**REDD+ as a Public Policy Dilemma: Understanding Conflict and Cooperation in the Design of Conservation Incentives**

#### **Hugo Rosa da Conceição 1,\*, Jan Börner 1,2 and Sven Wunder 3,4**


Received: 24 September 2018; Accepted: 1 November 2018; Published: 20 November 2018

**Abstract:** Command-and-control policies are often criticized as insufficient to tackle tropical deforestation. Over the past two decades, both academics and policy-makers have promoted incentive-based policies, notably REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), as attractive alternatives to curb forest loss, while also potentially contributing to the poverty reduction of forest-dwelling populations. Governments have been the driving force behind the largest incentive-based forest conservation programs in Latin America. Many science-based recommendations on how to design effective incentive-based policies have, however, not found much resonance within policy circles. To understand the gap between recommendations and practice, it is important to analyze how these schemes are designed towards achieving environmental and non-environmental outcomes. To this end, we analyzed the comprehensive history of governance dynamics behind two government-led incentive schemes in Ecuador and Peru. We found that electoral interests and bureaucratic politics exerted pressure on policy design teams, which eventually traded off long-term societal efficiency concerns against short-term administrative goals. Priority was often given to non-environmental concerns, due to perceptions of political feasibility, the influence of non-environmental government agencies, and beliefs in particular government roles or public response. These findings are especially relevant for scholars studying the design, implementation and impacts of incentive-based conservation policies, and for practitioners aiming to enhance policy efficiency.

**Keywords:** environmental governance; forest conservation; climate change mitigation; public policies; Amazon

#### **1. Introduction**

Despite the sluggish progress in international climate policy, Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) has become an important international source of funding for forest conservation since the mid-2000s. REDD+ was conceived as a means to harness the allegedly high potential for cost-effective emissions reductions in the forestry sector [1]. As international negotiations went on, countries with forest reserves prepared to receive international transfers for REDD+ implementation.

Incentive-based policies, such as Payments for Environmental Services (PES), were frequently proposed mechanisms to implement REDD+ on the ground [1]. Many PES initiatives were born over the last couple of decades, often preceding official decisions at the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on REDD+. Existing PES schemes can thus provide lessons to inform the implementation of REDD+ on the ground [2,3].

Governments were often the driving force behind large REDD+ and PES programs [4]. Arguably, due to economies of scale and the possibilities for integration with other sectoral policies, governments are bound to be at the forefront of adopting PES as a large-scale forest conservation tool. Early PES research, however, suggested that government-led PES schemes tend to be less cost-effective than private PES initiatives [5]. Emerging impact evaluation studies confirmed this conjecture, showing that the effectiveness of selected schemes in reducing deforestation has been low [6].

One of the reasons singled out for the low effectiveness of government-led PES is the existence of "major political-economy obstacles" [7] (p. 11) and a "need to accommodate political pressures" [8] (p. 260). Early PES research mostly focused on the technical aspects of designing payments to provide additional environmental services cost-effectively. In recent years, however, a growing body of literature has investigated the complexities of REDD+ and PES policy-making processes, beyond technical aspects. This research focused on the political contexts and discourses related to REDD+ in several countries [9–16], multi-level and polycentric governance issues in REDD+ [17–20], the institutionalization processes of REDD+'s technical aspects such as monitoring and benefit-sharing [21,22], and national case studies on the governance of REDD+ and PES design and implementation [23–28]. This paper seeks to add to this body of literature, accounting in detail for how political processes can shape and transform the design of incentive-based environmental policies.

In a previous article, we [29] analyzed the factors explaining the political dynamics of the adoption of three incentive-based forest conservation programs, the National Program of Forest Conservation for the Mitigation of Climate Change—Programa Bosques—in Peru, the Socio Bosque program-in Ecuador, and the System of Incentives for Environmental Services—SISA—in the state of Acre, Brazil.

Here, we revisit the Programa Bosques and Socio Bosque programs to zoom in on their policy-design processes. We show why and how context-specific political and bureaucratic constraints affected their design, focusing especially on how those constraints led to deviations from efficiency-oriented recommendations in the literature. The two programs were chosen for being both well-known and comparable examples of large-scale PES programs with clear potential for REDD+.

Section 2 presents the conceptual framework used in our analysis. Section 3 describes the history and analyzes the processes that led to the design features of the programs. Section 4 concludes the paper, discussing how the findings are relevant for forest conservation and REDD+ policies. The Supplementary materials provide a factual description of the programs, supporting the understanding of Sections 3 and 4.

#### **2. Conceptual Framework**

Some articles have utilized institutional frameworks for analyzing PES schemes [30,31], but few have explicitly drawn insights from public policy theories focusing on the motivations of governments [24,32]. In this section, we present a conceptual framework for our two case studies that is derived from different public policy theories. Drawing eclectically on various theories of policy science, our framework does, in Ostrom's words, "provide the most general list of variables that should be used to analyze institutional arrangements" [33] (p. 26).

Policy design is more than a technical exercise of matching appropriate responses to given problems. It is a complex and eventually ambiguous product of interactions and interdependencies occurring, as posed by Howlett [34], at three levels of decision making (see Figure 1). At an abstract level, we label "overarching preferences" (by Howlett, called "macro-level") the general statements of "government aims and ambitions in a specific policy area" and the "long-term preferences of government in terms of organizational devices to be used in addressing policy aims" (p. 75). At the level of "operational policy objectives" (Howlett's "meso-level"), we observe "the specific types of governing instruments to be used to address program level objectives" (ibid). In this article, however, our focus is on "specific, on-the-ground micro requirements to attain policy objectives the settings of policy tools required to attain policy targets." (ibid). Choices at this level of "specific design decisions" ("micro-level") will determine the details of how a policy instrument will ultimately be shaped. That does not mean we ignore the importance of long-term policy preferences, but that we seek to analyze policy processes that occurred in a shorter time span. Hence, we interpret long-standing policy preferences (e.g., an marked focus on social policy in Ecuador) as a given policy context in which decisions are made. Figure 1 illustrates the framework and Table 1 describes its elements.

**Figure 1.** The conceptual framework. Source: elaborated by the authors.



#### **3. The Design of Public PES Schemes: Socio Bosque and Programa Bosques**

This section describes how academic recommendations for cost-efficient PES were considered in the design of each program, and analyzes the underlying decision-making processes. Table 2 summarizes the section. A detailed description of the programs is provided in the Supplementary materials. Our sources of analysis were personal interviews with current and former policymakers who were directly or indirectly involved with program design, and a thorough scrutiny of design documents, as well as triangulated opinions on (and external analyses of) how design decisions were made and implemented.

#### *3.1. Conditionality, Monitoring, and Baselines*

Conditionality means that payments should only be made if environmental services (ES) are being provided, or a proxy activity clearly linked to the provision of ES is implemented. It is the defining characteristic of PES programs, the one that distinguishes them from more traditional subsidy programs [5,46]. Conditionality is the combination of compliance monitoring ("efforts to detect non-complying participants, typically combining remote-sensing technologies with on-site ground truthing") [46] (p. 146), and sanctioning non-compliance, usually by suspending or withdrawing payments. PES programs should also construct baselines to enable the understanding of what would have happened without the scheme and to gauge additionality.

Socio Bosque's design contains clear conditionalities attached to payments. Program planners emphasized the need for simplicity and clarity of conditionalities, given that long administrative procedures would put off many potential beneficiaries, and due to concerns with administrative capacities in the long term (Appendix A: Interview 5). When the program was created, no country-wide forest monitoring system or forest cover baselines existed. The design teams decided to set up an extensive monitoring system and a baseline study as one of the program's core components (Interview 5), instead of setting up the systems before the beginning of the payments. Specific property/community baselines were developed as a requirement for enrollment so that compliance could be monitored.

Monitoring activities were implemented through the analysis of satellite imagery and field verification of zones which are deemed as being potentially threatened. According to a recent monitoring report (December 2015), 89.92% of the enrolled area has been analyzed [63]. Also in 2015, field verification identified 6.6% of the areas as non-compliant with the program's regulations (ibid). Additionally, a country-wide baseline has been completed and published after the start of the program [64].

The creation and design of Programa Bosques were inspired by the Juntos conditional cash transfer (CCT) program [29], so the inclusion of conditionalities was integral to Programa Bosques (Interview 12). The rationale for the definition of the conditionalities was to ensure that communities would not perceive the incentive as a hand-out, and that they should be easily understandable (Interview 12). The envisaged forest cover monitoring system was not complete at the beginning of the program, as satellite images of enrolled communities were not yet available. The images were later acquired, on a yearly basis, with the support of the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ). To monitor compliance, a participatory mapping was made together with the communities, including the definition of the zone to be put under conservation, later to be complemented with satellite images. The first cash transfers were provided upfront, without considering forest cover dynamics. The communities used that money to implement sustainable productive activities (see Section 3.6 below, and the Supplementary materials). By the end of the first year, compliance monitoring was performed: if the communities had complied with all conditionalities, they would be eligible for the second payment—and so on for the following years (personal communication, R. Giudice, 8 April 2018).


**Table2.**Thedesignforcost-efficientPES(PaymentsforEnvironmentalServices):theoreticalrecommendationsvs.policychoicesandtheirimplementation. 1Participation of multiple stakeholders in program design is a prominent theme in PES debate and practice. It is commonly discussed, together with poverty reduction, within the broad theme of "equity".

Data on conditionality enforcement has not yet been consolidated, but according to our personal communication with program staff, some sanctions for non-compliance have been imposed. Ten communities were evicted from the Program between 2011 and 2014, and a few more were suspended for one year and rejoined in the following year. The main reason for eviction has been the use of cash transfers for reasons not included in the investment plan, which details how beneficiaries are planning to use the money transferred from the program to carry out productive projects expected to improve their welfare. Other reasons were deforestation beyond the allowed threshold (0.3% of the area committed for conservation over the 5 years of the conservation agreement [65]) and receiving a fine or sanction from another forestry regulatory office (personal communication, R. Giudice, 8 April 2018).

While conditionalities were swiftly agreed upon in both programs, several contextual factors explain the decision to provide initial upfront payments and only condition-subsequent payments on compliance. Both programs have the dual objective of conserving forests and reducing poverty (see Section 3.2) and intend to achieve those objectives by implementing ICDP-like sustainable productive activities (see Section 3.6). Therefore, upfront payments to initiate those activities are an integral part of the programs' intervention strategies. Additional factors help to explain that design feature. In Ecuador, the idiosyncratic characteristics of President Rafael Correa were relevant, as he pressured for quick government action in various policy areas. From the beginning of his mandate, he was trying to implement fundamental changes in Ecuadorian institutions. One of the core changes observed in the country was the strengthening of the executive power's capacity to formulate public policies, to the detriment of other institutions such as Congress [66,67]. At the base of his political changes was a new constitution, which the president hoped to approve in a referendum. The public debate on the constitution overlapped with the design process of Socio Bosque. The constitutional referendum happened in September 2008 and Socio Bosque officially started in November 2008. To ensure support, Correa intended to demonstrate a commitment to quick and bold action by the government. Therefore, the political context in which the design team worked urged for a quick start of the payments (Interview 5).

In Peru, a similar pressure for quick completion of the design process existed, but the political feasibility and bureaucratic dynamics were more relevant factors. First, the government aimed to mend its relations with indigenous populations, which were strained due to confrontations between police forces and indigenous populations known as Baguazo [29,68]. A dragging design process would delay the beginning of payments, which was understood to be potentially counterproductive to that aim (Interview 21). In addition, the Environment Ministry (MINAM) was a new entity in the government (created in 2008) and sought to demonstrate efficiency to a skeptical Council of Ministers (Interview 24).

#### *3.2. Poverty Reduction*

PES have been considered attractive to conservation practitioners and policymakers as a possible win-win solution for tackling environmental problems and contributing to poverty alleviation concomitantly [69]. There are, however, often tradeoffs between both objectives [46,51]. From an efficiency perspective, those who should receive payments are the ones who pose a credible (or, at least, credibly projected) threat to the provision of ES [7,47]. For that reason, several researchers note that poor land users, who usually have small plots and few means to seriously threaten themselves and/ or protect their environment against outsiders, will often not be the most efficient providers of ES [48,52]. Programs that target payments to poorer populations risk having higher costs and low environmental additionality. For that reason, many authors have stressed that the PES schemes should not be promoted as poverty reduction tools [48,52,53]. In other words, "poverty alleviation is an important side objective, which can be pursued through timely interventions, but it should never become the primary objective" [7] (p. 22). On the other hand, some authors argue that the existence of interdependencies between effectiveness and equity outcomes [70] can make poverty reduction a necessary condition for ES provision [71].

Contrary to most recommendations in the literature on cost-efficient PES, poverty reduction was a central concern in Socio Bosque's design, as it was in its adoption [29]. Several of the design provisions in Socio Bosque aim to benefit poor population segments. The decision to include communities in the program was driven by the goal to provide them with cash transfers [72]. Welfare concerns also guided the definition of a poverty parameter for targeting, and the interest in fostering potential income-generating activities also motivated the inclusion of ICDP-type activities (see below). The program, however, was not able to reach many of the poorest inhabitants of forests because, for legal reasons, it can only enroll participants with formal land titles (Interview 5).

The design process had a limited formal participation of national actors outside of the government [73,74], except for the partnership with Conservation International throughout the design process and informal contacts with some potential beneficiaries, as well as local governments already implementing PES projects (Interview 5). The lack of participation design was justified by the program designers with the voluntary enrollment in the program, allegedly deeming the participation of civil society actors unnecessary (Interview 5). Additionally, the design team understood that a consultation process would hinder the program's quick deployment, as there were pressing requests from the president's office to get the project started quickly ([73], interviews 5, 12).

Poverty reduction concerns were also central to the design of Programa Bosques. Similar to Socio Bosque, they were key factors in design decisions on targeting, payment system definition and, crucially, the introduction of ICDP-type activities (Interview 21, 23). We could not, however, find evidence on the extent to which these design elements were thoroughly discussed by the design team, or if they straightforwardly adopted Socio Bosque's design model. The design process of Programa Bosques also did not count with the wide participation of non-government stakeholders. A few meetings were held with the NGO Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Forest (AIDESEP) to discuss some of the initial drafts of the program (Interview 22), but we could not infer how much of AIDESEP's input had been adopted. The design team also reasoned that since participation in the program is voluntary, a thorough participatory process would make the design process unnecessarily time demanding (Interviews 21, 22, 23).

The centrality of poverty reduction concerns in both programs is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most outstanding deviation from policy recommendations. Improving the living conditions of the poor has been the main overarching declared objective of Latin American governments for many years, and more markedly since the 2000s, with the emergence of leftist-populist governments all over South America [75,76]. Even before those developments, CCT programs started proliferating in Latin America. Studies found that voters tend to reward governments that implement targeted social assistance programs [77–79], at least in the short term [80]. Subsidies for forest conservation can, in addition, also legitimately benefit geographically marginalized rural populations that are otherwise hard to reach for central states.

Additionally, pro-conservation action could be popular with an environmentally conscious electorate. Our respondents agreed that conservation remains a low priority for voters, although there were no consistent studies or opinion polls found on the voters' preferences to back that perception. However, there is a documented increasing trend in environmental movements' activity and in the public environmental awareness in the region [81–83], which may have influenced the adoption of the programs, despite it not being explicitly recognized by respondents. In any case, an increased environmental awareness in the public does not necessarily mean that forest conservation would overtake welfare issues as a priority for voters. Hence, governments should have a political interest in associating conservation and welfare policies. It is fair to say that both programs have been designed with the intention of being perceived as a hybrid of environmental and social policies, with the latter probably being in the driver's seat.

#### *3.3. Spatial Targeting in Selecting Participants*

Since funds for PES schemes tend to be limited, it is crucial to carefully determine where interventions will take place and which actors will participate in them. Spatial targeting of PES should consider both benefits and costs in site selection [51], mainly focusing on areas with a high-ES density [46,55], high deforestation risk [55,56], and low costs relative to the service levels [84]. Appropriate targeting is relevant to ensure higher additionality of a PES scheme and its cost-effectiveness [46,55].

Socio Bosque "has not specifically targeted enrollment to generate increased outcomes in prevented deforestation and provision of environmental services" [85] (p. 104) but developed targeting (prioritization) criteria in their operational manual to define who would be enrolled first. The prioritization criteria used are the level of threat, proxies for environmental service provision, and poverty levels [86] (see Supplementary materials for detailed targeting criteria). Prioritization was not intended to be applied from the beginning of the program, but only after there was more demand for participation than the supply of funds available for new enrollments, which happened in 2012 [87].

The targeting process at Programa Bosques is divided into two steps. The first is the selection of which provinces are the priorities for conservation. Three criteria are considered at this stage, (a) the total area of primary forests, (b) deforestation rates, and (c) the poverty incidence rate. The second is the selection of which communities within the previously prioritized Provinces should take priority in participating in the program. The indicators used in this phase are (a) the total area of primary forests, (b) the percentage of conserved primary forests, and (c) the closeness to transport routes [88] (see Supplementary materials for detailed prioritization criteria). The selection of the initial Provinces, at the Valley of the Apurímac and Ene Rivers (VRAE) region, however, did not follow the prioritization criteria and was instead motivated by the government's interest to benefit a region with a history of poverty and political conflict (Interview 21). Furthermore, according to information provided by the GIZ-Peru staff (personal communication, R. Giudice, 8 April 2018), the criteria for prioritization of communities has not been homogenously followed by the program. In 2011, for example, the program prepared a ranking of 102 communities based on the prioritization criteria, with the first 50 being considered a priority for enrollment. In that same year, 27 communities voluntarily applied for enrollment, of which 17 were enrolled by the end of that year. Only 10 of those 17 were among the list of 50, and five were not even ranked within the list of 102 communities.

Targeting is, politically, one of the trickiest aspects of the design of a PES program, as it will ultimately define who participates—and eventually benefits. Consequently, Ecuador and Peru developed targeting schemes for selecting participants, but enrolled participants with a wider range of characteristics. Respondents indicated technical reasons for their selection of targeting strategies. Some of the data for the whole country that were required to implement targeting were lacking. For that reason, the start of program implementation would allegedly have to be delayed for a few months while the programs were urged by higher authorities to deliver payments as soon as possible (Interview 5, 17). There were also concerns about political feasibility and medium-term electoral strategies of the governments. Targeting conservation incentives to maximize cost-effectiveness may generate a perception of unfairness if the targeting criteria discriminated against poor landholders or good forest stewards. A perception of unfairness, justified or not, may jeopardize program acceptance, undermine the government's popularity in the intervention area, and cause rifts among the population. Additionally, the number of enrolled participants and the size of the forest areas under the programs are arguably regarded as the most important early measures of success for the programs since measurements of actual deforestation reductions, additionality, or improvements in incomes of enrolled beneficiaries are, at the time of writing, incipient at best.

#### *3.4. Selection of Plot-Level Conservation Areas*

Once the participants were selected, their contractual conservation areas also needed to be defined. When landowners self-select those, they will likely choose from the start those that are least threatened (remote, inaccessible, steep, etc.), where deforestation risks are minimal. Payments would, thus, make no difference: the so-called adverse selection bias [89] would apply. One PES design recommendation is, therefore, to make conservation agreements for the entire land area of participants, so as to counteract self-selection bias.

