Walking the REDD+ line: Insights from CIFOR’s REDD+ Global Comparative

Study - incentives, MRV, strategy, government reform

COP 23, 9. November 2017, Bonn Germany

1

Arild Angelsen Professor, School of Economics and Business,

Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Ås, Norway & Senior Associate, CIFOR , Bogor, Indonesia

arild.angelsen@nmbu.no

GCS

REDD+ Research modules

& partner-centered

knowledge-sharing

Project phases

REDD+ today

• UNFCCC Policy framework (Warsaw, Paris)

• An umbrella term for:

1. Efforts at all scales where a primary objective is to reduce

emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and

carbon stock enhancement

2. Have some elements of result-/performance-based payment

Variations in interpretations;

1. Limit to international level (a UNFCCC mechanism)

2. Include plantations

3. REDD+ = PES ?

4. Include non-carbon objectives

5. Mitigation and adaptation

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Q1: How can REDD+ contribute

to trans. change at national level?

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Governance• Key aspects

– Structures: Institutions

– Agents: interests, information, ideas/discourses (4I)

• Trajectories of transformational change

– Shifts in:

• Discursive practices

• Incentive structures

• Power relations

• Methods: policy, media discourses, networks analyses

Key finding:

• Powerful discourse coalitions talk BAU

5

Discourse coalitions

0.68 0.65 0.64

1

0.270.51

0.32 0.35 0.36

0

0.730.49

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Indonesia Vietnam Brazil Cameroon Nepal PNG

Power index of discourse coalition

BAU Trans.change

6

Business as Usual (BAU) coalitions: - Strong emphasis on global financial support/global solutions

- Not talking and tackling drivers

- Dominate in most countries

Transformational change (TC) coalitions:- Rights, empowerment, domestic drivers, non-carbon objectives

- Limited involvement of state actors

What brings about Trans. Change?

OUTCOME: Comprehensive policies for TC

Institutional setting

Forest scarcity (PRES)

Effective leg., policy & gov.

(EFF)

Initiated pol. change (CHA)

Policy arena

National ownership

(OWN)

Inclusive pol. process (INCL)

REDD+ perfor.-based funds

(PERFO) 7

6 of 13 countries had

successful outcomes

(2014): Brazil, DRC,

Guyana, Indonesia,

Tanzania, Vietnam

7 have not so far (2014):

Burkina Faso, Cameroon,

Ethiopia, Mozambique,

Nepal, Peru, PNG

Results:

CHA, even on its own, is

sufficient under inst.setting

PERFO can make a

difference, but only if

combined with OWN

Q2: Is REDD+ “lost in translation”

– or “improved by translation”?

• What happens when top down meets bottom up?

• Actor Network Theory

– Ideas don’t simply spread, but do so by network

• Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

– Pilot province (2010)

– Many actors & funding sources 8

STRADA – Regional Strategy

and Action Plan for REDD+

The actors:

• International actors (foreign donors)

– Viewed themselves as basic supporters of REDD+, transferring

knowledge, skills and Rupiahs

• National governments

– Sought to establish themselves in charge, in collaboration with

foreign donors

• Provincial governments

– Establish themselves as obligatory passage points (OPP)

• Local NGOs

– Partially-aligned positions: advocacy & community engagement

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Local communities

• Seeking to redefine REDD+ as community development,

poverty reduction, welfare, dignity and local rights

• Major problems to understand and participate, in part due

to the uncertainty about REDD+:

“The principle of REDD+ is that you will be paid not to cut

down trees. We do not know how much you will be paid, when

you will be paid, or even whether you will in fact be paid, and,

if so, the money will be paid directly or if the local community

will be rewarded in other forms such as the provision of a

school, a clinic, a new road or whatever. Do you agree to

accept this scheme?” (Howell, 2014)

• Would you sell you car based on this?

• Strong hostility towards UNDP as the fund manager

– Selection of UN organizations

– Bamboo climate communication centre 10

Lessons

• Is the project addressing the drivers?

