due to the risks and uncertainties associated with sinks projects. Some suggest however, that carbon has the potential to become a serious commodity on the world market, thus governance over ownership, rights and responsibilities merit discussion. Drawing on the interdisciplinary development, as well as from the literature on livelihoods and democratic decentralization in forestry, the paper explores how to adapt forest carbon projects to the realities encountered in the local context. It also highlights the importance of capitalizing on synergies with other rural development strategies, ensuring stakeholder participation by working with accountable, representative local organizations, and creating flexible and adaptive project designs.