In both Ecuador and Peru, however, the participants themselves define what part and share of their land would be enrolled in the programs, whereas deforestation could legally continue on other lands. Respondents argued that the decision to allow communities and individuals to self-define conservation areas was taken to maintain coherence with the voluntary nature of the programs (Interviews 5, 8, 24).

Electoral interests are likely to have also played a role here. A top-down definition of eligible areas could have been erroneously perceived as a violation of land use rights, especially when community conservation agreements were made—a problem also observed with the ejidos in Mexico [90]. The design teams reckoned that, even in a context of voluntary enrollment, a perceived interference in land use decisions would discourage participants from enrolling (Interview 5, 17). In Ecuador, the team was indeed aware of reports of previous activities in which communities felt discouraged to participate when they perceived that their freedom to make land use decisions would be hindered by conservation incentive projects, as described in Profafor and GIZ [91]. Another study [92] that analyzed the factors affecting desire to participate in Socio Bosque, focused on páramos areas. It found that "a fear of land expropriation" was one of the most important factors triggering a lack of desire to participate, together with "insufficient incentive payments to cover opportunity costs" (p. 128). Similar notions were reported in a study of the Ecuadorian Amazon region, where concern with expropriation was also reported, with a "fear that at the end of the 20-year contracts, the forested land would revert to the government. As stated by a male non-participant, 'some neighbors fear Socio Bosque is a trick, a way for the government to take possession of your land'" [93] (p. 7).

#### *3.5. Payment Differentiation*

The PES literature recommends differentiating payments according to variable ES benefits and costs of ES provisions across participating landowners [51]. For the latter, payments may conveniently be aligned with landowner opportunity costs, if these can be approximated [59]. Payment differentiation is likely to increase the environmental effectiveness of a PES scheme [94] and may also make the distribution of benefits more equitable if differential ES provision costs among participants are used as an equity criterion [46].

Opportunity costs were not calculated for the definition of payment levels in Ecuador. The project team considered that "different levels of incentives depending on the specific location of a landowner would be a cause of intense social debate and would not be politically viable" [72] (p. 535), and that a lengthy process to estimate opportunity costs would reduce the political momentum for program adoption [73]. Opportunity costs and other design parameters were discussed during consultations with international PES experts, including individuals from the Mexican and Costa Rican programs, at an expert meeting held in Hacienda Cusin (Otavalo), just a few weeks prior to the launching of the program. The experts suggested several alternative ways to use opportunity costs for payment differentiation, including a straightforward road zoning proxy system (Interview 13). Representatives of the Costa Rican delegation allegedly argued that the explicit use of opportunity costs could be politically complicated and unnecessary. As a reason, they suggested that such a differentiation is hard to communicate and could lead to complaints about undue favoritism. The Socio Bosque team thus decided not to follow the recommendations provided by the academic specialists (Interview 2) on opportunity costs. There was, consequently, no thorough answer on the definition of the specific payment values used by Socio Bosque. Respondents stated that the design team took into consideration budgetary possibilities and tried to offer the highest possible payment for participants (Interviews 2, 5).

However, since one of us (Wunder) participated as invited PES specialist in the expert meeting to inform the design of Socio Bosque, some triangulation of the interview information is possible here. The meeting was held just a few weeks prior to the launching of the program, which was politically timed to occur around the time of the constitutional referendum (see above). In practice, significant design choices such as payment differentiation were, at this stage, no longer possible, nor was strong advice in that direction necessarily desired by the ministerial staff. National experts from Conservation International, closely working with the Ministry on program design, voiced also a clear framework for what was or was not politically feasible at this stage of the process. This caused some friction with some of the international experts, feeling their participation from the outset was being used as a legitimizing procedural tick-off, rather than a genuine technical input into program design—which, in all major respects, had de facto already been predetermined.

Nevertheless, the meeting perhaps raised some awareness among Socio Bosque stakeholders about the importance of opportunity costs, which influenced the future implementation process. The area-based payment differentiation was devised as a proxy for opportunity costs, with the "assumption that opportunity costs decrease when the area increases, since access becomes more difficult in larger areas", but "was also a political decision to maximize the limited budget that was available" [95] (pp. 1173–1174). Likewise, the changes in the payments structure introduced in October 2011 showed at least an implicit recognition of potential efficiency gains from taking opportunity costs into consideration. The program added a differentiation between individual and collective lands, and between páramos and other vegetation types, as well as adding a special category for properties under 20 ha. The new structure increased per-hectare payments for communities and kept original values for individual landowners, except in the under 20ha new category [96,97] (for additional information, see Supplementary materials). Changes were also due to a decrease in the rhythm of new participants signing up, especially in páramos areas [95]. The initial values were loosely based on the incentive values of similar programs implemented in other countries (e.g., Mexico and Costa Rica) and on the budgetary possibilities of the program (Interview 5).

The Programa Bosques did no adopt a differentiated payments structure, although it reportedly drew explicitly on lessons from Socio Bosque. The interviews and program documentation did not yield solid evidence for specific reasons why an undifferentiated payment structure was chosen, or why opportunity costs were not considered. According to the respondents in Peru, the specific amount of the payment was defined largely for the sake of simplicity, with the value of 10 Soles per ha/year being deemed as easy to understand and communicate, and within a realistic budgetary range (Interviews 21, 23). However, in an exchange with international scientists (including co-author Börner) prior to launching the program, government representatives evoked similar fairness arguments against payment differentiation as in Ecuador.

#### *3.6. ICDP-Type Components*

PES were conceived as "alternatives to the more indirect pro-poor investments for transforming livelihoods such as ICDPs" [98] (p. 134). ICDPs have been significantly widespread since the 1990s, with the aim of promoting conservation by providing "alternative sources of products, income, or social benefits" [60] (p. 1718). ICDPs, however, have shown a mixed track record, at best, in terms of achieving their proposed conservation objectives and, crucially, provide payments that are not conditional on the objectives set [60,99]. Additionally, combining PES with development support can confuse program goals, inflate costs, and eventually compromise conservation outcomes [7,48,60]. Nevertheless, the 'PES-positive' literature sees possible benefits for ICDP-like activities, if they are approached creatively, especially by adapting conditionalities [7]. Additionally, some activities that can be promoted under a PES scheme, "for example switching to agroforestry or silvopastoral practices", may "become profitable for the landholder after some years of implementation", inducing "the landholder to adopt the environmentally friendly practice" [51] (p. 149).

Both Socio Bosque and Programa Bosques, however, included ICDP-type components in their design, which they call productive projects or activities (see Supplementary materials). That means that the incentive provided cannot be freely utilized by the communities, but must be invested in activities intended to generate income, making the program ultimately a source to finance small-scale, community-led ICDPs. The explanation for the lingering interest in ICDP-type activities is manifold. Program designers believed that the payments should not appear to be handouts, but must become seed funds for the construction of long-term solutions for the communities' socioeconomic issues (Interview 5, 23). From a technical standpoint, the fact that the money is given to a community, with a political/hierarchical structure of their own, tying payments to reportable productive activities was seen as the best way to accountably spread benefits inside the community, counteracting elite capture and misuse. However, the subsequent implementation shows that these expectations were not always met. Early analyses of Socio Bosque show that productive activities have not always ensured transparent and informed decision making in communities [74] and that "some communities are having difficulties distributing the costs and benefits of participation in Socio Bosque fairly" [100] (p. 8), reporting evidence of "intracommunal power imbalances and elite capture" [95] (p. 1180).

In Peru, bureaucratic intra-governmental dynamics also played a role. The ability to demonstrate the investment of payments in productive activities came to be an important asset in negotiations with the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), which was much more willing to approve budgets to a program with a stimulus to economic activity than a transfer for 'not doing something' (i.e., avoiding deforestation) (Interview 24). This led the design team to look to Socio Bosque's concept of investment plans attached to the payments (see Supplementary materials). The persistence of ICDP-type components, therefore, shows that the idealized view of PES as a poverty-environment "win-win" solution [69] was relevant for the design of the programs, especially to ensure the support of non-environmental agencies.

#### **4. Conclusions**

As we have seen, the centrality of development, welfare and poverty reduction considerations aimed at ensuring local and intra-bureaucratic support as determinants of policy design choices have produced a notable deviation from a set of commonly applied PES policy recommendations. The strong presence of ICDP-type components in the programs is also questionable with regard to cost-efficiency. Crucially, failure to account for heterogeneity in ecosystem service provision and opportunity costs in the design of payments leaves ample scope to the adverse self-selection of non-threatened forest areas into the program, allowing for several of the enrolled areas to generate sub-optimal conservation benefits in relation to the resources invested. Indeed, a preliminary study suggests that Socio Bosque "has provided little conservation additionality in terms of the prevented deforestation" [85] (p. 112); a more recent rigorous study showed the program to reduce deforestation by 1.5% in the areas that received the program's direct payments [101], while Börner et al. [102] show that Programa Bosques is designed suboptimally both in terms of conservation effectiveness and net benefit distribution. Additionally, an evaluation of the socioeconomic impacts of Programa Bosques shows that, despite the increase in the scale of production, there is no increase in the value of product sales by the beneficiaries, due to the low returns to investment and limited market articulation [103].

On the other hand, the environmental components of the programs also had more indirect positive outcomes. In Peru, the deforestation monitoring capacity has been strengthened through the activities of Programa Bosques [104,105]. Likewise, the program has improved the cooperation of MINAM with provincial governments on environmental issues. Socio Bosque has also helped to improve information on forests in the country, and the program became a blueprint for other environmental policies in the country (e.g., mangrove protection and biocommerce). Moreover, the changes in the payment structure of the program show a move towards an implicit recognition of opportunity costs as an element to improve the efficiency of the scheme.

Our findings are to some extent in line with the literature that highlights the importance of local contexts in REDD+ and PES [10,15,16,25,106]. Karsenty and Ongolo [9] discussed the difficulties of implementing REDD+ in "fragile states", and we showed that even in better-functioning democracies and administrations, political and bureaucratic constraints may get in the way of cost-efficient PES and REDD+ design. Despite the "globalist, homogenizing nature of REDD+ guidelines" [26] (p. 78), reviews on implementation show a patchwork of conceptualizations, guidelines, and forms of institutionalization [10,15,107]. However, we agree with Angelsen [4] (p. 238), that "the core idea of REDD+" remains "to apply conditionality and make payments to countries (and projects) based on performance or results". To prevent REDD+ from becoming simply the 'conservation fad' that some authors identify [108,109], efficiency-oriented recommendations must remain central to what program designers, especially within the REDD+ policy mix, should strive for [46,51], without losing sight of the potential equity risks [14].

The design of the programs has shown several politically and administratively sensitive issues that will be at the heart of the design of many 'multi-objective' REDD+ program. The active promotion of non-carbon benefits for REDD+ and PES means that any discussion on the design of programs will experience similar political repercussions and pressures as the ones we found in Socio Bosque and Programa Bosques. PES and REDD+ are marred with tradeoffs and risks [10,14,69], which will require explicit recognition and action [4]. Transparent priority setting in public policy, independent decision-making capabilities, funding for agencies responsible for REDD+ or PES programs, and sound technical provisions are jointly needed to ensure that the schemes efficiently generate emissions reductions.

It is likely that governments will remain the main promoters and funders for PES and REDD+ in the foreseeable future. Our findings help explain why the policy-making dynamics, such as intra-governmental conflicts and power imbalances between sectors and agencies, are key factors leading to the prevalence of multi-objective REDD+. It remains to be seen how governments will balance pressures for non-carbon benefits and equity considerations by ensuring the necessary cost-efficient emissions reductions, which will certainly be required for eligibility in future REDD+ funding schemes. Instead of reproducing an unrealistic "win–win ecological modernization discourse" [15] (p. 133), governments will likely better fulfill their REDD+ agendas by recognizing and addressing the political tradeoffs inherent to multi-objective REDD+.

It is clear from our findings that not enough emphasis is placed on adapting technical recommendations to the contexts in which they must be turned into real policies. Indeed, better knowledge of what constitutes a favorable public policy environment for effective REDD+ can help to avoid investments in doomed policy programs. Without doubt, for PES programs to be cost-effective REDD+ vehicles, intra-governmental conflicts and imbalances as well as the short-term planning horizons of politicians and bureaucrats, will have to be jointly addressed with technical challenges. Strategies to enhance program efficiency, therefore, should be based on a careful evaluation of context-specific political and institutional constraints, if both environmental and social objectives are to be reached.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/11/725/s1, Table S1: Targeting criteria of the Socio Bosque program; Table S2: Payment calculation examples for Socio Bosque, under the previous and current payment structure.

**Author Contributions:** H.R.d.C. and J.B. designed the study; H.R.d.C. collected and analyzed the data; H.R.d.C., J.B. and S.W. wrote the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation (grant 32.5.8043.0012.0), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (grant 81180343), Norad, and the European Commission (grant DCI-ENV/2011/269520). And the APC was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (grant 81180343).

**Acknowledgments:** The helpful comments of the reviewers are appreciated and the remaining errors and omissions are responsibility of the authors.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

#### **Appendix A. List of Respondents**

Ecuador


#### Peru


#### **References**


© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### *Article* **Competing Tenures: Implications for REDD+ in the Democratic Republic of Congo**

#### **Raymond Achu Samndong \* and Arild Vatn**

Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Faculty of Landscape and Society, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), 1430 Ås, Norway; arild.vatn@nmbu.no

**\*** Correspondence: rsamndong@thetenurefacility.org

Received: 19 September 2018; Accepted: 18 October 2018; Published: 24 October 2018

**Abstract:** The capacity of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) forests to sequestrate carbon has attracted interest from the international community to protect forests for carbon storage and alleviate rural poverty by establishing REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Using information gathered from interviews, focus groups, field observations, and policy document analysis, this paper demonstrates that REDD+ is not well adapted to the institutional structures of forest governance in the DRC, including both statutory and customary tenure. The lack of harmonization between these systems has created a situation of competition between state and customary authorities. This has created opportunities for powerful actors to 'shop' between the two systems to attempt to legitimize their expanded use and control over forest resources. As the REDD+ process evolves from the preparation to the implementation phase, competing institutional structures may negatively impact the effectiveness of REDD+, as well as the distribution of costs and benefits. While the newly enacted community forest law provides an opportunity to recognize customary rights to forestland, the lack of functional local government at the district and village levels has prompted REDD+ pilot project organizers to establish new village organizations for REDD+.

**Keywords:** forest tenure; property rights; authority structures; REDD+; the DRC

#### **1. Introduction**

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) hosts some of the world's most carbon-rich and biodiverse forests, covering more than 60% of the national territory with an estimated 17 billion tons of carbon sequestered [1]. The current deforestation rate in the DRC is estimated to be 0.27% per year [2]. This has motivated the international community to develop several incentive-based policies that aim to increase the provision of public goods from the forest (carbon and biodiversity) by explicitly valuing these goods and incentivizing their protection through different means, including under the umbrella of REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). The full expression behind the acronym is 'Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, plus the sustainable management of forests, and the conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+)'. REDD+ is a global climate policy instrument designed to provide financial incentives to tropical forest countries and land owners to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and protect forest carbon stocks. It is assumed that policies like REDD+ will effectively and efficiently conserve forests as well as improve the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities where poverty tends to be pervasive [3–5]. Whether these goals can be achieved depends greatly on the institutional structures that affect forest practices at the local level.

The implementation of REDD+ requires a clear definition/allocation of property rights as a basis for implementing measures and defining who is entitled to compensation. This is not an easy task in the DRC, where the forest is governed by a statutory tenure that co-exists with customary tenure. Colonial and post-colonial policies on forest governance have been based on the substitution of customary tenure systems with statutory tenure systems to pursue the creation of a modern economy based on market principles [6–8]. This transformation has resulted in conflicts between state agents and traditional leaders around who controls (and should control) access to the forests and its resources [9,10]. Although policy debates in recent years have swung back towards recognizing, adapting, and formalizing customary forest tenure, institutional pluralism (in this paper, we used the term 'institutional pluralism' instead of 'legal pluralism' to denote the existence of two or more institutional structures in one social space [11]), including the presence of different authorities, has maintained and contributed to a general fluidity of the institutional framework for forest governance [7,12].

This paper aims to assess the importance of both customary and statutory forest tenures, the adaptations they produce among local actors, and implications of these aspects for the implementation of REDD+ in the DRC. The paper responds to the following questions: (1) How does institutional pluralism affect local forest use? (2) What are the effects of this pluralism on the implementation of REDD+? The empirical data for this study come dominantly from two REDD+ pilot project sites in the Equateur province along from an analysis of policy documents. By doing this, the paper provides empirical evidence to the scholarly literature on REDD+ on the complexity surrounding REDD+ implementation in a fragile state with competing tenure systems. This contribution is relevant for policy action given the fact that tenure security is crucial for effective forest stewardship and REDD+ implementation [13,14].

In the following, Section 2 provides the theoretical framework of the paper by drawing on institutional theories of forest governance. Section 3 presents the geographical context and the research methods. Section 4 presents the nature and dynamics of both customary and statutory tenure of forest governance in the Équateur province. Section 5 analyzes adaptations of local actors operating within the institutional structures described in Section 4. Section 6 discusses the findings in relation to the development of REDD+ projects in the DRC. Section 7 summarizes the main findings and recommends future policy actions.

#### **2. Conceptualizing Tenure and Property Rights to Forests**

Forest tenure is a social contract, whether defined in customary or statutory terms, that determines who can hold and use the forests for how long and under what conditions [15]. Tenure encompasses property rights, understood as the control over a benefit stream and the ability to call upon the collective to stand behind one's claim to this benefit stream ([16], p. 15). Tenure, therefore, embodies both property rights and the authority structures that enforce and legitimatize claims or control over benefit streams. Customary tenure in this context is typically a set of rules that governs community allocation—access, use, and transfer of forests—as enforced by customary authorities in accordance with the customs and traditions of the community. On the other hand, statutory tenure is a set of rules and regulations enshrined in formalized legislation, decided by a legislature, that determines who can use the forests for how long and under what conditions [17]. While Freudenberger (ibid.) made the distinction that customary tenure depends on unwritten rules, and statutory tenure on written ones, the key point involves differences in authority structure.

Property rights to forests are recognized not as a unitary concept of 'ownership' but as a 'bundle of rights' often involving groups of people with multiple and simultaneous rights and hence, a shared interest in a common resource [18–21]. This bundle of rights may be broken down along a continuum from access, to withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation rights [22]. Property rights are also differentiated among a variety of rights holders conceptualized into three categories—states, communities, and individuals [23,24]. The authority that defines the bundle of rights specifying property is crucial to the sense of legitimizing or enforcing these rights in practice. Hence, different strategies for accessing and benefitting from forest resources transcend statutory property rights and may rely on different types of authority [25].

In this paper, we use the environmental governance framework developed by Vatn [26] to conceptualize tenure and property rights to forests in the context of institutional pluralism. These structures of forest governance include actors and institutions (Figure 1). Institutions include rules regarding political decision-making—constitutions, gubernatorial decrees, collective choice rules, or customary laws. These decisions create the second type of institution—i.e., those governing the economic process—like property rights. Such rights comprise three elements: user rights, control rights, and alienation rights. User rights are typically access and withdrawal rights, as defined by Schlager and Ostrom [22]. Control rights, also referred to as second-order rights, determine use rights and include management, exclusion, transaction, and monitoring rights [27].

**Figure 1.** A framework for analyzing forest governance (adapted from [26] 2011, Tapir Academic Press).

Alienation rights are the rights to rent, sell, or transfer rights to others.

