The Top 10: What’s wrong with REDD?

If you’re looking for a list of what’s wrong with REDD, then look no further. The Climate Justice Research Project at Dartmouth College has just produced this top 10 list (fully referenced version below):

1. Calculation of offsets is highly sensitive to choice of baseline methods and data availability, raising the potential for fraudulent “hot air” resulting from corruption

2. There is a severe lack of environmental safeguards in place to protect affected communities or to avoid biodiversity loss beyond project boundaries

3. REDD forest definitions can encourage plantation forestry, leading to mono-cropping and food insecurity

4. There is a severe lack of genuine community participation in project planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation

5. A lack of consultation with people affected by REDD projects means individuals affected often do not receive benefits and are further impoverished

6. REDD can create pressures for recentralization of forest governance, undermining the social, ecological, and carbon benefits of traditional forest management and the customary rights livelihoods of forest-dwelling peoples while encouraging corruption

7. REDD adopts a neoliberal approach that tries to solve the problem with the same practices that caused it in the first place, failing to address the fundamental issue of consumption that drives environmental degradation and which will continue to drive deforestation if unaddressed

8. REDD-style projects displace communities without effective resettlement plans, leading to increased poverty, marginalization, cultural loss, food insecurity, loss of education, etc., that are unlikely to be compensated due to corruption and capture of benefits by elites

9. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is not legally binding, and prominent REDD proponents, such as the United States, either voted against it or abstained, suggesting little commitment to efforts to improve REDD protections for indigenous peoples or even grant them the right of free, prior, and informed consent that is essential for protection of their rights and project effectiveness

10. Because of its weaknesses, REDD is primed to become part of the “last great land grab” on the part of corrupt elites taking advantage of insufficient protection of customary rights

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As the UN climate negotiations move along in Cancún, one step forwards, two steps back, and some staggering around in no particular direction at all, REDD is hailed as the big hope from Cancún. But if REDD is to do anything apart from provide a green fig leaf for continued pollution and a potentially massive land grab, there are some serious problems that need to be addressed.

Here is the fully referenced version of the Climate Justice Research Project’s “Top Ten Disasters to Heed from REDD/REDD+ projects” – it is also available for download here:

CLIMATE JUSTICE RESEARCH PROJECT SCHOLARLY NOTE

REDD & REDD+¹

Dartmouth College
Climate Justice Research Project

Agreement between Parties on supporting Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) projects is often cited as the most substantial outcome of COP15. While it remains inappropriate to address a problem with a solution that stems from the same basic principles, (i.e., demonstrably failed neoliberal policy measures) REDD remains a reality for being implemented as a “solution” to climate change. Therefore, it is essential to pay great attention to the very real, disastrous potentials of REDD/REDD+ and move towards policies that truly benefit local and indigenous communities, longstanding and too often marginalized stewards of forests. A review of the scholarly literature by the Dartmouth Climate Justice Research Project (CJRP) compels us to flag concerns on REDD and REDD+ accordingly as below.

Top Ten Disasters to Heed from REDD/REDD+ projects:

1. Calculation of offsets is highly sensitive to choice of baseline methods and data availability (Griscom, et al., 2009; Pirard and Karsenty, 2009; Dudley, 2010; Huettner, et al., 2009; Umemiya, et al., 2010), raising the potential for fraudulent “hot air” resulting from corruption (Brown, 2010: 260)

2. There is a severe lack of environmental safeguards in place to protect affected communities or to avoid biodiversity loss beyond project boundaries (Pauli, et al., 2010; Sasaki and Putz, 2009)

3. REDD forest definitions can encourage plantation forestry (Sasaki and Putz, 2009), leading to mono-cropping and food insecurity.

