Problematizing REDD+ as an experiment in payments for ecosystem services

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This paper conceptualizes the REDD+ policy framework as the world's largest experiment in Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). REDD+ promotes the commodification of ecosystems’ carbon storage and sequestration functions on a global scale and it is consistent with market-based conservation approaches and the ‘neoliberalization of nature’. REDD+ is therefore problematized on the grounds that, first, eases a transition from an ethically informed conservation ethos to a utilitarian one that simplifies nature and undermines socio-ecological resilience; second, relies on a single valuation language that may crowd-out conservation motivations in the short and long term; and, last, is sustained on a ‘multiple-win’ discourse that in practice lacks procedural legitimacy in many developing countries and reproduces existing inequities and forms of social exclusion. The argument is developed drawing on PES literature and insights from critical theorists and practitioners of nature conservation.

Highlights

► REDD+ can be conceptualized as the world's largest experiment in payments for ecosystem services. ► REDD+ and PES contribute to shift the logic of conservation from an ethical to a utilitarian ethos. ► They result in procedural and distributive inequities and may crowd-out conservation values in the future. ► An ecological debt fund would be a more ecologically and socially just approach to influence land-use governance.

Introduction

Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, conserving and enhancing forest carbon stocks, and sustainably managing forests (REDD+) is an international climate policy framework aimed at generating incentives to protect and better manage forest resources, by recognizing and establishing an economic value for the additional carbon stored in trees or not emitted to the atmosphere [1]. REDD+’s procedural rules have evolved over time [2] and its implementation means are country-specific. To be effective, REDD+ will require several coordinated national and regional policy programs, subnational projects, and involve multiple actors, including governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), multilateral agencies, private organizations, communities and individuals. REDD+ activities can thus include enforcing and expanding protected areas, combating illegal logging, changing subsidy and incentive policies, improving land-use planning, developing new forest management regulations, taxes and sanctions, and also very likely providing targeted economic incentives to land owners and rural communities through national and project-based schemes of payments for ecosystem services (PES) [3, 4]. Subsequently, governments should develop legal and technical frameworks for a carbon accounting system that controls for and does not double-count emission reductions from multiple activities, whilst taking into account carbon ownership and liability issues [5, 6]. The diversity of implementation means and participants makes REDD+ a relevant experiment of multi-level environmental governance [7, 8].

REDD+ has so far been catapulted through a range of public funds1 supporting the development of technical capacities and the design and early implementation of developing country policy options, counting with deposits for a total of 1.5 billion US$. Some of this funding will probably have to be sustained over time to consolidate carbon accounting and capacity building in developing countries. Additionally, a long-standing framework to reward governments and private actors for the supply of carbon emission reductions will probably have to rely on carbon markets and/or new supporting funds generated by proceeds from permit auctions or surcharges on trading of emission credits; a levy on Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects; a tax on air traffic, fines imposed on countries that do not comply with the international climate regime; and debt-for-nature swaps [9].

This paper conceptualizes REDD+ as the world's largest PES experiment. PES are generally understood as a voluntary transfer of – most often monetary – incentives from beneficiaries to providers of ecosystem services, as long as incentives are made conditional to actual service provision and participation is voluntary. Some PES are part of well-developed markets for mitigating impacts through offsetting, such as carbon markets and wetland banking [10, 11]. REDD+ aims to transfer economic resources from carbon offset buyers to sellers with payments being conditional to the adoption of sustainable land-use practices and the delivery of emission reductions against national or project-based baselines, expressed in tonnes of avoided or sequestered carbon dioxide emissions. As suggested above, payments are likely to be articulated through transnational or global markets for REDD+ and other types of carbon offsets.

REDD+ thus promotes the commodification of ecosystems’ primary production by isolating carbon storage and sequestration functions from other services provided by forests; quantifying such functions with a standard unit of measurement (tonnes of CO2); monitoring and reporting carbon stocks and fluxes over time and landscapes; and economically valuing the cost of avoided or sequestered forest carbon emissions for the purpose of exchange between buyers and sellers [9]. It upscales the model of project-based forest carbon offsets promoted by voluntary carbon markets and the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism to encompass programmatic policy actions at country level and national-based carbon accounting methods.

What follows draws on critiques of and insights from incentive-based conservation, including PES and REDD+ evidence, to frame REDD+ as a paradigmatic example of market-based conservation, that is the management of nature according to monetary values, and utilitarian principles of supply and demand [12]. This conservation approach is unsurprisingly subject to the ‘particularities of place’ and varying degrees of public and private intervention and re-regulation that characterize the ‘neoliberalization of nature’ [13, 14, 15••, 16, 17, 18••]. It is argued that REDD+ transforms the conservation logic and reconfigures livelihood strategies without significantly altering procedural and distributive justice conditions of the geographies where concrete REDD+ policies and project interventions unfold. In doing so, the paper sheds light on the risks and limitations of ecosystem service-driven conservation and adds to a growing body of evidence that exposes the limitations of “selling nature to save it” [19, 20, 21]. The conclusions summarize the argument and introduce an alternative proposal for funding land-use governance in developing countries.

Section snippets

Itemizing nature fosters a shift in conservation logic

The concept ‘ecosystem services’ has been popularized by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as the benefits that nature provides to humans and that influence our well being [22]. The concept was already coined in the late 1970s and early 1980s but its utilitarian emphasis has been only recently discussed and criticized [23, 24, 25]. Dividing nature in a collection of ecosystem services is a scientifically-driven process that, taken out of context, may render invisible the inter-connectedness

Pricing ecosystem services risks crowding-out conservation behavior

The underlying attribution of a monetary value to an ecosystem service that characterizes REDD+ and other PES schemes risks undermining or at best underplaying other languages of valuation [12]. Examples of rural communities resisting the pricing and exchange of ecosystem services are rare, potentially due to the fact that only those PES schemes that are somehow supported and become implemented are thoroughly researched. In south-east Mexico, for example, there are documented cases of

Uneven procedural and distributive outcomes

PES schemes are informed by a neoliberal environmentalist rhetoric that makes it possible for ecosystem service buyers to “eat one's conservation cake and have development desert too” [61]. Governments and NGOs often understand PES as instruments that can reconcile conservation and development goals and acknowledge the role of landowners and communities in securing the provision of ecosystem services. When introduced to prospective providers, both national and localized PES schemes have been

Conclusion

This paper has argued that REDD+ can be conceptualized as the largest PES experiment in the world. As such, the framework is congruent with an existing trend towards ‘neoliberalizing nature’ that is characterized by the re-regulation of state and non-state driven forms of conservation through the commodification of new ecosystem goods and services; an increasing number and complexity of actors pursuing conservation; a process of territorialization that demarcates new spaces for controlling

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

  • • of special interest

  • •• of outstanding interest

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the valuable comments provided by two anonymous reviewers and the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through a ‘Ramón y Cajal’ fellowship (RYC-2010-07183) and of the Biodiversa Framework Project INVALUABLE: Values, Markets, and Policies for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (PRI-PIMBDV-2011-1072).

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