– “The STRADA document illustrates this tension; it identifies

policy and commercial causes of deforestation, but maintains

that Central Kalimantan ‘as the first pilot province for REDD+

implementation in Indonesia is based on the principle of

community’”

• “We don’t want to be a guinea pig for their tests” (villager)

– “Local actors tended to see themselves as subjects of

controlled lab experiments, or guinea pigs, rather than as

having agency and control of their options—as pioneers

chartering the local terrain of REDD+ on behalf of Indonesia and

the world.”

• REDD+ in the social context

– “Successes …are not outcomes of singular efforts, but

negotiated through ‘lengthy social processes to build linkages

and foster learning’” 11

THINKING beyond the canopy

Studies of sub-national REDD+

initiatives

1. round: 23 sub-national initiatives (projects)

2. round: 17

THINKING beyond the canopy

Comparison (Control)

REDD+ site(Intervention)

Before After

IMPACT

Intervention

After

Control

After

Intervention

Before

Control

Before

Method: BACI

Sampled 150 communities and ~4,000 households

Combined measures of tree cover change (Global Forest

Change 2000-2014) and socio-economic variables

(collected through field surveys in 2010 and 2014) using

BACI approach

Q3: Is BACI (= the gold

standard) feasible?

• Initial matching of control and intervention villages based

on Rapid Rural Appraisal

• At hindsight (with detailed household and village level

data): How good was the matching?14

Results

• Significant initial different in many respects

– Intervention villages generally poorer (assets, infrastructure),

but not in average income

– Intervention villages have more forest

• Not all everyone in interventional villages are subject to

treatments, and some in control villages

• Implications:

– Need to take those differences into account in analysis, e.g.

matching methods

– Also analysis at household level

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The value of BACI

• The value of baseline data

– Compare initial differences, and control for them

• Reluctance among conservation org. to implement

rigorous impact assessment (BACI)

– High costs

– Work in non-intervention villages

– Risk of documenting no-success

• Impact evaluations generates knowledge that is a public

good

– Donors to sponsor explicitly

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Q4: Did REDD+ projects

reduce forest loss?(and does the answer depend on the method?)

• Landsat/Hansen data: tree cover change

– Forest: >10% tree cover

• Change in relative, annual forest loss (percentage points)

17

18

BACI score

BA score

19

Findings

• BACI shows better results than BA

– Comforting as BACI is superior (it corrects for higher scale trends

or drivers)

• Better performance at micro (village) than at meso

(project/district) level

– Higher local treatment intensity

– Leakage

• Overall performance

– 9 (out of 16) sites with BACI at village level with positive

performance, and average BACI result good

– No obvious explanation why some more successful than others

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Q5: What does REDD+ cost?

• Focus on opportunity costs and how it varies across

income groups (low, middle, high)

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COST 101

• Opp.cost: best alternative use of one ha of forest

– Agric rent (profit), minus (sustainable) forest income

• Annual or NPV? Per ha, C, CO2, household … 22

Actor 1. Oppor-

tunity costs

(OC) (ag.rent)

2. Implem./

Transaction

costs (TC)

3. Transfers 4. Net direct

benefit

(1+2+3)

Forest user 1 -50 75 25

Forest user 2 -50 -50

Forest user 3 75 75

Village -40 30 -10

NGO (prop.) -60 80 20

Local govt. -60 20 -40

Nat. govt. -20 50 30

Foreign donor -10 -330 -340

Sum -100 -190 0 -290

Efficiency: Opp.costs (OC)

per tC

•𝑂𝐶 𝑝𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝐶 =𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑐 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎

𝑡𝐶 𝑝𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎

• OC varies considerably:

– USD 0.61 – 84.29 (6.89) (annual)

– USD 6.83 – 943.90 (77.15) (NPV)

– CO2 : x 3.67

– Highest in Tanzania due to low tC/ha

• OC below voluntary market price (USD 3.30/tCO2)

in 6 out of 17 sites

– And well below Social Costs of Carbon (SCC, USD 36/tCO2) in

all sites except one (so, REDD+ is cheap in terms of OC) 23

Equity: Opp.costs (OC) at

household level•𝑂𝐶 𝑝𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑑= 𝑂𝐶 𝑝𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎 ∗ 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 (ℎ𝑎)

How much forests will be cleared in BAU?