Central to our analysis are political and economic actors. Economic actors include local farmers, loggers, and the state as the forest owner that collects revenue through the allocation of timber concessions, but also civil servants when obtaining income from bribes. Political actors include the government, politicians, government agencies involved in forest management, administrators, and traditional authorities who define and enforce the rules of use and the control of forest resources. The political actors are central to our analysis because they have the authority to define and enforce property rights. On the other hand, the economic actors have day-to-day access to the forests and choose which political actors to support and enforce their claims.

In this context, there are two principal types of political actors: state authorities and traditional authorities. The coexistence of the two allows economic actors to choose which authority structure to support their claims. The power of state authorities is enshrined in either the constitution, laws, or gubernatorial decrees, while the power of the traditional authorities is based on customary laws, i.e., rules sanctioned by local customs and traditions that are negotiated and renegotiated over time and space [7,28].

The ways that political actors access their positions are complex in the DRC. State authorities are appointed through elections and political appointments, the latter often based on patron–client relationships [29]. As formal institutions are generally weak, patron–client relationships define who holds political positions. This is true in the forestry sector as well [30,31]. Traditional authorities are appointed through rules based on cultural processes linked to the inheritance of genealogical rights [32]. Economic actors may interact with political actors through exchange (the state and logging companies or traditional authorities and local loggers) through command (by state and individuals or communities), by granting formal property rights, or by following local/customary rules [26].

To understand how economic actors deal with these overlapping institutional structures that compete for access to forest resources in Équateur province, we employed the institutional bricolage approach developed by Cleaver [33]. It describes the process by which "people consciously and non-consciously draw on existing social formulae to patch or piece together institutions in response to changing situations" ([34], p. 10). Through this process, actors create space to interpret and re-interpret existing institutions, enabling them to interact, negotiate, and compete with each other to access forest resources [33,35]. To create the necessary space to act, actors need to possess certain power resources or mechanisms of access [33]. These power resources are attributes that enable or constrain actors to influence access to forest resources. In forest governance, an economic actor may draw upon different power resources to make claims over forests such as their socio-political position—for example, an official position, formal function, or kinship relations—a social network, economic resources such as wealth, or personal attributes such as knowledge, eloquence, self-confidence, and strength [33].

The environmental governance framework and institutional bricolage framework were selected because they complement each other and provide a better understanding of how institutions and actors operate in practice. While the former focuses on the structural view of power in analyzing institutions, the institutional bricolage approach emphasizes an agent perspective on institutionalized power—how actors operate in relation to institutions.

In the DRC, REDD+ strategies and pilot projects are developed in the context of competing institutional structures for forest governance which are not very different from other Congo Basin countries [36–38]. Consequently, any intervention aimed at promoting sustainable forest management and conservation will have to take into account the existing formal and informal rights over forest resources and the roles of all actors involved. This paper assesses the nature and dynamics of these two conflicting institutional structures of forest governance, how local actors respond to them when legitimatizing use and control rights over forests, and how this might influence the effectiveness of REDD+ on the ground.

#### **3. Geographical Context and Research Methods**

The data for this paper were collected from two REDD+ pilot sites in the Équateur province of the DRC (Figure 2). The province was divided into five new provinces in July 2015 following the implementation of the decentralization reform of 2006. The data for this analysis were collected following the political and governance structure of the old province before the division. The province has a total area size of 403,292 km2, and hosts 28 per cent of the total forest area in the DRC [39]. The population of the province was estimated to be 3,574,385 inhabitants in 2008, distributed into two main ethnic groups—the Bantu and the Batwa—also known as the Pygmies. The Batwa form only about 20 per cent of the total population and are located in the Southern part of the province. The Bantu is divided into different sub-ethnic groups, such as the Bangala, the Ngwaka in the north of the province; and the Mongo, Ntumba, and Ekonda in the south of the province.

The first pilot site was located in Buya 1 village of Bikoro territory, southwest of the old Equateur province, which is now the new Équateur province. This village has an estimated population of about 3000 inhabitants, with about 300 households located just 42 km from Mbandaka, the seat of administration for Équateur province. The main ethnic groups are the Mongo and Batwa Pygmies. The Batwa Pygmies living in the village are not considered customary landowners; they are migrants from the Ingende territory. The village is made up of the clans (A clan is a group of families that share actual or perceived kinship and descent. In the Équateur province and other provinces in the DRC, clans are very important traditional forest management groups)—Ekole, Esangele-Nkoy and Djipanga—and migrants from other districts and territories of the province. Its dominant vegetation is

equatorial swamp rainforest that is inundated year-round, making road construction and maintenance difficult [40].

The second pilot site was located in the Bokumu Mokola village of the Gemena territory, northwest of the old Équateur province, which is now the Sud-Ubangi province. Bokumu-Mokola/Bongo village belongs to the Bominege tribal chiefdom, located about 60 km from Gemena town. The village has an estimated population of 2700 inhabitants, with about 280 households made up of one ethnic group known as Ngwaka. The pilot site is made up of five clans—Boyabakona, Boyagbandolo, Bobanda, Bogbando, and Boyangadaka. Here, the dominant vegetation is dense, humid, equatorial lowland rainforest that transits into evergreen savannah woodland and grasses in the north. The populations of both pilot sites rely heavily on the forest for their livelihoods via slash and burn shifting cultivation, the extraction of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), fishing, hunting, and the production of charcoal.

**Figure 2.** Map of the two pilots in Équateur province: (**a**) Bikoro territory, Buya 1 project village; (**b**) Gemena territory, Bokumu-Mokola project village. Source: Chapman (2016).

Table 1 offers an overview of the statutory and customary authority structures. All villages belong to a particular politico-administrative district unit, which, in turn, belongs to a territory and thence, a province. These politico-administrative units are established by statutory law and were reinforced in the 2006 decentralization reform. This reform demanded the establishment of elected local government structures at the different politico-administrative levels. To date, this has occurred only at the provincial level, with the other units still lacking local government structures. Each of these politico-administrative units, from the village to the territory, is thus still governed by a representative with executive power to implement and enforce state laws and resolve local conflicts. On the other hand, people in the study area also belong to traditional jurisdictions known as tribal chiefdoms, known in in French as groupements. These traditional jurisdictions include the villages and clans and are governed by tribal chiefs. The main function of the customary authorities is to exercise control and manage forestland allocation based on customary rules. The relationship between tribal chiefdom as a customary institution and statutory forestland tenure is analyzed in the next section.

The paper combines data from policy documents, interviews, focus group discussions. and field observations from field research conducted in May–July 2013, July–August 2014, and July–August 2015. National and provincial policy documents and administrative texts were examined, and seventy-two in-depth interviews were conducted in French and Lingala with six different types of actors: customary authorities, local administrative authorities, staff of the different intervening agencies, executive members of the village associations, staff of the REDD+ pilot project, and logging operators. The interviewees were selected from the actor and institution mapping list established during the project's baseline study. They were all contacted and interviewed in person at different times based on

their availability during the field research. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed manually at different stages of the field research process and the corresponding author was the principal researcher who conducted the interviews. Our intention was to gather information on the different institutions that influence forest practices and how actors adapt to these institutions when legitimatizing their rights and access to forests.



To capture local actors' insights on how these institutions shape forest practice, and how they respond to them when legitimatizing their practices, we organized nine focus group discussions with ten members in each group. Five groups in the project village in Bikoro (Buya 1), consisting of, respectively, men, women, customary landowners, migrants, and Pygmies, and another four groups in the project village in Gemena (Bokumu Mokola) consisting of men, women, customary landowners, and migrants were convened. The focus groups considered issues related to local people's rights to resources and benefits and their interactions with local authorities when making decisions about forest rights and conflict resolutions. Field observations were collected on the availability and quality of social infrastructures like roads, schools, healthcare and community activities, rights to land, material resources, places for village meetings, and the way local people engage in these meetings.

#### **4. Forest Tenure Systems at Play in Equateur Province**

Here, we examine the nature and dynamics of customary and statutory tenure systems in the Équateur province.

#### *4.1. The Nature and Dynamics of Customary Tenure to Forests*

Customary forest tenure is traditionally grouped under a tribal chiefdom (in French: groupement) governed by a tribal chief (in French: chef de groupement). This tribal chief is the highest customary authority in the study area. Each tribal chiefdom is made up of many villages, with the tribal chief being custodian to all forestlands in the chiefdom. The main duties of the tribal chief are to protect the people and the land and to bring fertility to the soil and rivers. Their succession is rotational among the dominant clans of the chiefdoms. Each village that belongs to the tribal chiefdom is governed by a customary village chief. Each village is made up of more than one clan, and the village customary chief is selected from the clan that established the first rights on the village forestland. The customary chief position is based on inheritance among male members of the lineage. Each of the clans are headed by a notable, with acquisition based on inheritance among male members of their lineage. The members of

the clans are considered customary landowners (in French: ayant droits). These different levels are based on their current geographical location, since some clans now extend to other villages within or beyond the tribal chiefdoms.

The customary system of forest management follows a decentralised model where clans of the village constitute the operational units for production and control of the forest, and customary authorities play a role in the supervision and management of disputes. Each tribal chiefdom has a traditional council headed by the tribal chief with the village customary chiefs as representatives. Similarly, each village has a traditional council headed by a village customary chief with the notables as representatives. The latter makes decisions about village land allocations and enforces property rights over the village forests, while the chiefdom's council makes decisions around land allocation. The legitimacy of the customary authority resides in a cultural belief system transferred from generation to generation. There are also traditional mechanisms of sanctioning these authorities if they misbehave.

Rights holders are classified into three categories: collective (customary authorities), clans (group of families), and individuals. User rights belong to members of clans. This group of right holders claim (exclusive) use rights to all forest resources in the territory of the village. Tradition considers customary landowners to be descendants of the male founder of the clan. He established the territorial rights of first occupation through migration and the establishment of a lineage.

Customary landowners perceive the forests to be a common physical and cultural inheritance from the ancestors. These user rights are passed from generation to generation through the genealogical line of the male descendants of the founder of the clan (see [7]). Non-clan members living in the village may be granted user rights to forest resources upon request. Non-clan and complete outsiders may negotiate access and use rights with the customary chief and notables to harvest high-value forest resources such as poles/sticks, timber, and charcoal. Converting forestland into farmland is a decision made among the clans that make up the village. Each member family of the clans receives land for farming. Non-clan members negotiate use rights to farmland with customary landowners either by renting a parcel of land, sharecropping, or other forms of social exchange.

Control rights belong to the customary chief, notables, and clan members. The village customary chief manages and controls access to the villages´ communal land and makes decisions about its allocation. The notables manage and control access to the clans' forestland and allocate land to the family members of the clans for different uses and also resolve internal land conflicts within or between families. Once land has been allocated to the families of a clan, each family establishes productive rights through labor investment. In the Congo Basin, clearing the forest for cultivation and making any labor investment to manage forest resources for productive purposes are the most robust and long-term forms of appropriation associated with exclusive permanent user rights, also known as usufruct rights (see [7,41]). Families that have control rights to forestland may exclude non-family members from using the land for cultivation. However, clan members can still use resources over which the families have not established permanent use rights, e.g., harvesting firewood, gathering non-timber forest products and medicinal plants, and hunting.

According to customary law, it is forbidden for clan members to sell forestland as it is considered the collective property of the clan. Leasehold, renting, or sharecropping of forestland is allowed. The enforcement of customary rules of access and use are based on local norms. These unwritten rules are overlapping, flexible, and subject to negotiation and renegotiation depending on factors such as the persons involved, the place, even the season.

Today, with the increased presence of state agents and local administrative authorities, the authority of the customary chiefs and notables has weakened. This is especially the case in Bikoro. Information from the interviews and focus groups revealed that the enforcement of customary rules to forestland that are not supported by local government representatives is limited. Many wealthy, well-situated, and knowledgeable—i.e., powerful—village members now use local state agents and authorities to establish access to forestland that was once governed by customary tenure. They prefer to report conflicts over land held under customary tenure to local state authorities, like the district

chief or a state agency, like the police, rather than reporting them to the customary chiefs and notables. In doing so, they undermine the authority of the customary leaders.

During the men's focus group discussion in Buya1, a village member noted, 'if you report conflicts over land to the customary chief, the solution is based on our culture and the accused is not well sanctioned' (interview, village member in Buya1 village, 2014). Many participants of the focus groups supported this statement. The presence of local state authorities encourages resourceful village members to circumvent customary authorities by establishing social relations with local state authorities (see [42]).

In the Gemena pilot study, customary tenure to forestland was shown to still be strong and the power of customary authorities over forestland was uncontested. This region is characterized by ethnic homogeneity, and local people tend to reject state institutions because they do not relate to their cultural beliefs, norms, and routinized ways of doing things. The presence of state authorities is also limited due to poor roads and few extractive activities.

#### *4.2. The Nature and Dynamics of Statutory Tenure to Forests*

Statutory forest tenure was established in the 2002 Forest Code, which states that all forests are owned by the state (Art. 7, [43]). Article 10 of the Forest Code classifies the forests in three broad categories: classified forests, protected forests, and permanent production forests. The classified forests are designated for environmental protection and may include nature reserves, forests located in national parks, botanical and zoological gardens, hunting areas, urban forests, etc. In protected forests, user rights are less restricted compared to classified forests. The Forest Code also recognizes customary forest tenure in the protected forests, which was reinforced by the 2006 Constitution. Protected forests may also serve as community forests, since they can be granted to communities upon request. In contrast, permanent production forests are designated for the allocation of logging concessions and forests already used for timber production, identified via a public survey process (Art. 23, [43]).

The 2002 Forest Code recognizes the right of communities with customary claims to the forests to use the forests for their subsistence. It also allows communities with customary rights to extract timber from protected forest through artisanal logging permits (Art. 111–112, [43]). Communities may apply for such permits for a maximum of fifty hectares per year on their own or through a private artisanal logger following an agreement between the community and the logger (Arrete 035, [44]). Individuals of Congolese nationality can apply for artisanal logging permits to harvest timber from the protected forest using long saw or a chainsaw [44,45].

The Forest Code and its administrative texts also grant long-term logging rights (control rights) to concessionaires to exploit timber from production forests. The logging rights to concessionaires are granted for a period of twenty-five years through a bidding process that allows both Congolese and non-Congolese nationals to participate (Art. 83, 85–86, [43]). These logging rights mandate the concessionaires to establish a management plan and to consult communities with customary rights to forests that overlap their concessions to negotiate and sign an agreement for socioeconomic development (Art. 89, [43]). The concessionaire must identify these communities and their legitimate authorities through a legally required socioeconomic survey. An administrative text further provides a model for these agreements by, e.g., defining what should be negotiated between the parties (Arrete 028, [46]). However, this text fails to provide guidelines on how to negotiate the social agreement. Hence, in the past, logging compensations were typically granted on a voluntary basis to the customary authorities while excluding the majority of community members [47]. To ensure equity in benefit sharing, a ministerial text known as *Arrêté 023* was adopted in 2010 and provides a new model for the implementation of social agreement (Arrete 023, [48]).

The Forest Code further recognizes community use rights within logging concessions for subsistence but restricts commercial activities and any use deemed incompatible with logging activities (Art. 44, [43]). The Forest Code also allocates control rights to communities through its provision for community forest concessions in protected forests (Art. 22, [43]). The law for the implementation of community forests was enacted in August 2014. It advances provisions for communities to have concessions of up to 50,000 ha on a perpetual basis, but the guidelines and procedures for implementation are still under process.

The Forest Code grants the Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Tourism (MECNT) the authority to make decisions on forest allocation and management, to issue logging permits to concessionaires, and to approve any forest management plans and the quantity of timber to be harvested. The Forest Code and its implementing regulations, coupled with the decentralization reform, recognized the authority of provincial governors to issue artisanal logging permits in the provinces upon examination of the application and subsequent recommendations made by the provincial and district forest administration. These authorities are mandated to monitor and enforce all the provisions to the Forest Code and its implementing regulations.

In practice, enforcement of the Forest Code and its implementing regulations is very weak. First, the forest classification is not implemented and there is inconsistency in the Forest Code. Second, forest law enforcement is massively under-resourced in the DRC. Enforcement officers represent just 1% of the total staff of the MECNT, and most are based in cities, many miles from the logging concessions they are tasked with monitoring. In addition, very few forest officers have any education beyond secondary school, and access to civil service employment is typically based on political patronage [49,50]. Third, low salaries, which are paid late or irregularly, weaken the quality of their work. Fourth, bribery and corruption at both the national and local levels is a significant barrier to forest law enforcement [51,52]. Fifth, many local authorities and communities know very little about the details of the Forest Code and especially the new institutional structure created by *Arrêté 023*. Finally, conflict between the central and provincial authorities regarding the new division of powers in the management of forest royalties and artisanal operations affects forest law enforcement (see also [12,29,52]).

#### **5. Competing Tenures and Forest Practice in Equateur Province**

Here, we describe how the institutional pluralism explained above plays out for two major forest uses—timber extraction and charcoal production—in the study area. We have chosen these two uses as they demonstrate the different ways that local actors adapt to the overlapping institutional structures to legitimatize their forest practices or to make claims on forests.

#### *5.1. Timber Extraction*

Artisanal logging permits are granted only to Congolese nationals to exploit timber in protected forests specifically, distinct from the categories of general production or classified forests. Since the classification of the forest estate is not enforced or locally formalized, artisanal logging takes place in uncategorized forests, often including forest concession areas, which thus creates confusion and conflict between concessionaires, artisanal operators, and communities. In an interview with the district MECNT administrator of Gemena territory in July 2015, it was revealed that no artisanal logging permits were issued by the governor for 2014–2015. According to him, many of the artisanal loggers in Gemena operated either with authorization letters issued by MECNT officials in Kinshasa or the territorial administrator or without permits.

Information gathered from interviews with five different artisanal loggers operating in the REDD+ pilot site in Gemena revealed that it is difficult to get artisanal logging permits from the governor or MECNT in Kinshasa, as they do not have the needed 'social capital'—e.g., political connection or social network—to do so. Two of the loggers interviewed operated with receipts issued by the district administration of MECNT. These receipts documented that they had paid taxes to the administration to log timber species and, according to them, this is accepted as if it was a logging permit by both customary authorities and local forest officers controlling timber extraction. The other three loggers interviewed operated without permits. They negotiated their logging rights through customary chiefs and the customary landowners and state administration with informal payments. These loggers also noted that many artisanal loggers in Gemena operated without permits. They also established social relations with local politicians and military personnel to improve and maintain their negotiation leverage.

Data from interviews and focus group discussions revealed that all artisanal loggers, both with and without permits (tax receipts), had to negotiate their access and use rights to the forest through the customary authority and landowners prior to logging. The negotiation process varied and depended upon the area of forest to be logged and/or the size of the tree's species. The loggers negotiated access rights with the customary authority by providing gifts (alcohol, food, tools, and building materials), including 300–500 USD. If the forest area to be logged had already been allocated to any clan of the village according to customary arrangements, the loggers had to negotiate use rights to the forest with the members of that clan as well by providing payments and gifts. The logger was entitled to the timber species, but the ownership of the forestland remained with the clan (men and customary owners' focus groups at both pilot sites in 2015).