4. There is a severe lack of genuine community participation in project planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation (Kelly, 2010: 68; Clark, 2010: 49-50, 57-59; Asquith, et al., 2002: 331-332; Couto Pereira, 2010; Friends of the Earth International, 2010: 15, 18, 20-21)

5. A lack of consultation with people affected by REDD projects means individuals affected often do not receive benefits and are further impoverished (Kelly, 2010: 68; Clark, 2010: 49-50, 57-59; Asquith, et al., 2002: 331-332; Couto Pereira, 2010; Friends of the Earth International, 2010: 15, 18, 20-21)

6. REDD can create pressures for recentralization of forest governance, undermining the social, ecological, and carbon benefits of traditional forest management and the customary rights livelihoods of forest-dwelling peoples while encouraging corruption (Kelly, 2010: 69; Seymour, 2008: 11; Phelps, et al., 2010).

7. REDD adopts a neoliberal approach that tries to solve the problem with the same practices that caused it in the first place, failing to address the fundamental issue of consumption that drives environmental degradation and which will continue to drive deforestation if unaddressed (Brown, 2010: 262; Global Forest Coalition, 2010: 5; Butler, et al., 2009; Dauvergne, 2010; Meyfroidt, et al., 2010)

8. REDD-style projects displace communities without effective resettlement plans, leading to increased poverty, marginallization, cultural loss, food insecurity, loss of eduction, etc., that are unlikely to be compensated due to corruption and capture of benefits by elites (West, et al., 2006; Andarn, et al., 2008; Nepstad, et al., 2006; Bray, et al., 2008; Joppa and Pfaff, 2010).

9. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is not legally binding, and prominent REDD proponents, such as the United States, either voted against it or abstained (United Nations, 2007), suggesting little commitment to efforts to improve REDD protections for indigenous peoples or even grant them the right of free, prior, and informed consent that is essential for protection of their rights and project effectiveness (Lawlor, et al., 2009: 11-12).

10. Because of its weaknesses, REDD is primed to become part of the “last great land grab” on the part of corrupt elites taking advantage of insufficient protection of customary rights (Rights and Resources Initiative, 2008; Indigenous Environmental Network, 2009)

LITERATURE REVIEW

Andarn, Kwaw S., Paul J. Ferraro, Alexander Pfaff, G. Artuor Sanchez-Azofeifa, and Juan A. Robalino (2008). Measuring the effectiveness of protected area networks in reducing deforestation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 15(2): 16089-16094.

Asquith, Nigel M., María Teresa Vargas Ríos, and Joyotee Smith (2002). Can forest-protection projects improve rural livelihoods? Analysis of the Noel Kempff Mercado Climate Action Project, Bolivia. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. 7: 323-337.

Bray, David Barton, Elvira Duran, Victor Hugo Ramos, Jean-Francois Mas, Alejandro Velazquez, Roan Balas McNab, Deborah Berry, and Jeremy Radachowsky (2008). Tropical deforestation, community forests, and protected areas in the Maya forest. Ecology and Society. 13(2): 56 (online).

Brown, Michael L. (2010). Limiting corrupt incentives in a global REDD regime. Ecology Law Quarterly, 37: 237-267.

Butler, Rhett A., Lian Pin Koh, and Jaboury Ghazoul (2009). REDD in the red: Palm oil could undermine carbon payment schemes. Conservation Letters. 2: 67-73.

Clark, Ross Andrew (2010). Moving the REDD debate from theory to practice: Lessons learned from the Ulu Masen project. Law, Environment, and Development Journal, 6(1): 36-60.

Couto Periera, Simone Novotny (2010). Payment for environmental services in the Amazon forest: How can conservation and development be reconciled? The Journal of Environment and Development. 19(2): 171-190.

Dauvergne, Peter (2010). The problem of consumption. Global Environmental Politics. 10(2): 1-10.

Dudley, Richard G. (2010). A little REDD model to quickly compare possible baseline and policy scenarios for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 15: 53-69.

Friends of the Earth (2010). REDD: The realities in black and white. Amsterdam: Friends of the Earth International.

