Lessons for equitable REDD+ Benefit Sharing from

Community Forestry practices in Indonesia and Nepal

Ani A. Nawir, Naya S. Paudel, Grace Wong, Cecilia Luttrell

ASFN 6th Annual Conference, Inle Lake, June 2015

REDD+ incentive can be categorized as performance-based or input-based payments

A REDD+ incentive is only one of many drivers influencing behavioral patterns in land use and governance

Potentially effective if REDD+ monetary incentive > opportunity costs, or provides compensation ≥ input costs of implementing a REDD project or governance of policy

Other REDD+ non-monetary or indirect benefits can be significant

Benefit sharing = distribution of direct and indirect net gains from the implementation of REDD+

REDD+ as incentive for reducing emissions and deforestation

What lessons can Community Forestry (CF) bring to REDD+?

CF institutions have developed well established BSM that are legitimate, recognised by national law and incentivise forest conservation

Nepal’s CF scheme is regarded as a successful approach in forest conservation and therefore its lessons on BSM provide good basis

Indonesia has multiple variations of CF schemes with differing tenurial and rights arrangements

CF generates and distributes co-benefits beyond carbon therefore provides relevant lessons for REDD+

Management role

Patterns of ownership

Private Communal State

Private Privately managed forests around

households (e.g. farm forestry)

Privately-managed on community lands

(e.g. Customary land in Borneo: tembawang)

Public land allocation scheme for individually

managed (e.g. Community-Based

Plantation)

Communal Private land organised by community

institutions

Communal mgm on community lands (e.g. Village Forest in

Indonesia)

State land allocated for community management: (e.g. HKm and partnership schemes in Indonesia; CF

and REDD+ pilots in Nepal)

State Co-management

Co-management on privately-owned lands

(e.g. outgrower schemes)

Co-management on communal lands

(e.g. JFM in India)

State lands allocated to community group

(e.g. CFM in Philippines)

Sources: Adapted from FAO (1985); Mayers (2000); Arnold (2001); Calderon and Nawir (2004); and Nawir (2012)

There are three general approaches to benefit sharing: input-based, performance-based, & land allocation-based

The three approaches are differentiated in responding to: Overarching policy framework underlying the exclusiveness of

management right granted to community Forest function classification and its associated tenurial arrangements, An externally introduced initiative under a specific pilot project, such as

REDD+ Project.

1. Benefit sharing is determined by the CF property right regimes

In Nepal, shared-benefits are a compensation for local communities' active involvement in managing the National Forest entails that halting deforestation and degradation

In Indonesia, main activities being rewarded vary depending on types of right are granted and who is initiating the scheme for community involvement. HKm scheme: enforcing permanent status of the forest as a

state property Partnership scheme: securing company access

2. Activities being “rewarded”: reducing deforestation and enforcing the status of forest as state property

There are at least four factors as the underlying reasons: Community lands are usually scattered: high transportation costs

for collecting and marketing Limited economies of scale for commercialization, such as for

NTFPs, that causes high harvesting costs per unit area. The nature of tenurial arrangement, enforcing property rights

involves significant transaction costs Current policy and timber regulations at national and local levels

are not in favour of smallholders that cause high transaction costs.

3. Operational and transaction costs are potentially high: Cost sharing is equally important as benefit sharing

Nepal: low productive subsistence economy; people have volunteered their time to manage forests. REDD+ Pilot Project has not considered opportunity cost of CF management as there are no options to put these lands into alternative use

Indonesia: high opportunity costs; compensating such costs is important in maintaining long-term community’s commitment

There are different types of opportunity costs (i.e. the opportunity costs of revenues from behavior change of individual household versus the rent of alternative land uses in the area included in a REDD+ scheme) and these differences should be considered in the design.

4. Managing opportunity costs in situations with high land-use competition

Innovations in Nepal for equitable REDD+ BSM

Procedural equity Inclusive representation in

decision making bodies Social criteria for REDD+

payment Conditions for CF

fund/REDD fund use (e.g. 35% for pro-poor activities)

Substantive equity Wellbeing ranking within

benefit sharing framework Forest based employment to

poor Support during difficulty Land allocation to poor

households Differential price of forest

products

Key messages

Benefit sharing is closely linked with tenure arrangements

Procedural equity at all levels of environmental governance is critical

Managing forests for multiple benefits serves equity purpose better than focusing on single benefit

Allocation of rights as an indirect benefit can be a more sustainable incentive than performance or input based incentives the direct incentives do not reflect true transaction and opportunity costs

• Key publications: Loft, L. et al. (2015) Taking stock of carbon rights in REDD+ candidate countries: Concept meets reality. Forests 6:1031-1060. Börner et al. (2015) Mixing Carrots and Sticks to Conserve Forests in the Brazilian Amazon: A Spatial Probabilistic Modeling

Approach. PLoS ONE 10(2): e0116846. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0116846 Luttrell et al. 2014 Who should benefit from REDD+? Rationales and realities. Ecology and Society 18(4): 52. Pham et al. 2014. Local preferences and strategies for effective, efficient and equitable PES benefit distribution options in

Vietnam: Lessons for REDD+. Human Ecology DOI: 10.1007/s10745-014-9703-3 Pham et al. 2013. “Approaches to benefit sharing: A preliminary comparative analysis of 13 REDD+ countries” CIFOR working

paper. Assembe, S. et al. 2013. Assessment of the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of benefit sharing schemes under large-scale

agriculture: Lessons from land fees in Cameroon, European Journal of Development Research

• Series of information briefs: Arwida S. et al. 2015. Lessons for REDD+ benefit sharing from anti-corruption measures in Indonesia. CIFOR InfoBrief 120. Tjajadi, J.S. et al. 2015. Lessons from environmental and social sustainability standards for equitable REDD+ benefit sharing.

CIFOR Infobrief 119. Myers, R. et al. 2015. Benefit sharing in context: Comparative analysis of 10 land use change case studies in Indonesia.

CIFOR Infobrief 118. Nawir A. et al. 2015. Lessons from community forestry in Nepal and Indonesia, CIFOR InfoBrief 112. Gebara MF. et al. 2014. Lessons from local environmental funds for REDD+ benefit sharing with indigenous people in Brazil.

CIFOR InfoBrief 98. Kowler LF. et al. 2014. The legitimacy of multilevel governance structures for benefit sharing: REDD+ and other low emissions

options in Peru. CIFOR InfoBrief 101. Loft L. et al. 2014. Lessons from payments for ecosystem services for REDD+ benefit-sharing mechanisms. CIFOR InfoBrief

68. Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR. Myers, R. et al. (2014) Who holds power in land use decisions? Implications for REDD+ in Indonesia. CIFOR InfoBrief 100. Wong G. (2014). The experience of conditional cash transfers: Lessons for REDD+ benefit sharing. CIFOR InfoBrief 97.

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