At the Bikoro REDD+ pilot site, three different types of artisanal loggers were identified. One group had logging permits issued by either the governor of the province or top officials at the MECNT in Kinshasa. This group of loggers was considered powerful because they had the material resources, knowledge, and social networks to obtain such logging permits. A group of less well-situated loggers used tax receipts issued from the provincial and district administration of MECNT to establish rights. Those with the weakest relations operated without permits but built social relations with customary authorities and negotiated their way through the administration, either with side payments or by using their social capital, i.e., political loyalty, local networks, and family ties. At the local level (the village), all loggers negotiated their access to the forest with customary authorities and customary landowners. Once the resourceful loggers had negotiated access rights with the customary authorities, they were often reluctant to negotiate their use rights to forests with the customary landowners.

A typical example of this occurred in Penzelle village in 2011–2013, where a powerful artisanal logger operated in the village together with a Chinese partner. The forest area logged was noted as part of a forest concession allocated to a Lebanese logging company (ITB). This artisanal logger operated in the village using heavy machinery without making any agreement with the customary landowners. The local people were unable to influence the logging operation because they were informed that the logger had strong connections both to the governor of the province and the mayor of Mbandaka municipality. The supervisors of the logging operation (two Chinese men) refused to be interviewed by us and asked us to contact the governor of the province or the mayor of Mbandaka municipality.

#### *5.2. Charcoal Production*

The situation of charcoal production differs strongly from logging. Charcoal production has become a lucrative economic activity in the Équateur province due to increased demand from the principal cities, including Kinshasa. Charcoal production is considered an activity under the use rights of communities. The Forest Code and its administrative texts make provisions for circulation permits for producers and transporters of woody forest products including charcoal. The local forestry department is authorized to issue these permits at the area of extraction and requires inspections at production sites. The local forestry department is also responsible for issuing sale permits to charcoal merchants and collecting tax. The 2006 decentralization reform transferred the authority to issue sale permits for fuelwood and charcoal to the Directorate of New and Renewable Energy at the Ministry of Energy. This Directorate is also responsible for collecting taxes from charcoal sold in the markets.

Data from interviews with local MECNT officials in Mbandaka and Bikoro as well as local administrative authorities revealed that charcoal production is largely regulated by customary institutions and authorities despite the Forest Code provision (MECNT district administrator pers comm.). This provision is little known and seldom applied. Charcoal production takes place in shifting cultivation areas of the forest, fallow land, and in primary forests. The producers are mainly customary landowners living in these villages, although there are some migrants who engage in this activity as

well. According to these officials and the customary authorities alike, charcoal production is not a primary livelihood activity among local people.

Data from interviews and focus groups in the Bikoro pilot nevertheless indicated that many households are engaged in charcoal production. The presence of the Lebanese logging company in Bikoro provides cheap transportation for charcoal to Kinshasa on the boats that transport its timber. Also, the road that links Bikoro and Mbandaka has reduced transportation costs (including for charcoal) to the town. Bikoro has also witnessed an influx of charcoal merchants in recent years. Many of them pre-finance the production process, provide material support to local producers, and hire labor from the Pygmy population.

The migrants or the merchants who finance the process of charcoal production negotiate use their rights to forest with the customary authorities and customary landowners by either buying trees or renting parcels of forestland to produce charcoal. Many non-clan members living in these villages use forestland to which they have use rights for cultivation to produce charcoal during forest clearing. Information from focus group discussions in the Buya 1 village revealed that many clan members are now restricting non-clan members' rights to produce charcoal on forestland secured for cultivation because of the increasing value of charcoal in the market. Clan members are now demanding non-clan members who want to produce charcoal to negotiate use rights to cut trees standing on forestland secured for cultivation.

At the Gemena pilot site, few customary landowners are involved in charcoal production because of poor roads. The few charcoal merchants operating in the area rent parcels of forestland or buy trees from the customary landowners, including the customary authority, while others pay customary landowners to produce charcoal for them. At the Gemena pilot site, the customary rules prohibit clan members and non-clan members from cutting trees that bear caterpillars for charcoal production. The customary rules are not as strong in Bikoro, since many customary landowners reported the disappearance of trees bearing caterpillars due to logging and charcoal production.

All charcoal merchants are required to have a sale permit, but many operate without them. Many sale taxes are imposed on these merchants by government officials at the markets, at road blocks, and at exit locations. Many transporters and merchants, however, do not pay these taxes but negotiate with government officials at road blocks and exit locations with side payments. Data collected from the interviews and field observations revealed five different government officials that collect taxes from the sale of charcoal. This includes officials from the provincial Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Energy, local territorial and district state authorities, and police department authorities. These different authorities impose different taxes on charcoal transporters and merchants. Similar findings have also been reported in other regions of the DRC [53,54].

In Bikoro, officials of the local MECNT coordination unit collect a sales tax for each bag (about 60 kg) of charcoal to be transported to Kinshasa on the boat of a logging company. Many local producers avoid paying this sales tax by selling their products to charcoal merchants that come to villages. Local producers who transport charcoal to the markets in Mbandaka, however, pay tax. Many of them also complained about taxes imposed on them at the market by various local officials.

#### **6. Institutional Pluralism: What Are the Implications for REDD+?**

The above demonstrates the competing relations between the customary and state authorities in legitimatizing and enforcing forest property rights at the local level, especially around timber extraction. Given such an institutional landscape, actors engaged in forestry invent different ways of dealing with the plurality of power centers at the local level to ensure claims to forest resources—a phenomenon known as forum shopping [18]. Their ability to choose which authority structure to legitimatize their forest use depends, however, on the power resources they possess, i.e., material resources, knowledge, and social relations. In such an institutional landscape, there are no effective checks on the powers of the elite relative to the poor and marginalized; actors with more power resources influence those who govern (see [42]).

How then can REDD+ be implemented in an institutional landscape with competing authority structures? Power and authority are very important regarding access to resources, as they largely determine who can benefit from resources regardless of whether they have tenure rights or not [55]. Many scholars have pointed out the importance of forest tenure for REDD+ implementation, since REDD+ is set up to reward those who maintain or enhance carbon sequestration in the forest [14,56,57]. As REDD+ is a payment-based mechanism, rights holders to forest carbon should be the ones who are both compensated and held accountable for fulfilling or failing to fulfill their obligations.

Many civil society organizations operating in the DRC believe that REDD+ affords the opportunity to expedite and enhance the tenure security of forest-dependent communities through reform [58,59]. Others claim that REDD+ interventions might increase state control over forestland while risking the exclusion of some categories of forest users [60,61]. More generally, expediting forest tenure reforms might not guarantee effective and legitimate REDD+ implementation if the authority structures that define and enforce rules are weak and if the process involves top-down government imposition of tenure security through land titling as a prerequisite for the participation of local communities. Through such a process, poor communities are likely to be excluded [62].

Based on our findings, implementing REDD+ in a context of institutional pluralism is challenging, since the current situation has different rights holders using different authority structures to legitimatize their claims to resources. Some scholars have proposed the application for a unitary and fixed institutional structure, enforced by state authorities, as a means for delivering REDD+ outcomes [63,64], but this approach might affect the existing bundles of rights to forests, and thus, the sustainability, of REDD+ generally [65,66]. Such an approach also might fall short in a context where the state lacks the capacity or resources to define and enforce property rights, as seen in this study. State authorities can lose people's confidence when a lack of accountability prevails, when government officials represent private rather than public interests (as seen above), and when appropriate institutional and enforcement protocols can be evaded or corrupted by bribery.

Although our demonstration of the multiple and overlapping institutional structures described above provides a more accurate understanding of forest practices and thus, a greater flexibility for adapting to changes and uncertainty, the lack of harmonization or coordination between those overlapping institutional structures will likely affect the distribution of REDD+ benefits. Customary rules enforced by customary authorities might deliver reasonable outcomes from REDD+ in traditionally homogeneous communities such as Gemena, but are less likely to succeed in areas where there has been significant in-migration such that founding lineages no longer predominate or have lost some authority (see [67,68]).

Customary tenure mirrors the cultural and social values of the community, where the forest is regarded not only as an economic or an environmental asset but also as a social, cultural, and ontological resource that embodies the spirit of the society. The legitimacy of customary authorities largely flows from the community, and their accountability is also based on local norms and customs. In this context, people that share a common background and social history are more likely to trust and respect the customary authorities. Such trust and legitimacy risks decrease if there is perception of corruption and partiality or in situations where customary authorities may not have the knowledge or confidence to deal with pressure from powerful external interests and market penetration. In such circumstances, people may turn to other authority structures (state or international bodies) hoping to get support for their rights claims, even if they fear the loss of autonomy and flexibility that this may entail [69,70]. In addition, customary tenure often favors the rights and benefits of the first occupants, i.e., genealogical and differentiated rights between customary landowners and those considered outsiders. This is more visible when forest resources become more coveted and where the rules of use, exchange, and inheritance become more intricate. In the context of REDD+, non-customary landowners and tenants—including vulnerable groups like the Pygmies and women—may be excluded from REDD+ benefits. This is because women and Pygmies do not have decision-making power and

control over land and forests in the Équateur province [71,72]. This appears to be the case for the distribution of logging compensation in Bikoro territory, as previously documented [42,71].

Since people in our study areas attach considerable trust to customary tenure to secure their rights to forest resources, the formalization of customary tenure in the DRC using the kind of community-based models seen in Tanzania (see [73]) offers a promising opportunity for addressing REDD+ implementation tenure issues in the DRC. Similarly, the DRC's enactment of a community forestry law in August 2014 could further ground attempts to formalize customary rights to forestland [74]. Under this approach, the property rights are perpetually recognized but limited to use and control rights only.

As the modalities and procedures of community forestry in the DRC are under development, early REDD+ pilot projects are applying various mechanisms to recognize customary tenure in their activities [58,59]. They are initiated in the process of introducing REDD+ to these communities using procedures of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). (FPIC is an important set of principles in the REDD+ social safeguard standard that establishes the rights and conditions for local people's engagement in negotiating the terms of REDD+ interventions that affect their wellbeing and their right to give or withhold their consent to these terms.). While it is typically assumed that local influence on tenure clarification and rights recognition is assured [75], in practice, this process is costly and requires time for proper dissemination of information about REDD+ [57]. In our case study, the REDD+ pilot project organizers conducted the FPIC and started demonstration activities in the communities without yet signing a contractual agreement with the local population. In addition, information about the risks and costs of the project as well as issues related to land rights and forest tenure were not provided or discussed during FPIC. When introducing REDD+, many pilot projects conduct land use planning by engaging the local people through a participatory land use mapping exercise that charts customary use rights. This includes the development of operational rules for resource use and collective choice institutions for management and exclusion.

Because of a lack of harmonization or coordination between the customary and statutory institutional structures of forest governance in the DRC in conjunction with an absence of functional local government at the district and village levels, many REDD+ pilot project organizers—including those in our case study—have facilitated the establishment of a new village organization for REDD+ implementation. This new village organization is called the Local Development Committee, also known in French as Comité Local de Développement (CLD). This new village structure accords with the legal mandate (Law No 08/012 of 31 July 2008 elaborating the decentralization reform in Art 3 of the 2006 constitution) stating that if no local government is in place, a project like REDD+ must establish an CLD. An executive manages this new village organization for REDD+.

While the mechanisms used to create an CLD and executive committee vary among the REDD+ pilot projects, for our case study, household heads sat as members of the CLD and provided the electorate for electing the executive committee. This excluded women from participation, since more than 80% of the household heads in our case study were men—see also Samndong [76]. In the ERA REDD+ project in Mai-Ndombe, all the members of the village general assembly are considered members of the CLD, and members of the executive committee were elected from the village general assembly [77]. As a mechanism for harmonizing and coordinating this new REDD+ organizational structure with customary institutions in order to build local trust and legitimacy, the president of the CLD in Bikoro is the village customary chief, while the president of the CLD in Gemena is one of the customary landowners. This is also the case for the ERA REDD+ project in Mai-Ndombe, where all of the presidents of the CLD in every village are customary landowners.

While it is still too early to assess the effectiveness of the new village structure for the delivery of REDD+ outcomes, the representativeness and accountability relations of the authority structure in this REDD+ village organization will depend greatly on the social processes and local power dynamics influencing the distribution of REDD+ benefits. This structure is different from the existing structure as it is established through a democratic (if not complete) process, while the existing structure is based on local norms and customs. This recognition of the customary chief and customary landowners in allowing them to head the executive committees of these REDD+ organizations might prompt and empower the customary institutions to be more democratically accountable, thus transforming local norms and customs and minimizing the effects of the current pluralist situation. However, if these authorities are not accountable to the local people, it may simply reinforce elite interests and the exclusion of some segments of the population.

While clarifying property rights to forests might be a pre-condition for enabling benefits from REDD+ to occur, the success of these rights is conditional upon the level of ethnic heterogeneity. In the case of the Bikoro pilot site with its high ethnic heterogeneity, such a measure might favor the dominant ethnic group and hence, additional measures could be needed to secure benefits to other ethnic groups. In situations where these rights are weakly enforced, some people might apply different strategies to access and benefit from REDD+ depending on their relationships with the authority structures and their ability to influence decisions.

#### **7. Conclusions**

This paper documents that the forest in the Équateur province is governed by both statuary and customary tenures. The statuary tenure was introduced by colonial and postcolonial authorities to override customary tenure and enforce state control over forestland and thus, generated a situation of institutional pluralism. While customary tenure is flexible and subject to negotiation, statuary tenure is based on legislation with less flexibility and room for negotiation. The lack of harmonization and coordination between these two tenure systems has created a situation where the state and customary authorities compete to legitimize forest practice at the local level. This has created room for local actors who move across these institutional landscapes to patronize authorities who favor their particular use of forest resources. In this way, empowered local actors (local powerful people—mainly logging operators with permits) can draw on state authorities to support claims to forests or legitimize their use rights, while less empowered local actors instead build relationships with traditional authorities to secure their access and use rights to forests. The situation is exacerbated further by the inconsistency of the statuary tenure and its weak enforcement. As such, local state authorities can reshape statuary tenure provisions before they arrive at the local level as a way of favoring their personal interests. Although such an institutional landscape provides greater flexibility for adapting to changes and uncertainty, any implementation of REDD+ benefits under these institutional conditions will greatly affect their distribution.

For REDD+ to be effective and legitimate at the local level, there is a need to address tenure insecurity and the basis of conflicts over forest access and use. The competing forest tenure systems in the DRC imply that a 'one size fits all' approach to REDD+ is doomed. While recognizing customary tenure seems a better approach for addressing tenure in REDD+ implementation, such an approach first requires land tenure reform. Early actions towards addressing tenure in REDD+ through the establishment of collective choice institutions and land use planning may seem more demanding than a top-down approach, but the former affords a better chance of delivering effective and legitimate REDD+ outcomes at the local level. At the same time, however, the authority structure(s) that undergird collective choice institutions to define and enforce REDD+ rules and benefit distribution locally must also be empowered to be more democratic and accountable in order to avoid elite capture and to ensure legitimate outcomes for REDD+.

**Author Contributions:** R.A.S.: Conceptualization, developed research instruments, data collection, analyzed data, writing and rewriting. A.V.: project proposal for funding, assist in conceptualization, reviewed and commented in research instruments, assist in writing, editing and rewriting.

**Funding:** This research was funded by [Norwegian Research Council] grant number [4403040214].

**Acknowledgments:** This research was supported by the Norwegian Research Council through the Man and Forest Research Project 2014–2016. The authors would like to thank all those who participated in the interview survey. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments in the early versions of the manuscript. We are grateful to Millie Chapman for producing the maps to our specifications.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### *Article* **How REDD+ Is Performing Communities**

#### **Margaret Skutsch 1,\* and Esther Turnhout <sup>2</sup>**


Received: 22 August 2018; Accepted: 5 October 2018; Published: 12 October 2018

**Abstract:** Community based approaches are becoming the norm in environmental governance initiatives. One prominent example of this is Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), a climate change mitigation strategy that aims at reducing carbon emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. REDD+ policies generally evoke communities as both potential beneficiaries of REDD+ and as agents for its implementation. However, it is unclear what REDD+ policies are really referring to when they talk about communities. Drawing on critical social science literature about the idea of community, this article advances a performative perspective to analyze how communities are articulated in international and national REDD+ policy, and reflects on the potential implications of these articulations. Results reveal that international policy documents, including those of the major non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in REDD+, tend to present an interpretation that corresponds to Agrawal and Gibson's myth of communities as small, localized, and homogenous social units that share social norms. On the other hand, national policy documents reveal enormous variety in the communities that are actually targeted in national REDD+ policies in terms of resources, governance structure, and social cohesion. One conclusion that could be drawn from this is that the dominant uniform interpretation of communities in REDD+ policy, and in much academic and NGO literature, is clearly unrealistic. However, this does not mean that it is inconsequential. We conclude our article by discussing the performative effects of the identified articulations of community.

**Keywords:** performativity; REDD+ policy; myths of community; forest governance; climate change

#### **1. Introduction**

The need to involve communities in the implementation of the international policy initiative on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) is widely stressed in both policy and academic literature on the subject [1–8]. (Indeed, much of the literature that is critical of REDD+ bases its complaints on the failure to adequately involve communities in decision making, or to adequately reward them for their REDD+ efforts [9–11]. However, what is implied by the term 'community' (or 'local community', as it appears in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) sources) is not discussed in any of these texts, which simply assume the presence of entities called 'communities' in or around forested areas. These communities are widely referred to in the context of REDD+ safeguards, i.e., the need to protect rights to use the forest and to receive social benefits (even poverty alleviation). However, they are also frequently portrayed as the stakeholders who will be responsible for management of local REDD+ initiatives.

In this paper, we explore how communities have been imagined in REDD+, and we examine what impact these framings may have had not only on the policy, but also on the communities themselves. We start by observing that the definition of 'community' was problematized very well twenty years

ago by Agrawal and Gibson [12], who observed that proponents of a community approach to natural resource management usually consider 'community' to mean a place-based, small, spatial social unit, with a homogeneous social structure and shared norms. They provided a historico-philosophical explanation for this perception and then criticized it claiming communities tend to be made up of different actor groups with varying interests, the implication being that 'shared norms' may be a myth. Despite this, such myths continue to be evoked by powerful external actors who propagate it to justify interventions based on problematic assumptions about community approaches being pro-poor, efficient because they incorporate local knowledge, and a fulcrum for democratic change amongst others [13,14]. However, while there has been vigorous debate on the issue of the efficacy of communities in managing natural resources [15–17], there has been relatively little debate on what 'community' actually means in the context of REDD+ specifically.

The notion that communities may be a central pillar in the implementation of REDD+ fundamentally rests on the idea that the rural population, or that part of it that has access to forest resources, is organized into communities which could in principle gear up to carry out activities under the REDD+ banner. This assumes that communities have a number of characteristics, for example leadership with local legitimacy and organizational mandate, as well as the skills needed (which could be bolstered through capacity building), although it is well recognized that community involvement in REDD+ may also require improving the security of land tenure [18–21]. It also seems to imply that where forests are inhabited, there is 'wall-to-wall' presence of communities. However, it may be questioned whether presence of human life necessarily implies presence of communities, in the sense that people consider themselves to be members of a particular place-based 'community' which can decide upon and undertake a series of actions, either communally or through coordination of individual effort. While this may well be true for some communities in some circumstances, it may be questioned whether the entire rural population, particularly in areas that are well integrated into the global economy, feels that it belongs to communities of this kind. Moreover, much human-used forest is very clearly not under any sort of control by communities. Global estimates of the proportion of forest land recognized as owned or managed by communities vary from 22% to 30% [22,23]; other forest areas may be used by the local rural population as an open access resource; often this is officially state or (large scale) private property.

