Framing national REDD+ benefits, monitoring, governance and finance: A comparative analysis of seven countries

Marjanneke J. Vijge*, Maria Brockhaus, Monica Di Gregorio, Efrian Muharrom

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This article analyzes how and with what possible consequences REDD+ is framed in the national policy arena in Cameroon, Indonesia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Tanzania, and Vietnam. It analyzes the most prominent views and storylines around key REDD+ design features among policy actors and in policy documents. We focus on storylines related to four questions, namely: (1) What should REDD+ achieve: carbon or also non-carbon objectives? (2) Who should monitor REDD+ outcomes: only technical experts or also local communities? (3) At what level should REDD+ be governed: at national or sub-national level? and (4) How should REDD+ be financed: through market- or fund-based sources? The vast majority of policy actors and policy documents frame REDD+ as a mechanism that should also realize non-carbon benefits, yet non-carbon monitoring receives very little attention. In all but one country, policy documents contain plans to involve local communities in the design and/or execution of measuring, reporting and verifying REDD+ outcomes. With regard to the level at which REDD+ should be governed, while most policy documents contain elements of a nested approach to accounting, almost all countries envision a long-term transition to national accounting and benefit distribution. We found strikingly little discussion among policy actors and in policy documents of how to finance REDD+ and acquire results-based payments. In the conclusion we reflect on possible consequences of the prominence of REDD+ storylines in the seven countries, and argue that carbonization and centralization of forest governance are possible outcomes given the limited attention to non-carbon monitoring and the envisioned centralized approaches to REDD+.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)57-68
Number of pages12
JournalGlobal Environmental Change
Volume39
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2016
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This research is part of the policy component of CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+ ( www.cifor.org/gcs ). The methods applied in this study build partially on research undertaken by the Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks program ( www.compon.org ), led by Jeffrey Broadbent and funded by the National Science Foundation . The authors would like to express their deep gratitude to our partners and the individual country teams in the Global Comparative Study, without whose work in the research countries this article would not have been possible. Sofi Mardiah, Cynthia Maharani, Bimo Dwisatrio and Christine Wairata played highly valuable roles in research support and editing. Funding for CIFOR’s research was provided by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation , the Australian Agency for International Development , the UK Department for International Development , and the European Commission . In addition, travel funding for one of the authors was provided from Wageningen School of Social Sciences . Finally, we would like to thank Aarti Gupta for providing advice on the research design for the article.

Keywords

  • Centralization
  • Co-benefits
  • Comparative discourse analysis
  • Market-based approach
  • MRV
  • REDD+

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