Redeeming REDD
Redeeming REDD

Author: Michael I. Brown

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-26

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1136340602

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It is now well accepted that deforestation is a key source of greenhouse gas emissions and of climate change, with forests representing major sinks for carbon. As a result, public and private initiatives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) have been widely endorsed by policy-makers. A key issue is the feasibility of carbon trading or other incentives to encourage land-owners and indigenous people, particularly in developing tropical countries, to conserve forests, rather than to cut them down for agricultural or other development purposes. This book presents a major critique of the aims and policies of REDD as currently structured, particularly in terms of their social feasibility. It is shown how the claims to be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as enhance people's livelihoods and biodiversity conservation are unrealistic. There is a naive assumption that technical or economic fixes are sufficient for success. However, the social and governance aspects of REDD, and its enhanced version known as REDD+, are shown to be implausible. Instead to enhance REDD's prospects, the author provides a roadmap for developing a new social contract that puts people first.

Reconsidering REDD+
Reconsidering REDD+

Author: Julia Dehm

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-06-03

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 1108540139

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In Reconsidering REDD+: Authority, Power and Law in the Green Economy, Julia Dehm provides a critical analysis of how the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme operates to reorganise social relations and to establish new forms of global authority over forests in the Global South, in ways that benefit the interests of some actors while further marginalising others. In accessible prose that draws on interdisciplinary insights, Dehm demonstrates how, through the creation of new legal relations, including property rights and contractual obligations, new forms of transnational authority over forested areas in the Global South are being constituted. This important work should be read by anyone interested in a critical analysis of international climate law and policy that offers insights into questions of political economy, power, and unequal authority.

The Carbon Fix
The Carbon Fix

Author: Stephanie Paladino

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-18

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1315473992

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Given the growing urgency to develop global responses to a changing climate, The Carbon Fix examines the social and equity dimensions of putting the world’s forests—and, necessarily, the rural people who manage and depend on them—at the center of climate policy efforts such as REDD+, intended to slow global warming. The book assesses the implications of international policy approaches that focus on forests as carbon and especially, forest carbon offsets, for rights, justice, and climate governance. Contributions from leading anthropologists and geographers analyze a growing trend towards market principles and financialization of nature in environmental governance, placing it into conceptual, critical, and historical context. The book then challenges perceptions of forest carbon initiatives through in-depth, field-based case studies assessing projects, policies, and procedures at various scales, from informed consent to international carbon auditing. While providing a mixed assessment of the potential for forest carbon initiatives to balance carbon with social goals, the authors present compelling evidence for the complexities of the carbon offset enterprise, fraught with competing interests and interpretations at multiple scales, and having unanticipated and often deleterious effects on the resources and rights of the world’s poorest peoples—especially indigenous and rural peoples. The Carbon Fix provides nuanced insights into political, economic, and ethical issues associated with climate change policy. Its case approach and fresh perspective are critical to environmental professionals, development planners, and project managers; and to students in upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental anthropology and geography, environmental and policy studies, international development, and indigenous studies.

The Performance of REDD+
The Performance of REDD+

Author: Bas Arts

Publisher: MDPI

Published: 2021-09-09

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 3039288997

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REDD+ represents countries’ efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and foster conservation, the sustainable management of forests, and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks. The basic idea is that more carbon can be sequestrated and stocked in tropical forests by improving their conservation, management, and sustainable use, thus contributing to mitigating climate change. The developing countries and relevant stakeholders concerned will be financially compensated for these endeavors, either through public funds or private carbon markets. Given this context, this book will address the need to assess the political and socio–economic dimensions of the performance of REDD+, which is relevant to policy-makers, practitioners, and scholars. This implies taking into account the various levels (from global to local) and dimensions (e.g., results-based payments, MRV, co-benefits, and community engagement), as well as divergent (disciplinary) connotations, of performance. We, therefore, pose the following question: What does performance mean? In answering this question, we provide examples of assessments of performance. We present 9 cases of how REDD has performed on local, national and international scales, and reflect on the representativeness of these examples and their limitations when looking at the current range of REDD initiatives, along with what is missing in terms of evaluating the performance of REDD+. We conclude by establishing why performance assessment remains so relevant today.

Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa
Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa

Author: Melissa Leach

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-06-05

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1317579984

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Amidst the pressing challenges of global climate change, the last decade has seen a wave of forest carbon projects across the world, designed to conserve and enhance forest carbon stocks in order to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and offset emissions elsewhere. Exploring a set of new empirical case studies, Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa examines how these projects are unfolding, their effects, and who is gaining and losing. Situating forest carbon approaches as part of more general moves to address environmental problems by attaching market values to nature and ecosystems, it examines how new projects interact with forest landscapes and their longer histories of intervention. The book asks: what difference does carbon make? What political and ecological dynamics are unleashed by these new commodified, marketized approaches, and how are local forest users experiencing and responding to them? The book’s case studies cover a wide range of African ecologies, project types and national political-economic contexts. By examining these cases in a comparative framework and within an understanding of the national, regional and global institutional arrangements shaping forest carbon commoditisation, the book provides a rich and compelling account of how and why carbon conflicts are emerging, and how they might be avoided in future. This book will be of interest to students of development studies, environmental sciences, geography, economics, development studies and anthropology, as well as practitioners and policy makers.

Climate Cultures
Climate Cultures

Author: Jessica Barnes

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0300198817

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Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our times, yet global solutions have proved elusive. This book draws together cutting-edge anthropological research to uncover new ways of approaching the critical questions that surround climate change. Leading anthropologists engage in three major areas of inquiry: how climate change issues have been framed in previous times compared to present-day discourse, how knowledge about climate change and its impacts is produced and interpreted by different groups, and how imagination plays a role in shaping conceptions of climate change.

Papua New Guinea in the Twenty-first Century
Papua New Guinea in the Twenty-first Century

Author: David Lea

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1666917397

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This book describes the challenges this young nation state of Papua New Guinea faces in the twenty first century as it strives for economic development and an independent voice in regional and international affairs. These challenges also include the geopolitical context in which China is exerting a growing influence.

Forest Governance
Forest Governance

Author: Jessica Stubenrauch

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-04-22

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 3030991849

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This book analyses and develops overarching concepts for forest policy and forest governance and includes a detailed investigation into the historical discussion on forests. It examines opportunities and limits for negative emissions in a sector that – like peatlands – appears significantly less ambivalent compared to highly technical large-scale forms of climate geoengineering. The analysis shows that the binding climate and biodiversity targets under international law are much more ambitious than most people assume. Measured against that, the volume critically reviews the potentials of afforestation and reforestation for climate mitigation, which is often presented as the new saviour to fulfil the commitments of the Paris Agreement and to reach climate neutrality in the future. It becomes clear that ultimately only biodiverse and thus resilient forests can function as a carbon sink in the long term. The volume shows that the existing European and international forest governance approaches fail to comply with these targets and insights. Furthermore, the book develops a bundle of policy measures. Quantity governance systems for livestock farming, fossil fuels and similar drivers of deforestations represent the most important approach. They are most effective when not directly targeting forests due to their heterogeneity but central damaging factors. With regard to the dominant regulatory and subsidy-based governance for forests we show that it remains necessary to supplement these quantity governance systems with certain easily graspable and thus controllable regulatory and subsidy regulations such as a regulatory protection of old-growth forests with almost no exceptions; extension of the livestock-to-land-ratio established in organic farming to all farming; far-reaching restriction of bioenergy use to certain residues flanked by import bans; and a national and international complete conversion of all agricultural and forest subsidies to “public money for public services” to promote nature conservation and afforestation in addition to the quantity control systems.