Given the significance attributed to REDD+ as an integrated approach to climate adaptation and mitigation in developing countries [24], it is urgent to examine how communities are envisioned and articulated in REDD+, as well as the implications. We start by examining the role of communities as presented in official policy documents of the UNFCCC on REDD+, and in materials written by the international organizations providing support for REDD+. We then turn to the national documents on REDD+, analyzing in detail eight of the most recent and more advanced REDD+ country programs as submitted to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) program of the World Bank for financing. This enables us to trace different meanings ascribed to the term 'community' in different contexts, which we believe is important to deepen understanding of how 'communities' can become engaged in REDD+. Before we present the findings, we first discuss our performative perspective and methodological approach.

#### **2. Communities: A Performative Perspective**

As discussed in the previous section, the idea of communities, defined as small spatial units with homogenous social structures and shared social norms, is problematic, and this can be viewed in at least two different dimensions. The first relates to representation, being the way in which ideals of community fail to represent the reality of communities. Agrawal and Gibson [12] highlight the ideological character of the idea of community and of the way in which communities are evoked in current natural resource management policies. Confronted with the failure of the state to conserve forests and nature, and the negative social consequences of many state-led policies, as well as piggy-backing on wider trends to participation and democratization, communities have emerged as an

attractive and appropriate target for policies. This reflects a belief that community involvement could "promote desirable collective decisions" thereby enhancing the effectiveness, as well as legitimacy of these policies [12] (p. 636). However, this community ideal falls short of capturing the reality of communities and particularly the diverse actors, interests, and norms that constitute them and Agrawal and Gibson suggest that this may result in disappointing effects of community based natural resource management policies. Specifically, it makes these policies vulnerable for elite capture and may result in them reproducing or even enhancing existing power inequalities [25]. Whilst much of the REDD+ academic literature, alongside much of the official REDD+ documentation, attaches great importance to communities, this last point is increasingly being recognized. Several recent contributions have highlighted risks of elite capture within communities, and the risk that the lion's share of benefits will go to those who by tradition or by circumstance have a greater share of the resources and power over community decision making [26–30].

This leads us to the second dimension of the problematic of communities, which relates to performativity. Quite apart from the question of whether policy discourses that evoke the myth of communities are realistic, it must be recognized that they are not innocent or inconsequential. As Igoe and Fortwangler [31] (p. 66) explain: "while these discourses may not accurately describe the realities of the problems that these interventions are meant to resolve, they are nevertheless effective for mobilizing significant revenues and extending state control over people and natural resources". This suggests that they are performative in the sense that they produce effects that cannot be understood with reference to their representational accuracy [32]. This argument has amongst others been applied to the process of nation building. Scott [33] (p. 3) explains that representational devices, such as maps, rework reality to fit with the ideal: "They did not successfully represent the actual activity of the society they depicted, nor were they intended to; they represented only that slice of it that interested the official observer. When allied with state power, they would enable much of the reality they depicted to be remade". Anderson's well-known book 'Imagined Communities' makes a similar point. To Anderson, Nation States can create their constituencies by presenting authoritative and attractive visions, in media, maps, or museums, which people can evoke and make their own [34].

However, as the many examples in Scott [33] show, this constitutive power of visions does not mean that these visions become reality exactly as imagined; they often create unintended effects and they can fail even on their own terms. Performativity means that there will inevitably be overflows [35], that is to say, unpredictable and contingent surprises [32,36]. Studies of participation and engagement using the concept of performativity have highlighted how identities and interests of participants do not pre-exist but are formed in the participatory practice, often with unintended and unpredictable outcomes [25,37]. Thus, a performative perspective on policy invites us to consider what policies do and how they produce effects. Importantly, this is not the same as asking how effective policies are. Instead of an evaluative perspective that judges the performance of policies using a yardstick, such as the stated objectives of a policy, or criteria for good governance, performativity is tied to a practice-based perspective [38,39] and does not assume the existence of yardsticks or policies outside the practices they judge or intervene in. This interpretation of performativity finds its roots in Science and Technology Studies [40,41], and recognizes that policies and their outcomes are entangled and that they are both constitutive of and constituted in practice. Applied to the notion of community, a performative perspective suggests that communities do not simply exist, passively waiting for REDD+ to engage them. Instead, REDD+ performs communities, it brings them into being in practice in specific, contingent, and context specific ways. According to Marres [42], this argument can be traced back to pragmatist philosophy and particularly to Dewey's 'The Public and its Problems' [43]. Marres [42] suggests that the formation of publics (communities in the case of REDD+) is not just about will formation (articulating the interests of the communities), but also issue formation (shaping the meaning of REDD+ and the problems it addresses).

In other words, a performative perspective offers insights into the workings of a policy, which go beyond evaluating its representational quality (does the policy adequately reflect reality) and its effectiveness (does it achieve stated objectives) and allows for critical examination of the intended and unintended political implications of policy prescriptions. Consequently, this paper asks how REDD+ performs communities, that is, what visions of community do REDD+ policies at various levels articulate and with what potential consequences?

#### **3. Method**

To understand how communities are envisaged in the international policy on REDD+, we examined three sets of literature; Firstly, all the official policy decisions, as well as submissions made by parties and observers, which were made during the negotiations on REDD+. These are available on the UNFCCC website [44]. This represents a relatively concise body of centralized literature, which can readily be overseen. Secondly, literature from NGOs and support organizations, which in contrast is vast and widely dispersed. Although we could not make an exhaustive or all-inclusive study, we attempted to distil the main lines of discussion in this material in as far as they refer to communities in REDD+.

Thirdly, for the analysis of how communities are framed in national level REDD+ planning, we used as examples the eight countries which had submitted so-called Emissions Reduction Programs (ERPs) to the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) in final or draft form by the time this study was carried out (end of 2017). These are the most complete expressions of the rationale of national REDD+ thinking available and can be compared since the reports follow a common format requiring among other things, the identification of stakeholders and an explanation of the causes of deforestation and degradation, as well as how the interventions planned are consistent with this. The countries that had submitted final ERPs at the time of this research were: Chile, Mexico, Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Costa Rica, whilst Ghana, Mozambique, and the Republic of Congo (R. Congo) had entered draft ERPs. In all cases, except for Costa Rica, these plans were not for the entire country, but for selected geographic areas only.

The ERPs were studied using the textual analysis software Atlas-ti. A full document search was made for all mentions of the word 'community' or 'communities' (including 'local communities' and 'indigenous communities'). Uses of terms that were irrelevant for our purposes (e.g., international community, donor community, plant community, and proper names) were ignored, as were those parts of the text that were provided by the World Bank (i.e., embedded in the format) and sections that were copies of standard texts from other sources, such as the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The reference lists at the end of the reports were also excluded from the analysis. The remaining uses of the term 'community' were coded using a set of alternative signifiers, which are explained in the results section of this paper. Words which could have similar meanings to 'community' (e.g., village, indigenous group, commune, agrarian nucleus) were also checked and compared. All the reports were in English, but where a version in an alternative language (e.g., French, Spanish) was available, the equivalent terms were also identified to ensure consistency.

#### **4. Communities as Articulated in UNFCCC REDD+ Policy**

The Paris Climate Agreement [45] includes in Article 5 explicit reference to 'policy approaches and positive incentives for activities relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries'. The initiative is generally known as REDD+. In this context, no direct mention of communities is included, though the preamble to the Agreement lists the need to consider obligations, such as support for the rights of indigenous peoples and of local communities, and Article [8], on adaptation, refers among other items to support for the resilience of communities. However, the need for engagement and participation of 'local communities' and 'indigenous peoples' (IPs) in various ways is clearly expressed in earlier UNFCCC policy decisions on REDD+. In these decisions, the term 'communities' is mentioned ten times, particularly in the context of recognizing their needs [1]. The documents specify it will be important that REDD+ ensures communities' sustainable livelihoods, develops safeguard information systems that show respect for their rights and their knowledge, provides options for adaption to climate change which take into account their traditional and indigenous knowledge, and engages them in monitoring and reporting (Table 1). There is strong emphasis on consultation and the use of community knowledge to arrive at better REDD+ interventions, which, at minimum, will do no harm to their livelihoods. More recent decisions also recognize the potential of communities to be involved in the implementation of these interventions. The influence of IP lobby groups, which joined with civic environmental movements to form a front for issues relating to social justice during the climate change negotiations [46–48], is evident in the repeated use of the combo 'local communities and indigenous peoples' and undoubtedly served to increase the prominence of 'communities' in these policy texts.

The views of the UNFCCC negotiating Parties on the engagement of communities in REDD+ can also be traced through the submissions that have been entered on different topics throughout the process. What is most noticeable is that, as with the policy developments outlined above, there has been a progression in how the role of communities has been seen. Whilst the call for benefits to flow to communities has been present in broad and unspecific terms throughout the negotiation process, quite quickly contributions turned to focus on the need to engage communities in the generation of information (monitoring) of carbon stocks and of the effectiveness of REDD+ efforts locally. This was followed by calls for community monitoring of safeguards, including those that refer to respect for knowledge and rights of IPs and members of local communities, promotion and support for effective participation of communities (e.g., through Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)), and protection and conservation of natural forests, whilst enhancing social and environmental benefits considering the need for sustainable livelihoods. Although there have been sporadic references to direct incentive payments to communities (e.g., by Colombia, [49]), most refer to community benefits in general, without committing to cash payments as such, and the most recent submissions have focused on the need for non-carbon benefits to communities, possibly financed in addition to carbon. Overall, whilst there are clear calls for the participation of communities in the sense of providing information and receiving some benefits (and above all, not being disadvantaged by REDD+), there is no clear picture given in either the national submissions or in the UNFCCC policy texts on whether and how communities would be engaged in the actual implementation of REDD+ post planning phase, presumably in part because this would interfere with national sovereignty on the matter.

Additionally, is it noticeable that there is no definition at all in these policy texts of what 'community' means, barring one remark from COMIFAC (the Commission of Central African Forests) which suggests that the definition should be left to individual countries according to their national circumstances [50]. Clearly, social institutions vary greatly between countries and trying to impose a single definition would be impossible. However, it is apparent that the term is intended to refer to groups of people resident in or near forests who are dependent on these forests for part of their livelihoods, whether or not they have formal tenure, rather than to individuals who own forest land as private property. However, in reality many rural communities are made up of smallholders (operating essentially as private land owners) or at least include some quasi-private situations. Farmers within communities usually operate as individuals even where there is no formal tenure (i.e., usufructure systems are common). Therefore, whilst use of the term 'community' implies some kind of group or communal decision-making system, there is no implication in the texts that a community necessarily possesses and/or manages areas of communal land as this may or may not be the case; nor is any particular size of community or form of community governance suggested. The phrase 'local communities' as noted above is almost always paired with, but clearly seen as different from, 'indigenous peoples'. The latter term is well recognized, e.g., in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in relation to territories owned by or claimed by groups who identify themselves as being of a specific local ethnicity, and it is safe to assume that the term 'local communities' is considered to have a broader, more catch-all meaning. To conclude, the UNFCCC does not provide a definition of communities but does envision them as being able to benefit from REDD+, and as potential agents in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of REDD+ without a clear specification of how exactly

the communities are to accomplish this. This formulation appears to have been chosen to ensure that REDD+ is directed at the poorer, more traditional, users of rural land and forests, rather than profiting large land owners. This was partly in response to concerns that arose (among others, from international NGOs and Indigenous Peoples' (IP) organizations, see below) when REDD+ was proposed, with a view to ensuring that REDD+ would be socially equitable. However, the formulation makes no reference to possible inequalities within communities and how individuals within communities would be engaged.

**Table 1.** References to communities and indigenous peoples in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) decisions on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+).


#### **5. Communities as Articulated by International Support Agencies and NGOs**

The position of intergovernmental support organizations and NGOs on the role of communities in REDD+ is, in comparison to the UNFCCC and its Parties, much more detailed. In a formal submission to the UNFCCC [49], the UN Convention on Biological Diversity calls for the development of self-sufficiency in REDD+ of indigenous and local communities. Similarly, the UN Forum on Forests calls for community forestry under REDD+, for the involvement of communities in meaningful decisions on state forests, and as one of the first, for attention to the role and importance of tenure. Crucially, a community approach to implementation appears to be at the heart of the UN REDD+ program (a support and funding program jointly managed by United Nations Development Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, which has a specific community based sub-program co-financed by the Global Environmental Fund Small Grants Program. The World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), one of the major funders of REDD+, follows a charter which requires testing ways to sustain or enhance livelihoods of local communities and conserve biodiversity, whilst its Forest Investment Program (FIP) has a dedicated mechanism that provides grant funding for indigenous people and local communities to engage in the implementation of REDD+ processes. Conservation International states that the participation of indigenous peoples and local communities is crucial to the successful development and implementation of REDD+ mechanisms, and has developed a community manual to support such efforts [51]. However, perhaps more than any other agencies, the CGIAR organizations have been influential in shifting the nature of much discourse on REDD+ from its earlier focus on international results-based finance to national governments, to one in which the central issue is what communities can do at the local level. This can be seen in the work of the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), which championed the idea of the '3Es' (effectiveness, efficiency and equity) as the standard against which REDD+ implementation should be held [52], and followed this up with in its global comparative study and global database of community level REDD+ projects [53]. This type of thinking is also present in the work of The World Agroforestry Centre, ICRAF, with its Local Perspectives on REDD+ [54] and arguments that REDD+ projects which involve communities are more likely to save forests [55]. For: "Who can manage forests better than those living within or beside them? with REDD+ redefining the forest management and conservation landscape, community forest management can contribute to reduced forest emissions and increased forest carbon stocks [6] (pp. 201–202)".

Yet despite this focus on the importance of communities in REDD+, these texts also fail to explain or explore what they mean or imply by 'community'. They use the term as if it were self-evident (e.g., the otherwise very extensive REDD+-related glossary at the end of Angelsen et al. [51], for example, does not include an entry for 'community'). This follows earlier practice in highly influential publications on communities and forests, such as White and Martin [22], which also talked about communities without critical analysis of what this means. It is quite difficult to read between the lines to determine how communities are actually being imagined here. In terms of organizing natural resource management and REDD+, involvement of communities is seen as a 'third way' (other than regular government channels and the private sector). There are underlying pragmatic efficiency reasons for this, as the quote from Agrawal and Angelsen above indicates, but also ideological/political reasons related to the idea that the rights of poorer, small scale users to control their local resources need to be protected and bolstered to ensure that REDD+ does not give advantage to the more powerful elements, such as larger landowners and corporations. Along with this, it seems that the whole rural population is implicitly conceived as being made up of communities, and secondly that these communities are imagined largely as Agrawal and Gibson [12] suggest, although the list might be broadened. Specifically, communities appear to be envisaged as relatively small territorial and placed-based social groupings (1) that are positioned outside the normal hierarchy of government administration, (2) that have some form of internal, communal decision making procedure which may be based on traditional/indigenous rules or on other norms and procedures, (3) that may or may not have formal rights to land and forest and may or may not have communal forest land, and that (4) under favorable conditions, are expected to be able to act as a unit to manage the forest to meet common goals.

Whilst this last expectation does imply the ability to work towards common goals, it is less clear whether communities are understood in these texts to have homogeneous social structures and shared

norms [12,56]. The shared norms which supposedly help communities to manage common properties are usually understood to be rooted not just in shared ethnicity, religion, and history, but also in the fact that members have similar livelihoods strategies, seen as contributing to internal harmony. The way that the REDD+ discussion on equity has developed offers interesting insight into this issue. Although there have been a number of interesting discussions on the meaning of equity in REDD+ in academic literature [57–60], the main focus at the policy level has been on safeguards and benefit sharing (see Table 2 for the case of UN-REDD). FCPF requires countries to provide and justify a benefits distribution plan that respects customary rights to lands and territories and that reflects broad community support "so that incentives are applied in an effective and equitable manner, and shared with those stakeholders most critical to protecting forests (the benefit sharing plan will provide details on the benefit-sharing process, related distribution criteria and timelines and types of beneficiaries)" [61]. Moreover, there is emphasis in these texts on the need to be gender inclusive and to protect the interests of marginalized groups (i.e., usually seen as marginalized communities), thus a generally pro-poor approach. However, they do not really peek into questions of equality (for example, as regards to size of landholdings) within communities and there is no requirement to carry out a class analysis at community level. This failure to attend to heterogeneity within communities, suggests that these texts do assume some degree of social homogeneity. This also applies to NGO literature, which critiques the social inclusivity of REDD+ programs. The Rights and Resources Institute [62] for example, deals with generalized issues such as community rights and community tenure, but does not broach questions of equity and fairness within communities. To our knowledge, this has been addressed, and only in the context of benefit sharing, in just two countries, Nepal [63] and Vietnam [64,65], where a formula to differentiate needs of the family (Nepal) or their individual contribution to increasing carbon stocks (Vietnam) has been used. We note that these benefit distribution systems relate to rewards for increases in carbon storage, rather than for decreased deforestation, which is much more difficult to link with individual behavior or position (see Skutsch et al., [60] for a detailed explanation). We also note in passing that lack of equality within communities does not necessarily mean there are no shared norms. In many communities, inequality is the norm and is accepted as such.


**Table 2.** Criteria relating to social equity established by the UN-REDD program on Social and Environmental Principles (SEP).

#### **6. Communities as Articulated in National Policy Documents**

The eight Emissions Reductions Program documents revealed a range of uses of the term 'community', which in most cases was applied in several different senses even within one country document (Table 3). The term is used much more often in some countries (e.g., Mozambique) than in others (e.g., Costa Rica), even taking into account the length of the reports, and that six distinct meanings can be identified, as explained below.

**Table 3.** Meanings of the term 'community' in the Emissions Reduction Programs (ERP) documents submitted to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility FCPF (frequency of occurrence in %). N—number of relevant references to the term 'community' in the national report; PP—pages; N/PP average occurrence of the term 'community' per page of the document.


The first important finding is that 'community' is very frequently (and some cases, predominantly) used not to refer to a group of people, their organizational form or governance, but simply to refer to the rural population. Examples are 'community awareness raising' and 'increasing community income'—where what is meant here is not community (in the sense of shared or communally decided), but the rural people in general, and this use is repeated in many reports, e.g., 'the resilience of communities to climate change'; 'access of communities to forest resources'; 'develop viable alternative livelihoods for local communities'; 'sustainable community livelihoods'; 'bushmeat is a primary source of income for communities', etc. In all such cases, terms such as 'rural families' or 'the local population' could equally well be used instead of 'community', since the reference is not to any specific organization, institution, or social grouping. We see here 'community' being used as shorthand for 'people'.

A second meaning of the term community is found in reference to indigenous peoples or indigenous cultures in general (i.e., not to specific communities such as local organizations). Statements such as ´Indigenous Law No. 6172 set forth that the indigenous reserves remain the property of indigenous communities´ Costa Rica ERP is a typical example of this. Thirdly, it is often used to refer to 'villages/settlements', i.e., the physical areas in which groups of people live (e.g., 'forest-fringe communities in the ER program area are ethnically diverse' (Ghana ERP)). In this sense, it implies a presence of people living together in groups, but without reference to any particular form of governance; however, we mostly used the term 'villages' to classify references to communities where there does not appear to be clear authority present that would enable the community to take charge of REDD+ implementation (e.g., 'Communities/villages are not legal administrative entities in Vietnam so are without decision making powers' (Vietnam ERP)).

