Equity and REDD+ Maria Brockhaus, Grace Wong, Cecilia Luttrell and Arild Angelsen

Myanmar, Lake Inle, 1-3 June 2015

Outline

• Equity and REDD+: opportunities and risks• The need for transformational change: a 4 I

framework• Case study examples: risks in governance for

equitable (effective, efficient) REDD+ • Conclusion

REDD+ as a (good) idea, beside being quick, cheap, easy ?

Equity —e.g. in terms of both distribution of costs and benefits and equal participation in decision making—is essential for ensuring both the legitimacy and effectiveness of REDD+ (Chhatre et al. 2012, McDermott et al. 2012)

• globally : turning tables, countries are no longer receivers of aid but providers of a globally needed service; safeguards

• nationally: incentives for policy mix supporting conservation PAMs, tenure reforms, other lager policy reforms

• locally: benefits for forest stewards (PES), cash and co-benefits

Towards equity through transformational change?

REDD+ especially with inclusion of safeguards, seemed to be very promising in terms of achieving transformational change through

shifts in incentives, discursive practices, power relations in the REDD+ policy arena

Concerns and risks related to REDD+• incentive to push out holders of informal rights , IPs

rights• carbonization and monetarization of nature Some concerns expressed in discourses: “cheap excuse” for the off- setters, who want to pay

for their sins without changing : “payment for indulgence”

‘the real’ profits for private investors, carbon cowboys

‘recentralization’ of forests and benefits not for communities but for the state and its administration

Equity and REDD+ in the Media

How is equity framed in media representations of national REDD+ policy debates in Indonesia, Brazil, Vietnam and Peru?

• 3 major newspapers from 2005 to 2010: articles with substantive focus on REDD+

• 3 levels of coding: article, media frame; policy actors associated with frame

Risks related to discoursesNational state actors engage mainly with global equity

issues (except Vietnam); civil society with domestic equity issues;

In all 4 countries the most discussed equity issue is benefit-sharing (state); followed by non-state actors concerns about livelihood impacts, tenure/indigenous rights and participation. Almost no discussion on gender equity.

Need for state actors to address domestic equity issues (connect to rights-based demands of civil society)

Discourses on ‘who should benefit’? (Luttrell et al. 2013)

Different discourses which different implications for design of BSMs But there are trade-offs: Effectiveness/efficiency vs. equity discourses Effectiveness/efficiency = goal of emission reductions; Equity = who has the

right to benefit– rationale I: benefits should go to actors with legal rights related to carbon emissio

n reductions ("legal rights" rationale)– rationale II: benefits should go to those who reduce emissions ("emission reducti

ons" rationale)– rationale III: benefits should go to forest stewards ("stewardship" rationale)– rationale IV: actors incurring costs should be compensated ("cost-compensation"

rationale)– rationale V: benefits should go to effective facilitators of implementation ("facilita

tion" rationale)– rationale VI: benefits should go to the poor ("pro-poor" rationale)

Risks when unclear who should benefit .. (Contextual, procedural and distributional equity)

Lack of clarity on objectives hampers to define who ‘should‘ benefit

Legitimacy of the decision needs the decision to be made by those with:• Legal mandate to make them• Adherence to due process & to procedural rights

Risks related to unclear tenure, financial procedures, elite capture

(Contextual, procedural and distributional equity)

Example Cameroon (Assembe et al 2013 and 2014):

Cameroon has two main mechanisms of benefit- sharing, 1) a decentralized forestry taxation system; and 2) land fees.In both risks are clearly related to• institutional path dependencies (e.g. colonial rules) in the

process of establishing land tenure, • the top-down approach to establishing a governance system

for the distribution of forest fees, • and a lack of transparency in the fee-distribution process

(Assembe-Mvondo et al. 2013, 2014)

Risks related to representation - Procedural equity in implementing

• decision-making and discussions on REDD+ in general and benefit sharing in particular are dominated by selected powerful actors (Brockhaus et al 2014)

Example Vietnam (Pham et al 2014):- dominant role of government agencies in REDD+ policy-

making, limited political space for non-state actors (e.g., NGOs, CSOs) to exert an influence on the final policy outputs

What hinders translating lessons and realizing transformational change for

equity into policy/practice?Seeing REDD+ through 4 Is: institutional stickiness, ideas, interests, information: - Discursive shifts? New agency, but rhetorics of powerful are still BAU- Shifts in incentives? Yes, incentives, but legitimacy of those that make decisions about it leads to/ reinforces existing patterns of rent seeking ? - Shifts in power relations ? Turning tables – not yet, aidification of REDD+, and in international and national REDD+ policy arenas BAU remains dominant across levels

Country Profiles

Media-based discourse analyses Info Briefs

Working Papers Journal Articles

Global comparative analysis of policies and processes

We acknowledge the support from:

NORAD, Australian Aid, UKAID, EC, USAIDand the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

& all research partners and individuals that have contributed to the GCS research

Thanks

For more informationhttp://cifor.org/asfcc/