– Reference level or additionality

– Lower bond: recent forest clearing (historical ref.level)

– Upper bound: current agric land

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• In general: much higher OC for rich households

Options:

1. Differentiated PES pay (efficiency): Most to the richest

2. Flat pay (equity): Higher ‘rent’ to the poorest

Efficiency - equity tradeoffs! 25

Q6: Did REDD+ projects

comply with safeguards?

• Change in

3 aspects:

1. Rights (tenure security)

2. Participation (knowledge and participation)

3. Social co-benefits (SWB)

• Does the impact vary by type of intervention?

– Incentives

–Sticks

–Both +

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Type of interventions

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Incentives:

conditional

& non-conditional

livelihood

enhancement

Disincentives:

restrictions on

forest access

& conversion

Tenure insecurity

17

13

17

2123

17

1113

32

22

-

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

All None Incentives Disincentives Both

Perc

en

t

Perceived tenure insequrity (%)

Phase 1 (before) Phase 2 (after)

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- CAC measures tend to reduce tenure security

- Positive incentives tend to increase it

- Country variation:

- Tanzania: 6 -> 0 %

- Indonesia: 17 -> 11 %

- Vietnam: 12 -> 20 %

- Other 3: slightly up

Knowledge and participation

55.5

89.9

80.8

94.9

24.4

57.9

33.5

74

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

None Incentives Disincentives Both

Knowledge and participation (%)

Knowledge Participation

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- Nearly 80 % aware of the local REDD+ initiative

- Ca. 50% participated in design and/or implementation

- Some expected variation across intervention type

- Brazil: Only 14% participation for disincentives (CAC),

while 62% for incentives

Subjective well-being (SWB)

• Q1: How has SWB changed past 2 years?

– More report (34-48%) positive change than negative change (20-

28%)

– Small difference between type of intervention (‘disincentives’ do

not report worse off)

• Q2: How has intervention affected SWB?

– Overall, weakly positive (score ca. 3.5 on Lickert scale)

– Disincentives slightly more negative; In Brazil: 3.94

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Forest clearing

• Evidence of effectiveness of disincentives in reducing

clearing (except Indonesia)

• Trade-off carbon

effectiveness and

tenure security and

well-being

• Inherent tension

between carbon

and non-carbon

values

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Q7: Why has REDD+ not met our

initial (optimistic) expectations?

32

0

1.0e

+06

2.0e

+06

3.0e

+06

4.0e

+06

2000 2005 2010 2015year

loss25_brazil loss25_drc

loss25_indonesia

A1: REDD+ is too small

• Not implemented at a scale needed to make a difference

• Initial proposals: USD 10-15 billion/year

• Actual international transfer: ca. USD 10 billion so far,

and declining (< 1 billion/year)

• “It will, however, be possible to achieve large-scale and sustainable

reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and

forest degradation in developing countries only if these emissions are

included in a global post-2012 climate regime.”

(Erik Solheim, 2008 in “Moving Ahead with REDD”)

• Still waiting for that climate regime

=> Simply not enough funding to make conservation more

profitable than forest clearing!33

A2: Strong Business-as-Usual (BAU)

interests continue to dominate

• Linked to A1: not enough funding to change basic equation

– REDD was (to some) supposed to buy out BAU interests

• Powerful BAU coalitions, as seen

– Indonesia

– Brazil

• Some local successes

– Indonesia: statutory community ownership

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A3: No national policies nor PES,

only ineffective ICDP

• Integrated Conservation and Development

Projects/Programmes (ICDPs)

– Alternative livelihoods

– Extension and education

– Enforcement

• Textbook PES with hard conditionality not common

– “Unconditional PES” – a contradiction

• Strong projectification of REDD+

– NGOs ready to relabel projects to tap into new funding

– REDD+ marginalized to “harmless” (to BAU projects?