However, in many cases, the term 'community' clearly relates to a form of governance, when it refers to communities in the sense of having a defined leadership system and mandate which could, for example, enable it to take charge of local implementation of REDD+. Here we discerned three more meanings of community. Firstly, there are communities that are independent of the government hierarchy, in the form of autonomous decision making units (e.g., 'internal organization among ejidos and communities, resulting from the weakening of their internal governance mechanisms, such as their general assembly, and their internal bodies, such as the ejido commissioner and the board of protection, are one of the main barriers to ensuring a successful development of activities' (Mexico ERP)). Then there are communities that specifically occupy indigenous peoples' reserves (i.e., 'different' from the majority of the rural population). For example, 'This diminishes the land use rights of local communities and leaves notably indigenous communities—those outside dedicated areas within concessions—in limbo' (ERP Republic of Congo). Finally, there are communities that belong to the (lowest tier of) the government hierarchy (e.g., 'The administrative organization comprises two former districts, 8 territories, 23 sectors, 66 communities, 4 towns and thousands of villages' (ERP DRC)). In allocating each mention of 'community' to these different categories, we have endeavored

to be as consistent as possible, and we included a 'not clear' category for cases where there was significant doubt.

The six different meanings associated with the term 'community' are shown in Table 3, in terms of the frequency with which they occur in each report (%). In Mexico, the term is exclusively used to refer to ejidos and comunidades indigenas, two different forms of communally organized agrarian nuclei which have legal land tenure over defined territories and clearly defined internal decision-making systems; they are independent of the government administration. Farmers and forest owners not living within these areas, but who might be engaged in REDD+, are in contrast referred to as smallholders or 'other landowners'. In Chile, 'community' is used both to refer to the lowest level of the formal government hierarchy, i.e., the commune (meaning municipality or county) and to indigenous communities living in areas over which they have communal tenure by law. In Costa Rica, it refers mainly to communities in indigenous territories, although other types of communities ('peasant communities', 'other rural communities') are sporadically mentioned in the report without further specification, as well as small landowners and farmers, who as in Mexico, are not considered to belong to communities. In Vietnam, 'community' most often refers to informal or traditional groups of people living in villages within the communes, which represent the lowest tier of the formal administrative system. Although there are traditional leaders in these villages, they do not enjoy formal powers, for example, the Civil Code does not permit these communities to own land as a group and they are not legal entities, so they cannot have bank accounts. The situation in the African countries is less clearly defined. In the DRC, R. Congo, and Ghana, communities are framed in the context of the traditional and customary system of chiefs. These traditional governance systems may fuse with the formal government system, for example in DRC, chiefs are usually appointed by the government as administrators at the village level. The DRC REDD+ document identifies the county or municipal level as the 'community' and smaller population centers nested within this, sometimes as 'villages' and sometimes (confusingly) also as 'communities'. In Ghana and the R. Congo, there are autonomous local level communities whose local leaders have some authority to make decisions about land use etc., although much of the land is in private hands through usufructure rights. Ghana already developed overarching umbrella institutions called Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) and envisages similar organizations for REDD+ called Hotspot Interventions Areas (HIA), which will be governed by a local governance board of land owners, land users, local authority entities, and community leaders (including leaders of minority groups), as the key players in the REDD+ strategy. This means that the 'community' is not seen as the focus in quite the same sense as in many other countries. Moreover, the target of the entire strategy is the individual cocoa farmer, not the community as a group. In Mozambique, the term 'Local Communities' (usually, but not always, capitalized) is specified in the Land Law to mean groups of people with communal title to the land and authority over its use.

In summary, we see that there exist quite different representations of communities in these different segments of policy making. These are all implicit rather than explicit, and while the national reports are more specific about the form their communities take, none of the sources really examine the nature of communities and their internal workings. There is an unquestioned assumption that a community approach will be efficient and will produce benefits for the rural people, with an underlying coda that suggests that all rural people are equally poor.

#### **7. Discussion**

At first sight, the different sets of REDD+ documents seem to represent communities in rather different ways. The policy texts developed at the level of the UNFCCC through national submissions and negotiations are not very specific about what defines a community, although they represent them as groups of people living in forest areas, which may or not have legal tenure over these resources. These texts appear to have been quite strongly influenced by lobby groups representing IPs, and most of the references to communities relate to safeguarding IP and community rights,

including the right to consultation, and emphasize their role as beneficiaries, whilst there is little reference to how they may be involved in the direct implementation of the policy. Given the lack of specificity, one could question why terms such as 'rural people' or 'small farmers and forest users' were not used instead of 'communities'. Evidently, 'communities' implies a level of organization and a means of communication which could be used directly by REDD+. The fact that 'communities' do not exist everywhere is simply bypassed, for convenience. The agencies that are promoting strong community involvement in the actual implementation of REDD+, including FCPF, UN-REDD+, and many international NGOs and research organizations do not provide a clear definition or critical discussion of communities either. However, as we have shown, these organizations also appear to imagine the entire rural population as made up of local territorially coherent communities, which are not part of the governmental administrative system, but are independent entities with their own decision-making systems. In these texts, a community approach appears in some ways to indicate a 'pro-poor' approach, since communities are considered to be 'poor'. However, it is noticeable that very few cases actually consider inequality within the community. This may reflect the dilemma mentioned already at the end of Section 5, i.e., the development industry in general supports the idea of self-determination at community level but at the same time demands equality, and these may be incompatible objectives. Interestingly, while these texts attribute great significance to communities in relation to REDD+, they also acknowledge that communities often do not have formal rights to forest or tenure over land and that they lack legal and technical skills for participation in REDD+, which means that the capacity of these communities to contribute to REDD+ may be limited.

In contrast, the individual country reports revealed quite a range of interpretations of 'community', reflecting their own national circumstances. Firstly, it was evident that in very many cases the term 'community' is being used not in the sense of a type of organization, but simply to refer to rural people in general, as a form of shorthand. Secondly, in at least two cases (Chile and DRC) 'communities' is a term, which, among other uses, is routinely used to mean municipalities or counties, i.e., the lowest tier of the government administration, which is very different from the view held by NGOs and support agencies, which clearly see communities as outside the normal government system. Thirdly, although in some countries 'communities' does imply place-based social groups that have the mandate to make their own decisions as territorial units, in others, this is not so clear. The role envisaged for communities varies, in some there is more emphasis on communities as beneficiaries, whilst others contain at least some practical suggestions for how they may be engaged in implementation. However, there is almost no reference to how existing social inequalities within communities might influence outcomes. In these national reports, the inequalities that are mentioned are only in terms of ethnicity or gender.

Thus, we may conclude that the first two sets of literature on REDD+ policy articulate a vision of communities that resembles Agrawal and Gibson's myth. We see an implicit assumption in the documents that all rural people are members of communities, which in principle could have the characteristics necessary for participation in REDD+. Community level REDD+ is seen as being for the general benefit of everyone without any reference to existing social inequalities within communities, other than gender and sometimes ethnicity (the euphemism 'marginalized groups' is often used in this context). Moreover, the engagement of communities is clearly seen as contributing to the effectiveness and legitimacy of REDD+. Importantly, this is done without clearly specifying how exactly, given their limitations, these communities will be able to live up to these expectations.

The interesting point is that the country reports display a whole range of different visions of community. In some cases, a wall-to-wall concept is employed, in others, only specific groups of people in specific areas are targeted; the forms of community governance vary and are more explicit in these reports. Aside from this, the function of communities in REDD+ is represented in terms rather similar to those used in the global texts. In that literature, there are expectations that communities can be capacitated to carry out REDD+ activities, and that this will promote an equitable, efficient, and legitimate approach to REDD+.

These observations raise questions about why, given the evident lack of community capacity in reality, and the social inequalities that quite clearly exist within communities, the idea that engaging communities in REDD+ will not only be effective but also egalitarian, continues to be evoked. While we agree to some extent with Pasgaard [66], that this can reflect pragmatic use of rhetoric to further the positions of actors at all levels, we suggest that in fact this formulation has a strong ideological appeal, which stems from particular political positions and social and environmental justice principles. It is also strengthened by lack of faith of many observers in government efficiency and sincerity regarding rural poverty alleviation, as well as by the general trend, also found in many official government rural development policies, towards the idea that local participation in decision making is positive and even necessary.

Apart from the concerns discussed above related to the realities and capacities of communities, this leaves the legitimacy of community-led decision making and implementation unaddressed. Following the majority of published literature on participation (for overviews and critical discussion see [25,37,67]), there is an implicit belief in REDD+ documentation on the global level that strengthening the relative bargaining power of rural people in the modern-day situation is unquestionably benign. Whilst we recognize that in some places there are strong alternative (traditional) forms of governance at the local level, particularly in the case of communities that identify themselves as indigenous people, taking this for granted overlooks the fact that in many cases community empowerment in REDD+ is likely to end up being inegalitarian or even undemocratic (see [68] for the case of REDD+ in Nigeria).

A second reason for the persistence of this myth is more pragmatic. The prior experience of the agencies that are promoting REDD+ is largely confined to projects such as community forest management and PES. These programs have been carried out in communities which possess at least some of the idealized characteristics described above, and which see themselves as management units. They are communities which were identified by government agencies or NGOs as potential partners or candidates for this kind of intervention, precisely because they possess these attributes. Although they may not represent the more general condition of the rural population, it has been expedient for some of these agencies to continue their programs in these kinds of communities and expand them with REDD+ objectives, and moreover it clearly influences the way these agencies conceive the situation and the possibilities for intervention in rural areas. However, there are many rural settlements where this kind of social organization is missing and where such initiatives have never been attempted because there is no mechanism for communication and negotiation, or where the label 'community' has been applied by external agents, but does not reflect local realities [14]. Therefore, all the literature on community level natural resource management is based on an inherently biased sample and this bias is being reproduced in REDD+. CIFOR's Global Comparative Study on REDD+, which used existing community forest management and payment for environmental services projects as proxies for REDD+ is a clear example of this. It is a bias which is extremely difficult to overcome, since programs such as REDD+ depend on being able to communicate both about and with local forest users. If these are not arranged into clusters with a recognizable contact point, i.e., in the form of 'communities', it is difficult to visualize how communication could be managed.

This brings us to our final point. The community myth persists because it performs, i.e., it does work. Pasgaard and Nielsen [14], for example, show in a case in Cambodia how conservation rhetoric is used at all levels, from local leaders to donor organizations, essentially to further own interests, and Blaikie [13] has a similar story for Botswana and Malawi. The propagation of the idea that community is central to REDD+ could be seen as an example of this. However, at the same time, the ideological attractiveness of performing communities in this way has enabled consensus about the direction of REDD+ (as unspecific as this direction may be). It has also worked to reinforce the legitimacy of NGOs and other agencies that collaborate with communities, where these do in fact exist and to advocate for their rights, resulting in the potential for new project funding for collaborative work under the banner of REDD+. Therefore, although the visions of community in REDD+ may not be real in a literal or material sense, they are clearly a reality that actors have chosen to believe

in and from which they stand to benefit. This means that they are real in their consequences [69]. Whether or not REDD+ will be able to shape the reality of actual communities according to its vision is an open question. Past experiences in community based natural resource management does suggest that this is possible. The initiation of community-based arrangements and institutions can re-order social relations and remake communities to fit with this myth. This is in fact the basis of the Ostrom tradition in institutional analysis and natural resource management. Moreover, in a recent analysis of the Payment for Environmental Services program in Mexico, McCall et al. [70] find evidence that the presence of this program, which provides relatively easy money to communities that can justify a case for it, may in fact have served as an opportunity and incentive for communities to create, or revive, the necessary decision making apparatus which may have earlier fallen into abeyance due to historical circumstances, i.e., it has formed the modern 'community glue'. Newton et al. [7] have also made the case for how REDD+ is strengthening existing CFM initiatives in Nepal.

Policies are often built on myths, which does not always invalidate them or even necessarily result in failure. Policies built on myths can sometimes transform the situation they are designed to address. However, the power of myths lies not only in the ideals they imagine, but also in what they obscure, and so there will always be unpredictable outcomes. The strong attachment to the community myth could be the fuel through which REDD+ becomes a widespread catalyst for positive change, but it may also cause blindness in terms of the practical implications for communities, which will ultimately do them a disservice.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, M.S. and E.T.; Methodology, M.S. and E.T.; Software, M.S.; Writing—Original Draft Preparation, M.S. and E.T.; Writing—Review & Editing, M.S. and E.T.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Acknowledgments:** We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers whose comments were very helpful in improving the arguments presented in this paper.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflicts of interest

#### **References**


Available online: http://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/RRI\_Community-Rightsand-Tenure-in-Country-Emission-Reduction-Programs\_June-2016.pdf (accessed on 3 September 2017).


© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

*Article*

### **Trifecta of Success for Reducing Commodity-Driven Deforestation: Assessing the Intersection of REDD+ Programs, Jurisdictional Approaches, and Private Sector Commitments**

#### **Peter Umunay 1, Breanna Lujan 2, Christopher Meyer 2,\* and Josefina Cobián <sup>1</sup>**


Received: 15 August 2018; Accepted: 29 September 2018; Published: 2 October 2018

**Abstract:** To date, numerous public- and private-sector efforts, commitments, and initiatives to reduce commodity-driven deforestation have emerged. In and of themselves, these elements—namely REDD+ programs, jurisdictional approaches (JAs), and private sector commitments—are necessary, but they are not sufficient to reduce deforestation. When operating together, however, these efforts have the potential to significantly reduce commodity-driven deforestation. This research aimed to determine whether and where REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments overlap in what are termed "trifecta jurisdictions". Considering that each element possesses features that can enhance and complement those of the others, the authors hypothesized that—but did not ascertain whether—trifecta jurisdictions present the greatest potential to reduce commodity-driven deforestation. A total of 13 trifecta jurisdictions and six bifecta jurisdictions—where two of the three elements are present—were identified by: compiling a dataset of REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments; evaluating all potential options against established criteria; and categorizing them according to trifecta or bifecta jurisdiction status. The fact that a majority of trifecta and bifecta jurisdictions are located in countries with the most tropical tree cover loss is also significant in that it highlights the presence of these elements where most needed, and how high deforestation rates might be attracting REDD+ program, JA, and private sector commitment activities. Although many of the REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments are relatively nascent and their ability to collectively reduce deforestation is not yet clearly evident, this article posited that synergistic potential is greatest in trifecta and bifecta jurisdictions and that efforts should be made to greater align these elements.

**Keywords:** REDD+; jurisdictional approaches; private sector commitments; commodity-driven deforestation; trifecta jurisdictions; supply chains; public-private partnerships

#### **1. Introduction**

In the lead-up to 2020—a year that marks the deadline for many companies to meet the deforestation and sustainability goals to which they have committed—it is critical for key government and private-sector entities to begin implementing solutions that will prove most effective for combating deforestation resulting from the production of key commodities like soy, cattle, timber and pulp, palm oil, and cocoa [1,2]. Commercial agriculture in tropical forest countries is known to be the driver of 40% of deforestation and continues to be a driving force of large-scale deforestation [3,4]. In fact, tree cover loss in the tropics has been rising steadily over the past 17 years. According to recent Global Forest Watch data, 2017 was the second-worst year on record for tropical forest loss; the tropics

alone experienced 15.8 million hectares of tree cover loss that year, an area the size of Bangladesh [5]. Historically, the private sector has approached solving deforestation one supply chain at a time. In light of evident limitations of certification systems (such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and the Forest Stewardship Council) and other approaches that have been used to reduce commodity-driven deforestation, the adoption and evolution of REDD+ as a government driven process leading to results-based payments has begun facilitating the shift of focus away from supply chain-specific approaches, and toward the development and implementation of jurisdictional approaches (JAs) [6,7]. JAs, which will be discussed further in Section 2.3, are integrated, multi-stakeholder planning initiatives at the landscape level that are aligned with subnational or national political jurisdictions to facilitate sustainable economic development and advance environmental commitments to reducing commodity-driven deforestation [8]. A trend seems to be emerging in which government, the private sector, non-governmental organization (NGO) actors, and other stakeholders involved with tackling commodity-driven deforestation are increasingly exploring JAs as potential avenues to overcome the shortcomings of discrete approaches to curb deforestation [9].

Jurisdictional approaches, alongside REDD+ programs and private sector commitments, number among the most promising tools to eliminate commodity-driven deforestation. It should be noted that, while some believe that JAs represent a combined form of REDD+ programs and private sector commitments, in this analysis each of these elements is distinct, as described below:


Facing mounting pressure to broadly and effectively reduce commodity-driven deforestation, governments and companies alike are striving to identify the most promising solutions. Given that in and of themselves, these elements are not sufficient to reduce commodity-driven deforestation at scale, REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments need to operate in conjunction to significantly reduce commodity-driven deforestation; each element has the potential to support, complement, and enhance the others to ensure their medium to long term success [10,11]. Pursuing this line of thinking, this paper explores the questions: How many current REDD+ programs (subnational and above), JA initiatives, and private sector commitments overlap in the same jurisdictions? How can these jurisdictions be characterized? This article hypothesizes that efforts to reduce and eliminate commodity-driven deforestation at a landscape level will be most successful in jurisdictions where all three elements—REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments—are in place; these jurisdictions are referred to as "trifecta jurisdictions" (Figure 1).

This article begins with providing an overview of the linkages between REDD+ and commodity-driven deforestation, the successes and limitations of private sector approaches to reduce commodity-driven deforestation, and the characteristics of JAs. The next section describes the methodology of the analysis, followed by a discussion of the findings. More detailed descriptions of the REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments analyzed in this article can be found in the supplementary materials. The concluding section provides insights into the relevance of the results and how they can be used to advance action to reduce commodity-driven deforestation in key jurisdictions.

**Figure 1.** Elements of a trifecta jurisdiction.

#### **2. Background**

#### *2.1. REDD+ Programs*

The linkage between commodity production and deforestation began before REDD+ was formally introduced in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiation process in 2005 [12]. Previous to the entrance of what is now jurisdictional REDD+ into the UNFCCC process, project level REDD+ started as early as 1997 with the Noel Kempf Mercado Climate Action project in Bolivia [13]. Initial thoughts about applying REDD+ as a tool to address deforestation in supply chains revolved around disagreement at the global level over two questions posed by developing countries: (1) Why should they not be allowed to clear forest for development purposes, when a portion of forest clearing was done to plant commodities to meet growing demand from global supply chains? (2) And if they were not going to clear forest, who was going to compensate them for the opportunity cost? [14].

After eight years, UNFCCC negotiations on REDD+ culminated in the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ (WFR). The WFR provides an overarching framework and methodological guidance for REDD+ implementation and payment for results at the federal level. Because of concerns about deforestation leakage from smaller project type REDD+ into neighboring areas—such as soy-related deforestation leakage from the Brazilian Amazon biome to the Cerrado biome for example—UNFCCC negotiators at COP16 defined the scale of REDD+ to be at the national level and only subnational level in the interim [15]. The jurisdictional or government-level scale of the WFR ensures that REDD+ programs are the focus of national strategies, rather than an amalgamation of distinct projects. The WFR requires that National REDD+ Strategies describe how the drivers of deforestation will be addressed and encourages all countries, organizations, and the private sector to take action to reduce the drivers [16]. However, no explicit type of demand-side actions to address the drivers are required of developed countries or of consumers of deforestation driving commodities [16].