Global Forest Coalition (2010). Getting to the roots: Underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation, and drivers of forest restoration. Asunción, Paraguay: Global Forest Coalition.

Griscom, Bronson, David Shoch, Bill Stanley, Rane Cortez, and Nicole Virgilio (2009). Sensitivity of amounts and distribution of tropical forest carbon credits depending on baseline rules. Environmental Science and Policy, 12: 897-911.

Huettner, Michael, Rik Leemans, Kasper Kok, and Johannes Ebeling (2009). A comparison of baseline methodologies for ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation’. Carbon Balance and Management. 4(4): Open Access.

Indigenous Environmental Network (2009). REDD: Reaping profits from evictions, land grabs, deforestation, and destruction of biodiversity. Indigenous Environmental Network. Accessed 1 December 2010, from: http://www.ienearth.org/REDD/redd.pdf.

Joppa, Lucas, and Alexander Pfaff (2010). Reassessing the forest impacts of protection: The challenge of nonrandom location and a corrective method. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1185: 135-149.

Kelly, David J. (2010). The case for social safeguards in a post-2012 agreement on REDD. Law, Environment, and Development Journal. 6(1): 61-81.

Lawlor, Kathleen, Lydia P. Olander, and Erika Weinthal (2009). Sustaining livelihoods while reducing emissions from deforestation: Options for policymakers. Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions Working Paper. NI WP 09-02. Durham, NC: Duke University Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Meyfroidt, Patrick, Thomas K. Rudel, and Eric F. Lambin (2010). Forest transitions, trade, and the global displacement of land-use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. Accessed 2 December 2010, from: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/11/05/1014773107.full.pdf+html.

Nepstad, D., Schwartzman, S., Bamberger, B., Santilli, M., Ray, D., Schlesinger, P. Lefebvre, A. Alencar, E. Prinz, Greg Fiske, and Alicia Rolla (2006). Inhibition of Amazon deforestation and fire by parks and indigenous lands. Conservation Biology. 20(1): 65-73.

Pauli, Gary D. Philip L. Wells, Erik Meijaard, Matthew J. Struebig, Andrew J. Marshall, Krystof Obidzinski, Aseng Tan, Andjar Rafiastanto, Betsy Yaap, J. W. Ferry Silk, Alexandra Morel, Balu Perumal, Niels Wielaard, Simon Husson, and Laura D’Arcy (2010). Biodiversity conservation in the REDD. Carbon Balance and Management. Open Access.

Phelps, Jacob, Edward L. Webb, and Arun Agrawal (2010). Does REDD+ threaten to recentralize forest governance? Science, 328(5976): 312-313.

Pirard, Romain and Alain Karsenty (2009). Climate change mitigation: Should “avoided deforestation” be rewarded? Journal of sustainable forestry, 28: 434-455.

Rights and Resources Intiative (2008). Seeing people through the trees: Scaling up efforts to advance rights and address poverty, conflict and climate change. Washington, DC: Rights and Resources Initiative.

Sasaki, Nophea, and Francis E. Putz (2009). Critical need for new definitions of “forest” and “forest degradation” in global climate change agreements. Conservation Letters. 2: 226-232.

Seymour, Francis (2008). Forests, climate change, and human rights: Managing risk and trade-offs. Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research.

Umemiya, Chisa, Masahiro Amano, and Suphawadee Wilamart (2010). Assessing data availability for the development of REDD-plus national reference levels. Carbon Balance and Management. 5(6): 1-7.

United Nations (2007). General Assembly adopts declaration on rights of indigenous peoples. GA/10612. Accessed 2 December 2010, from: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/ga10612.doc.htm.

West, Paige, James Igoe, and Dan Brockington (2006). Parks and peoples: The social impact of protected areas. Annual Review of Anthropology. 35: 251-277.

1. Research assistance was dutifully provided by CJRP COP16 interns: Caleb Gallemore and Julie Koppel Maldonado.