– Projects win battles, policies win the war

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A4: PES is flawed

• The Fletcher et al. (2016) argument of PES being flawed

and a contradiction

• True, PES is challenging

– Costly

– Selecting and measuring performance indicators

– Counterfactual: Targeting, additionality, ref. level

– Assigning rights, attribution

• But:

– Misunderstandings, e.g. pay in excess of revenue

– ‘Crowding out’ of intrinsic motivation?

• Not if economic considerations already there

• PES as ‘crowding in’ and norm-confirmation

• And, since few, large PES examples, cannot explain

REDD+ failure 36

My grades (to the question: “why

has not REDD+ achieved more?”

Answer Grade Comment

1. Not enough

money

B True, but would big money

have solved it?

2. BAU interests

dominate

A True, but how to change?

3. No PES or

national policies

B Cannot be sure PES would

have worked; Nat.pol. are key

4. PES is flawed D PES not implemented, so

cannot explain failure.

Rhetoric still matters?

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REDD+ as a learning experience • The question is not:

“Should we continue with REDD+ or not”?

• But rather:

“What have we learned that can make our current and

future effort to reduce forest emissions more effective,

efficient and equitable?”

• Dismissing REDD+,

or telling unfounded

success stories,

prevent that learning

• The writing of lessons

learned has just begun

• … and some ‘lessons learned’

are still ‘lessons to be learned’ 38

Thanks

… for valuable inputs and discussions in preparing this

presentation:

–Astrid Bos

–Maria Brockhaus

–Amy E Duchelle

–Martin Herold

–Amy Ickowitz

–Anne Larsson

–Christopher Martius

–Erin Sills

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Principal papers• Angelsen, A., Brockhaus, M., Duchelle, A. E., Larson, A., Martius, C., Sunderlin, W. D., Verchot, L., Wong,

G., Wunder, S., 2017. Learning from REDD+: a response to Fletcher et al., Conservation Biology. 31, 718-

720.

• Bos, A. B., Duchelle, A., Angelsen, A., Avitabile, V., De Sy, V., Herold, M., Joseph, S., de Sassi, C., Sills, E.,

Sunderlin, W., 2017. Comparing methods for assessing the effectiveness of subnational REDD+

initiatives, Environmental Research Letters, 12.

• Brockhaus, M., Di Gregorio, M., Mardiah, S., 2014. Governing the design of national REDD+: An analysis

of the power of agency, Forest Policy and Economics. 49, 23-33.

• Brockhaus, M., Korhonen-Kurki, M. K., Sehring, J., Di Gregorio, M., Assembe-Mvondo, S., Babon, A.,

Bekele, M., Gebara, M. F., Khatri, D.B., Kambire, H., Kengoum, F., Kweka, D., Menton, M., Moeliono, M.,

Paudel, N. S., Pham, T.T., Resosudarmo, I. A.P., Sitoe, A., Wunder, S. & Zida, M., 2017. REDD+,

transformational change and the promise of performance-based payments: a qualitative comparative analysis,

Climate Policy. 17, 708-730.

• Duchelle, A., de Sassi, C., Jagger, P., Cromberg, M., Larson, A., Sunderlin, W., Atmadja, S., Resosudarmo, I.

A. P., Pratama, C. D., 2017. Balancing carrots and sticks in REDD+: implications for social

safeguards, Ecology and Society. 22.

• Ickowitz, A., Sills, E., de Sassi, C., 2017. Estimating Smallholder Opportunity Costs of REDD+: A

Pantropical Analysis from Households to Carbon and Back, World Development. 95, 15-26.

• Sanders, A. J., da Silva Hyldmo, H., Ford, R. M., Larson, A. M., Keenan, R. J., 2017. Guinea pig or pioneer:

Translating global environmental objectives through to local actions in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia’s

REDD+ pilot province, Global Environmental Change. 42, 68-81.

• Sills, E. O., de Sassi, C., Jagger, P., Lawlor, K., Miteva, D. A., Pattanayak, S. K., Sunderlin, W. D., 2017.

Building the evidence base for REDD+: Study design and methods for evaluating the impacts of

conservation interventions on local well-being, Global Environmental Change. 43, 148-160.

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Financial support for GCS REDD+

www.cifor.org/gcs

a.duchelle@cgiar.org