To better tackle the specific and unique nature of commodity-driven deforestation, many initiatives are now exploring how to link REDD+ programs to other initiatives to reduce commodity-driven deforestation. For example, many multilateral REDD+ programs, such as the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), Forest Investment Program (FIP), and the UN-REDD Program, created to help countries prepare for and implement REDD+, have supported efforts to address the commodity drivers of deforestation in REDD+ countries [17–19]. Additionally, platforms like the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 (TFA 2020), Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), and New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) came to the fore to help catalyze linkages between public and private sector actors seeking to reduce

deforestation [1,2,20]. Finally, the Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI)—one of the major REDD+ donors—supported several NGOs to study "Commodity Supply Chain Initiatives of Relevance to REDD+" between 2013 and 2015 [21].

Although REDD+ programs are demonstrating progress, REDD+ is still considered to be "a great idea, but hardly tried" by many [22,23]. The need to comply with stringent donor or government criteria has delayed the implementation of REDD+ programs, as has the ability to overcome vested interests related to business-as-usual [22,24]. REDD+ programs must also tackle other difficult governance challenges that accompany improving land tenure and benefit distribution, which can be complicated by local circumstances [25]. Lastly, the ability of REDD+ to effectively address the underlying drivers of deforestation can be hindered by the unique and specific nature of deforestation drivers, and the broad reach of potential trade impacts that such actions might have [26].

#### *2.2. Private Sector Commodity Supply Chain Initiatives*

As of June 2018, 473 companies globally have committed to curbing deforestation in supply chains linked to palm oil, soy, timber and pulp, and cattle [27]. Such commitments have taken various forms, including targets related to purchasing certified products, supply chain traceability, moratoria on areas or suppliers linked to deforestation, certification schemes and sectoral standards, and other goals to improve sustainable management or reduce deforestation. The surge in private sector commitments is helping elevate the importance of forests, forge linkages between key stakeholders throughout supply chains, and focus attention on key deforestation drivers [28]. The certification approach, in particular, including the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), and the Soy Moratorium, continues to serve as a primary tool of many private sector commitments and has demonstrated mild success in curbing deforestation by setting a precedent for achieving traceability, producing responsibly, and establishing important platforms to discuss and determine best management practices [29–31].

Despite these benefits, there is no clear evidence that these private sector initiatives are having their intended impacts. The many shortcomings, specifically of certification systems, have become particularly evident [32]. Various socio-economic and environmental limitations such as economic leakage, low and selective adoption, poor forest governance, minimal market uptake, high expenses for small holders, lack of government buy in, and unintended social consequences all undermine the potential of private interventions to aggregate towards meeting broader aspirational goals to reduce commodity-driven deforestation [6]. Moreover, limited geographical coverage induces geographical leakage effects, while the focus on specific commodities does not allow for a comprehensive approach to land use changes and precludes potential indirect feedback effects [6]. Additionally, continued demand for conventional cheaper commodities might undermine supply chain action. Regarding certification systems, the limitations of this approach have also become more apparent. For example, despite the rapid expansion of FSC certification, evidence suggests that the certification system has had very little positive impact on deforestation [33]. The success of RSPO, on the other hand, has been challenged by lax implementation and weak commitments to sustainable palm oil production [34]. The Soy Moratorium's success has also been questioned due to potential leakage of soy-related deforestation from the Amazon biome to the Cerrado Biome [35]. Overall, there are myriad uncoordinated corporate initiatives with different objectives, measures, and timelines whose implementation is hardly monitored [6]. The effectiveness of such a highly fragmented approach to halting deforestation is questionable at the very least.

#### *2.3. Jurisdictional Approaches*

As noted, there are various public and private platforms, programs, and initiatives that have ushered in a wave of commitments to halt deforestation. However, the lack of coordinated and integrated strategies has made it challenging to meet demands for agricultural products without further deforestation and economic leakage. While individual company, NGO, and government actions have helped pave the way towards curbing commodity-driven deforestation, lasting and significant progress will likely require implementation at scale through jurisdictional-level planning and cooperation among key stakeholders [36].

The JA aims to do just that by aligning and coordinating the conservation, supply chain sustainability, and green development interests and actions of various stakeholders within a jurisdiction—a country or a politically defined area (such as a state or province) with defined governance [37]. The JA is a more inclusive and comprehensive solution than project- or supply chain-specific strategies that focuses on tackling deforestation from all angles. This government-led, multi-stakeholder process, which includes companies, producers, purchasers, civil society, local communities, and other local stakeholders, facilitates deforestation reduction across entire landscapes [9]. The JA focus on government is fundamental to the success of this strategy. Recognizing the value and importance of government involvement and action at scale, companies are beginning to consider JAs in order to meet their supply chain sustainability commitments.

By engaging key public and private actors, JAs combine strong governance and policy interventions with supply chain efforts aimed at reducing commodity-driven deforestation [32]. Through aligning multistakeholder goals, JAs present opportunities for these actors to work together in public-private partnerships to address issues that could undermine supply chain efforts aimed at tackling deforestation such as leakage, which means deforestation problems are simply shifted to other places, commodities, or ecosystems [32]. Furthermore, the results generated by JAs can easily be linked to results-based payments for REDD+, and can benefit from finance for phases 1 (readiness) and 2 (implementation) of REDD+. The scalability of JAs, and knowledge and experience sharing that accompanies collaboration at scale, helps ensure widespread and potentially long-term impacts.

Despite the potential of JAs to contribute to efforts to reduce deforestation, there are several challenges that could hinder their success. In order for JAs to be effective, strong governance needs to be in place at the appropriate scale [36]. Additionally, not only do all stakeholders involved need to coordinate and align their goals and efforts, they also need to be inclusive of all potential actors that could impact or be impacted by JA performance, such as those involved with REDD+ programs [38]. Another potential issue is that, by operating at a jurisdictional scale, recognition of good actors and identification of non-compliant actors—who may simply shift operations outside of the jurisdiction in question so as to continue deforesting—may be challenging.

#### **3. Trifecta Jurisdiction Analysis Methodology**

As demonstrated in the previous section, REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments face many challenges. When combined in trifecta jurisdictions, however, these challenges can be overcome, and the synergies between the three elements can facilitate more effective and lasting commodity-driven deforestation reduction (Figure 2). To answer the questions underpinning this analysis—where do REDD+ programs, JA, and private sector initiatives overlap in the same jurisdiction, and how can these trifecta jurisdictions be characterized—the trifecta jurisdiction analysis methodology was developed.

The first step of the methodology entailed creating several criteria to ascertain which REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments qualified for analysis. Then a comprehensive data set of all potential REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments to be taken into consideration was compiled. These initiatives were then assessed and categorized according to the established criteria to determine which would be eligible for analysis. Finally, eligible REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments were organized by jurisdiction to determine whether and where these initiatives overlapped in trifecta jurisdictions (Table S1) or bifecta jurisdictions (Table S2), and to identify which areas might be of interest for deeper analysis; more detail about the REDD+ program, JA, and private sector commitment initiatives included in this analysis can be found in the supplementary material.

**Figure 2.** Element-specific challenges that can be overcome through collaboration in trifecta jurisdictions and the benefits such alignment can yield.

#### *3.1. Criteria for the Selection of REDD+ Programs*

Four different criteria were used to determine which national and subnational REDD+ programs were eligible for this analysis. The first criterion reflected whether a country had a UN-REDD national program in place, the second whether a country had made significant progress in multilateral programs such as the FCPF, and the third whether a country had submitted a forest reference emission level/forest reference level (FREL/FRL) to the UNFCCC's Lima Info Hub [23]. These three criteria reflect how far along REDD+ implementation is in various countries. A REDD+ program was deemed eligible for analysis if two of the first three criteria mentioned were met. The fourth criterion reflected whether a subnational jurisdiction is engaged in bilateral REDD+ program agreements, such as the German Development Bank's (KfW) REDD+ Early Movers (REM) Program; those that are were also considered eligible [39].

#### *3.2. Criteria for the Selection of Jurisdictional Approaches*

As the JA concept continues gaining traction, more and more initiatives at the jurisdictional scale are being developed. To be included in this analysis, jurisdictional approaches needed to prioritize government leadership and involvement. In other words, subnational or national governments had to be involved in the JA from its inception, and continue to play a key role throughout implementation. The second criterion was that a JA needed to revolve around reducing deforestation resulting from the production of one or several of the key commodities of focus: soy, cattle, cocoa, palm oil, or timber and pulp. These commodities were selected due to their impact on deforestation. Lastly, there needed to be documented action or progress demonstrating that each JA was underway.

#### *3.3. Criteria for the Selection of Private Sector Commitments*

Although many companies have made commitments to reduce or eliminate deforestation from their supply chains, for this analysis, corporate commitments were only considered if they met three criteria. The first criterion required that company commitments, strategies, or announcements indicating an intent to reduce deforestation, create sustainable supply chains, or source responsibly be published in a publicly accessible way. Second, corporate commitments needed to be tied to one of the key commodities. The last selection criterion referred to information on the geographical location of the action. A simple statement that the action was intended, but without information on where the action was occurring, was not considered sufficient.

#### **4. Results**

#### *4.1. Trifecta Jurisdictions*

According to the trifecta analysis, there are a total of 13 trifecta jurisdictions in which all three elements are in place (Table 1). Of those, 12 are at the country level, while one is at the subnational level. Five of the jurisdictions are located in Latin America, six in Africa, and two in Southeast Asia. When comparing trifecta jurisdictions to a list of the top 30 tropical forest countries with the most tree cover loss from 2001 to 2016 (Table A1), 11 of the trifecta jurisdictions are in the top 30. The top five countries on the list (Brazil, Indonesia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malaysia, and Paraguay in order) are all trifecta jurisdictions; if Mato Grosso were a country, it would have been ranked fourth on the list. This is an important finding, because it indicates that coordinated efforts are occurring where there is significant deforestation. The fact that trifecta jurisdictions are located in areas with the most tree cover loss could also mean that high deforestation is attracting REDD+ program, JA, and private sector commitment action. This does not indicate, however, the degree to which these elements are aligned; further analysis is needed to ascertain the extent of coordination, as explained in the discussion section.


**Table 1.** All trifecta jurisdictions, including commodities of focus and geographies of interest.

<sup>1</sup> Although the Amazon and Cerrado biomes include Mato Grosso, the state is treated as an individual jurisdiction because of progress specific to Mato Grosso.

In terms of commodities, of the 13 trifecta jurisdictions, nine include explicit private sector commitments or JAs with a focus on palm oil, and are underway across the world. Cattle, the largest source of commodity-driven deforestation and one that is traded less globally comparatively, is being addressed in five jurisdictions (two of which overlap in the Brazilian Amazon biome, which extends into Mato Grosso) [40]. Soy efforts are also focused in Latin America, where there are four jurisdictions of note (two in Brazil, one in Paraguay, and one in Colombia). Cocoa was also a focus in seven jurisdictions (four in Africa, one in Asia, and two in Latin America). Of note is that key commodities are being tackled by JAs and private sector initiatives underway in the five countries experiencing the most forest cover loss. Palm oil is the focus in Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Malaysia; cattle and soy in Brazil and Paraguay; and timber and pulp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Côte d'Ivoire.

#### *4.2. Bifecta Jurisdictions*

Those jurisdictions in which two of the three elements are present are known as bifecta jurisdictions (See Table 2). Of the six bifecta jurisdictions identified in this analysis, one is subnational and five are national. REDD+ and JA initiatives are underway in all six of the bifecta jurisdictions. There are no geographically specific private sector commitments present in any of the bifecta jurisdictions, however.


**Table 2.** All bifecta jurisdictions, including commodities of focus and geographies of interest 1.

<sup>1</sup> As stated above, all bifecta jurisdictions listed have a REDD+ program and JA in place, but lack geographically specific private sector commitments.

Considering the relevance of the bifecta jurisdictions in the list of top 30 countries with forest cover loss from 2001 to 2016, five of the six bifecta jurisdictions are represented; Nepal was the only country that did not make the list. If the Brazilian state of Acre were a country, the sub-national jurisdiction would have ranked 26th on the list. Regarding commodities driving deforestation, cattle was a focus in five of the jurisdictions (Ecuador, Mexico, Nepal, Peru, and Acre), with palm following in three of the jurisdictions (Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru). Soy (Zambia) and cocoa (Peru and Ecuador) were also covered to lesser extents.

#### **5. Discussion**

The trifecta jurisdiction concept is nascent, considering that implementation of many REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments has only just begun. As such, at this stage it is difficult to determine the extent to which these elements are aligning; this analysis aimed to determine where the three elements are occurring so as to flag areas of interest and importance, but did not set out to ascertain the extent or nature of any alignment. Further clarity about the potential success of trifecta jurisdictions is essential, however, considering the limitations of each distinct trifecta jurisdiction element. Analyzing the production of export commodities, the extent of deforestation due to the volume of commodity production, and the presence of large corporates active in export production in trifecta jurisdictions could shed light on how the elements are aligning and the potential impact of this alignment.

Our results indicate that of the 19 trifecta and bifecta jurisdictions, 16 of the countries represented are found in the top 30 tree cover loss list. More interestingly, trifecta jurisdictions are located in the top five tree cover loss countries. These results reinforce our assumption that much of the REDD+ program, JA, and/or private sector work is occurring in areas where deforestation is most prevalent and that, therefore, there is a need to continue encouraging public and private entities to work together to tackle commodity-driven deforestation. An area that demonstrates the potential of trifecta jurisdictions to curb commodity-driven deforestation is Mato Grosso, Brazil (a trifecta jurisdiction); see Box 1 for a more in-depth explanation of what is occurring in this trifecta jurisdiction. Although this article posits that trifecta jurisdictions are the most likely to succeed in reducing, and eventually eliminating, commodity-driven deforestation, future analysis is needed to determine the validity of this hypothesis.

#### **Box 1.** A description of the trifecta elements in Mato Grosso, Brazil.

#### **Box 1: Mato Grosso, Brazil—A Trifecta Jurisdiction**

Mato Grosso, Brazil is one of the jurisdictions where a REDD+ program, a JA, and pri-vate sector commitments overlap; in other words, Mato Grosso is a trifecta jurisdiction. With regards to REDD+, in addition to adhering to the national REDD+ strategy and FREL data that the Brazilian government submitted to the UNFCCC REDD+ platform, the Mato Grosso state government passed a law to create a state REDD+ system in 2013 [41,42]. Additionally, Mato Grosso signed a results-based payment agreement with the REM pro-gram in 2017 [43]. Mato Grosso has also been a pioneer when it comes to JAs. In 2015, the governor of Mato Grosso launched the Produce, Conserve, Include strategy (PCI), a state government-led multistakeholder strategy that aims to keep 6 GtCO2 emissions from forests out of the at-mosphere by 2030 [44]. To contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, the PCI aims to restore 6 million ha of degraded pastures, reduce deforestation by 90%, increase agricultural production, and include smallholders and indigenous communities. Many private sector entities have been active in the PCI. Companies such as Amaggi, Lou-is-Dreyfus, and JBS, support Mato Grosso's PCI strategy through engaging in sustainable sourcing agreements, supporting the development of technical capacity, promoting sus-tainable practices to increase productivity, and providing conservation and financial bene-fits to ranchers. Amaggi, for example, has been actively working with the PCI governance entities to develop a strategic forest restoration plan for Mato Grosso that is in line with both state and private sector goals [45].

Compared to the neighboring state of Pará, which faces similar drivers of deforesta-tion and had a similar deforestation trend, Mato Grosso seems to have gained traction in reducing deforestation while increasing agricultural production. Using 2015 as a starting point for when the PCI, private sector commitments, and REDD+ programs were all in place—or when the trifecta elements were all in effect—it is evident that Mato Grosso has realized a reduction in its annual deforestation rate by 2.5% (deforestation rates totaled 2153 km2 in 2015, and decreased to 1561 km<sup>2</sup> in 2017), while deforestation rates in the neighboring state of Pará jumped from 2153 km<sup>2</sup> in 2015 to 2433 km<sup>2</sup> in 2017; an increase of about 13% (Figure A1) [46]. While too early to state that the difference in deforestation reduction performance between Mato Grosso and Pará equates to proof that trifecta juris-dictions are more successful in terms of reducing commodity-driven deforestation, it does show a promising trend toward a greater decrease of deforestation in one of the trifecta jurisdictions identified as likely to perform in the future.

Data demonstrating the collective impacts of these elements on commodity-driven defor-estation in trifecta jurisdictions is also limited at this stage. Although it is difficult to pinpoint how much of a role the synergies between trifecta elements have contributed to or could contrib-ute to commodity-driven deforestation reduction, in areas where private governance systems coordinate and integrate efforts with public governance and involve all local stakeholders within the jurisdiction, the likelihood of decreasing deforestation at a large scale is greater. Findings from Heilmayr and Lambin support our hypothesis and indicate that governance regimes with greater collaboration between environmental and industry stakeholders can achieve better environmen-tal outcomes [47].

#### **6. Conclusions**

The purpose of this analysis was to determine whether and where REDD+ program, JA, and private sector initiatives overlap in trifecta and bifecta jurisdictions, and to discuss what potential impact this overlap could have on reducing commodity-driven deforestation at a broad scale. The underlying hypothesis driving this analysis is that, because REDD+ program, JA, and private sector efforts each possess features that can enhance and complement those of the other initiatives, jurisdictions with all three elements in place will perform the best at reducing commodity-driven deforestation over the medium to long term. More analysis will be needed in the future, however, to determine the extent to which this hypothesis is valid. Additionally, analyses could be done on how different initiatives complement each other so as to understand the intricate dynamics of this collaboration, and to identify any other elements that might need to be in place to further catalyze performance. Such analyses would be invaluable in the areas of interest—trifecta and bifecta jurisdictions—flagged in this article.

This analysis identified 13 jurisdictions where all three of the initiatives believed to be essential in combating commodity-driven deforestation are underway. By identifying where these "trifecta jurisdictions" are located, this analysis has highlighted those areas we hypothesize to have the most potential for effectively curbing commodity-driven deforestation. Although it is too early to tell how these jurisdictions are performing in terms of reducing commodity-driven deforestation, monitoring whether the alignment of the trifecta elements is having an impact will be helpful in determining the most effective strategies for reducing commodity-driven deforestation.

As time passes, and more action is taken to curb commodity-driven deforestation, the trifecta elements will continue catalyzing and complementing one another. Private sector actors, government members, NGOs, producers, traditional communities, and other local stakeholders need to realize that reducing commodity-driven deforestation requires collaboration across sectors and at a broad scale. Trifecta jurisdictions could facilitate that coordination. By determining where REDD+ programs, JAs, and private sector commitments are overlapping and discussing the potential significance of this alignment, this article aims to further discussions regarding how to most effectively and efficiently reduce commodity-driven deforestation.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/10/609/s1, Table S1: A comprehensive list of all trifecta jurisdictions identified in this analysis, Table S2: A comprehensive list of all bifecta jurisdictions identified in this analysis.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.M., B.L. and P.U.; Methodology, C.M., B.L. and P.U.; Data curation B.L., J.C., P.U. and C.M.; Formal Analysis, C.M., B.L. and P.U.; Writing-Original Draft Preparation, C.M., B.L. and P.U.; Writing-Review & Editing, B.L., C.M., P.U.; Visualization, B.L., C.M., P.U. and J.C.

**Funding:** This research was supported by Norway's International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

#### **Appendix A**


**Table A1.** Top 30 countries with the most tropical forest loss between 2001 and 2016.

Source: Global Forest Watch [46].

**Figure A1.** Deforestation rates for Mato Grosso and Pará, Brazil between 2014 and 2017.

#### **References**


© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### *Article* **Assessing the Progress of REDD+ Projects towards the Sustainable Development Goals**

**Charlotte Milbank 1,3, David Coomes 2,3 and Bhaskar Vira 1,3,\***


Received: 20 August 2018; Accepted: 19 September 2018; Published: 21 September 2018

**Abstract:** Almost a decade since the establishment of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), this study investigates the extent to which REDD+ projects are delivering on the promise of co-benefits and the elusive 'triple-win' for climate, biodiversity, and local communities. The Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCB) is among several leading REDD+ certification standards that are designed to support the delivery of social and environmental co-benefits, and 'socially-just' carbon. This study uses an in-depth content analysis of 25 subnational REDD+ project documents to assess the extent to which REDD+ project objectives align with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets, and evaluates the reporting of progress towards meeting these objectives. Currently the CCB standards address a relatively small subset of SDG targets. Despite this, we find that REDD+ projects aspire to work on a much broader set of SDG target objectives, thus going beyond what the CCB Standards require for REDD+ validation. However, although reviewed REDD+ projects have these aspirations, very few are actively monitoring impact against the goals. There is a gap between aspiration and reported progress at the goal level, and for each project: on average, only a third of SDGs that are being targeted by REDD+ projects are showing 'improvement'. The analysis shows which global goals are most frequently targeted, and which are the least. It also allows an analysis of which projects are following through most effectively in terms of monitoring progress towards the SDGs. This assessment provides insights into the priorities of REDD+ project proponents, suggesting that REDD+ has unfulfilled potential to elicit positive change in relation to the SDGs. Our analysis also shows that there is considerable potential for the safeguarding bodies to do more to ensure that real improvements are made, and reported against, aligning REDD+ projects more strongly with global development agendas.

**Keywords:** REDD+; CCB Standards; Sustainable Development Goals; climate change; community; biodiversity; development; forests

#### **1. Introduction**

Amidst rapid social, political and environmental change, questions over the use, value, and control of forests are vital to the protection and conservation of these ecosystems. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), was established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) nearly a decade ago and is a highly visible intervention in global forest conservation. REDD+ is primarily a Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) system, which economically rewards resource managers for the secure provision of ecosystem services [1]. In the case of REDD+, the PES system remunerates forest managers in the Global South for reducing

deforestation and degradation, thus reducing carbon emissions. Carbon offset credits are 'sold' to (often Global North) buyers [2]. Under the UNFCCC, REDD+ refers to the full range of policy approaches and positive incentives undertaken by nations to support activities that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks through conservation and sustainable management of forests. The potential for conservation co-benefits from these forestry activities have provided an important potential new source of international finance for biodiversity conservation efforts [3]. As evidence continues to support the critical importance of forests to local livelihoods [4] efforts have been made to ensure that livelihood benefits are realized as part of REDD+, to avoid adverse unintended consequences on forest-dependent and forest-adjacent populations in developing countries. The use of market principles to protect tropical forests in order to mitigate climate change has also raised important concerns about justice for local, indigenous communities [5,6]. In response, the international development community has developed frameworks to reduce the risk of negative social and environmental outcomes from REDD+ projects. The 'Cancun Safeguards', agreed by UNFCCC parties at the sixteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) in 2010, require that 'free, prior, and informed consent' is obtained to protect the rights of indigenous people living in project zones, as well as mandating regular reporting on the progress of safeguards [7]. These mandatory safeguards still provide flexibility in REDD+ design, allowing project proponents to respond to local contexts and circumstances. REDD+ has gained widespread acceptance as a mechanism for developing countries to reduce forest degradation and associated CO2 emissions [8,9], whilst offering unprecedented opportunities to provide community and biodiversity 'co-benefits' in project zones—a 'triple-win' scenario.

A number of reporting frameworks have emerged to guide best practice in the REDD+ context. Complementary to the Cancun Safeguards, these include the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCB) standards, which provide third party certification of REDD+ activities, allowing for greater confidence in the veracity of claims made by project proponents, especially for investors and buyers in the emerging market for REDD+ carbon credits [10]. It is hoped that such accreditations will enhance the monetary and moral value of projects in the global marketplace through the certified assurance of socially- and environmentally-just carbon—the sought after 'triple-win' for climate, community, and biodiversity [11]. These standards can help governments and project developers implement activities which contribute (net) positive co-benefits for local biodiversity and communities, whilst mitigating the potential negative outcomes of REDD+ on these entities [12]. The CCB standards were established in 2005, featured prominently in the COP16 agreements, and are now amongst the most widely used of certification standards, with more than 130 projects worldwide having sought accreditation. To date, CCB has issued 39,201,081 verified carbon units (1 verified carbon unit (VCU) = 1 tonne of carbon) to a range of forestry programs worldwide [13]. CCB certification is applied for voluntarily by project proponents and it represents a desirable seal of approval for many communities, corporate investors, and governments.

The CCB Standards require projects to be evaluated by independent auditors at the validation (design) stage and verified periodically over the project lifetime. The reporting requirements of the Standards are designed to promote a high level of transparency and accountability, but do not specifically state how certain criteria should be addressed, fulfilled, monitored, measured, and reported. Proponents must identify the best way to communicate this information to auditors in project validation and verification reports—some guidance and template documents are made available by CCB to project proponents, but they are not always used. At present, most standards suffer from a lack of specificity, and do not provide a comprehensive framework for assessing the quality of governance and overall effectiveness of REDD+ projects [14]; the CCB standards have these same challenges. Inevitably, any attempt to synthesize REDD+ outcomes based on documentation from these audit processes will reflect the limitations of the verification and monitoring processes themselves, and the extent to which these processes recognize the complex political economy context within which REDD+ projects are implemented [14,15]. Recent work on the quality of REDD+ governance at the intergovernmental

level, with implementation agency- and country-levels has resulted in proposals for governance standards that could provide greater assurance about the overall legitimacy and accountability of the mechanism [14]. As the current CCB standards do not explicitly address quality of governance, our analysis does not assess these specific concerns about how these governance issues might impact REDD+ effectiveness. Our analysis is limited to project-level plans and outcomes, as reported in design and verification documents under the CCB standards. Although project level outcomes are clearly impacted by macro scale political economy issues, project proponents and implementers have less direct influence on how REDD+ is governed at country and intergovernmental levels. Our current exercise is analytically specific to the project level outcomes based on these existing standards, and it remains valid, despite concerns about the overall governance and legitimacy of REDD+ implementation at a more macro scale.

Alongside the expansion of REDD+ activities in recent years, a new global development agenda has been established under the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September 2015, this set of 17 Goals and 169 related targets unite a wide array of social and environmental issues, including education, health, and biodiversity, with an aspiration to achieve these globally by 2030 [16]. The Goals are increasingly being used to guide government policy worldwide, and they are also increasingly being adopted by businesses and other organizations that are keen to engage with the current global development agenda. The high level of acceptance, and the authority across diverse sectors, that the SDGs have attained make them a useful evaluative framework for the present analysis, commanding greater recognition and validity than other alternatives. We recognize that the SDGs framework, while being widely accepted, has also been subjected to considerable critique since its inception, with commentators suggesting that this remains a vague and fragmented concept, with little practical value [17,18]. Others raise concerns of governance: Like the CCB Standards, the SDGs are not legally binding, and governments must voluntarily support the Goals, and they are responsible for mobilizing policy and practice in accordance with the Goals, and for monitoring progress. Where accountability systems are weak, transparency is lacking and private interests are strong, there is risk of the Goals being implemented in ways which conflict with local needs [19]. Despite these critiques, the SDGs do provide an increasingly accepted set of targets for assessing progress, and provide a useful framework for the evaluation of a diverse set of REDD+ projects.

Both REDD+ and the SDGs represent aspirational ambitions for the global community, but much of their potential depends on the ways in which these goals are translated into meaningful (and verifiable) local actions. The SDGs encapsulate contemporary social and environmental concerns, and they increasingly guide the development policies of Governments and corporates worldwide [9]. They have a broad reach, are well-publicized, and are increasingly better understood. The FAO's recent report, The State of the World's Forests [9], recognizes the contributions of forests to all of the SDGs, and it supports the need for responsible, coherent policy-making mobilized around forest management and the SDGs [20]. REDD+ has been recognized as an instrument to help achieve the 2030 Agenda [21], and some projects have started to acknowledge the SDGs in their activities [22]. This analysis draws on these two global-scale developments—REDD+ and the SDGs—assessing the ways in which REDD+ aspires to produce community and biodiversity co-benefits with relation to the SDGs, and importantly the extent to which current projects are delivering on these aspirations. Exploring the extent to which REDD+ projects align with SDG goals and targets in their intentions and outcomes enables us to identify the potential of REDD+, in order to practically and responsibly contribute to broader development agendas.

This paper provides an empirically-informed exploration of the synergies between the SDGs and REDD+ projects, and suggests a method for project proponents to operationalize and document REDD+ outcomes which resonate with global development agendas. Whilst flexibility in REDD+ may allow location-specific and locally relevant project design, the subsequent diversity of content—including project objectives, activities, reporting metrics and outcomes—renders the task of comparison between

and assessment of REDD+ projects difficult [23]. This paper proposes an innovative approach to address this gap, using the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an evaluative framework. It compares and assesses the success of verified REDD+ projects using the documents that were made available by the CCB, by developing an analytical framework that can handle the diversity of report content. Specifically, we ask (1) in what ways the CCB Standards encourage REDD+ project proponents to orient their activities in accord with the SDG targets; (2) how strongly REDD+ project aims and objectives align with SDGs at the target-level; (3) how successfully REDD+ project activities address their SDG-related objectives, based on the evidence provided upon project verification, and; (4) how REDD+ project proponents might better accommodate and crucially meet global development objectives in their project design and reporting. This exploration comes as a timely contribution, a decade on from REDD+ establishment and amidst ongoing concerns for environmental and social justice surrounding REDD+ [6,11,24].

Our analysis shows that REDD+ projects are evidencing strong alignment with the SDG targets in their proposed activities—and go beyond the requirements of the CCB Standards in doing so. We find a notable gap, however, between the SDG-related aims of projects and their reported (and measured) progress in these fields. We conclude that whilst REDD+ aspirations are demonstrably high, this gap suggests that safeguarding bodies could do more to encourage successful operationalization of REDD+, to deliver and report on the diversity of co-benefits that are potentially achievable. By broadening required performance criteria, CCB and other safeguard frameworks could help REDD+ meet its full potential in relation to broader global development agendas.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**

#### *2.1. Information Sources*

An analysis of CCB-verified project documents was conducted for this paper, with documents downloaded from the Verified Carbon Standards project database (Appendix A Table A1). The 25 reviewed are REDD+ projects implemented at the subnational scale, within the non-compliance (voluntary) market with independent verification and certification. These documents are prepared by project proponents and provided to auditors at each stage of CCB accreditation, including the validation (design) stage and periodically over the project lifetime, with the first verification being undertaken within five years. Auditors conduct site visits to project zones and use the documents provided to them to assess how a project is performing against CCB standards. Proponents must demonstrate how the 'with-project' scenario shows an improvement on the Project Area/Zone conditions in the absence of the project. Evidencing this requires several stages of reporting: the starting conditions of the project or study, and stakeholder identification; 'without project' and 'with project projections; potential negative impacts, risks, and mitigation/prevention; and appropriate methodologies to document the changes due to the project activities [12,25]. Three editions of CCB standards have now been released, containing 15, 14, and 17 mandatory criteria in standards 1, 2, and 3 respectively [26–28]. Further, 'gold standard' certification can be achieved by meeting at least one of three further components relating to climate change adaptation, 'exceptional' community benefits and 'exceptional' biodiversity benefits.

The Verified Carbon Standard database [13] makes CCB-verified REDD+ project documents publicly available, of which the following two types were drawn upon in this study:


initial validation, accompanied by verification reports. Verification reports acknowledge continued conformance with CCB criteria, and they highlight any discrepancies to be resolved by the project.

A total of 25 projects are reviewed, all of which have been verified according to the CCB Standards Second (*N* = 17) or Third Edition (*N* = 8), demonstrable by available reports as of 2 July 2018 on the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) database (Table 1). The online, freely-accessible database is still in operation and up-to-date despite VCS and CCB Standards now both being under the management of the organization and carbon quality assurance provider, Verra. REDD+ projects with either the project design document or project implementation report not available and/or not available in English are excluded.

**Table 1.** Sampling strategy for reviewed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) projects.


The SDGs are used here as an evaluative framework to enable comparison between projects with a diverse array of objectives and outcomes, despite these projects having been designed prior to the establishment of the Global Goals. Through in-depth content analysis of these documents, we explore the reported impact of the 25 CCB-verified REDD+ projects, as explained in the following sections.

#### *2.2. Matching SDG and CCB Objectives*

The CCB Standards were analyzed to reveal the (minimum) SDG targets that CCB-validated REDD+ projects could be expected to address based on what the Standards require. The analysis finds SDG-correlates in the CCB Standards, which REDD+ projects need to demonstrate compliance with in their validation paperwork. Thus, these SDG-correlates should be the minimum SDGs that CCB-verified projects support. The Standards were analyzed using content/textual analysis, supplemented by keyword searches corresponding to each SDG target (following a similar approach to that reported in [29]. For example, the analysis noted direct linkages to SDGs from keywords such as 'worker safety', 'waste', or 'climate change'. Implicit linkages were fewer and they were also noted where the CCB Standards could be seen as strongly supporting an SDG target. Appendix A Table A2 provides more detail of where and how linkages between the SDGs and the CCB Standards have been recognized using this explicit/implicit methodology.

#### *2.3. Evaluation of the Objectives*

The project design documents of the 25 REDD+ projects were also reviewed using content/textual analysis, supplemented by keyword searches corresponding to each SDG target [29]. This focused on their stated objectives and proposed activities, revealing their alignment with SDG targets. Direct and implicit linkages to SDGs from keywords were again noted. For example, SDG target 12.8, which ensures 'people have the relevant information for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature' [16] (p. 9) was linked to proposed REDD+ plans to train community members to engage in sustainable non-timber forest production. Content analysis of both the CCB Standards and the REDD+ project design documents allowed us to identify three types of SDG targets: (i) those which are expectedly supported in CCB-verified projects, as these correspond to mandatory requirements of the CCB Standards; (ii) those which are highly targeted despite not being a mandatory requirement of CCB accreditation (i.e., REDD+ project proponents are going beyond what is required of them in

support of the global development agenda); (iii) those SDG targets which are not highly targeted, and which we would not necessarily expect REDD+ projects to contribute to.

#### *2.4. Evaluation of Outcomes*

We reviewed the latest project implementation reports available for each project, to assess whether SDG-related objectives were being followed through in the implementation of project activities. Content/textual analysis was again used to record project progress at the SDG Goal level. Each REDD+ project's project implementation reports were read in detail, noting where project activities towards the 17 SDGs had been reported. This qualitative information was converted into quantitative form using the numerical score system described below, to allow a degree of comparability between projects.

We tracked the progress towards long-term goals using a four-part scoring framework, which acknowledges that all projects are at different stages along a general pathway of change that would be expected on the way to achieving an ultimate desired output. Articulating each step within a longer-term process of change allows projects' progress to be assessed. A score of 0–3 is given to each project for each of the 17 Global Goals, where 0 = not targeted; 1 = insufficient information; 2 = monitoring variable(s) have been explicitly identified, and/or monitoring is occurring (results may be too soon to see); 3 = outcome monitored and improvement reported (Figure 1). This score system reflects other studies' hypotheses that early outcomes are often strong predictors of projects' long-term impacts [30]. It is these outcomes that are more likely to be picked up upon project verification and included in project implementation reports. Similar impact assessment frameworks have been utilized successfully elsewhere [31,32]. The method was considered an appropriate approach here, as it allows REDD+ projects' progress to be systematically and quantitatively assessed in relation to the SDG targets initially identified in the project design documents.

**Figure 1.** Impact Stages Chain. The 25 project implementation reports were given a score of 0–3 against each of the Sustainable Development Goals to reflect their contribution to the Goals. 0 = not targeted; 1 = insufficient information is given in the project implementation report; 2 = variable is being monitored or has been identified (no improvement yet); 3 = variable is being monitored and improvement is clearly demonstrable.

Our evaluation builds on third-party verification by independent CCB auditors, which we do not seek to dispute or assess independently—our analysis uses these evaluations to explore the relevance and efficacy of REDD+ in relation to the global development agendas. This study does not seek to find the 'best' REDD+ project, and we stress that stronger SDG-alignment does not necessarily make a better project. The impact assessment also allows a qualitative evaluation of approaches, which prove to be consistently effective in the delivery of project outcomes across spatial and temporal scales.

The CCB advises that the REDD+ project proponents distinguish between project activities, project outputs, project outcomes, and project impacts, to demonstrate how they plan to progress from initial project strategies, through activities, to positive impacts in term of climate, communities, and biodiversity [12]. These causal models—known as 'theory of change' models—are useful for explaining how specific interventions can give rise to specific outcomes and impacts, and to resolve the challenge of project 'attribution' required by CCB for project proponents [23]. Our analysis does not use this terminology, as the model has not been universally adopted by proponents in project

implementation reports. It is difficult to make judgments on the stage of impact reached where proponents have not used this criterion in their reporting.

#### *2.5. Limitations*

CCB validation and verification is a time-consuming and financially costly venture for proponents and auditors alike. Thus, project proponents do not provide complete detail on all project operations in validation and verification documents, but they often report the minimum that is required to demonstrate conformance with the CCB standards. Whilst the Standards are designed to promote transparency, not all activities will be visible in the project documents assessed here. This is an obvious constraint to the use of the CCB documents as a proxy for project performance, as it is very likely that SDG-relevant activities are under-reported by project proponents. However, short of independent audits of each project using an SDG framework, this remains a useful analytical approach to assess the comparative performance of a large number of relatively mature REDD+ projects in relation to the SDGs.

#### **3. Results**

#### *3.1. Matching CCB-SDGs/Evaluation of Objectives*

Currently CCB, standards only address a small subset of SDG targets (Figure 2; see also Table A2). Figure 2 points to the minimum number of targets that we would expect CCB-verified REDD+ projects to support. Ten SDG targets would be supported by a REDD+ project seeking no (optional) Gold Level criteria, or only Gold-Level biodiversity criteria, validated against the CCB Standards, Second Edition. In contrast, a project validated according to the CCB Standards Third Edition for all Gold Level criteria would support at least 20 SDG targets. Further descriptive data on the CCB-SDG correlates can be found in Appendix A (Table A2).

**Figure 2.** The number of Sustainable Development Goals targets correlating to the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCB) Standards (Second and Third Editions and Gold Standards) and the number of SDG targets supported by Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) projects in their project design documents. Maximum and minimum values, interquartile range, median line, and cross indicating the mean value of SDG targets that are supported by the Standards and REDD+ projects.

Analyses of the 25 CCB-verified REDD+ projects show which SDG targets were being considered and supported in project designs. Despite the relatively limited requirements within the explicitly stated CCB standards, reviewed REDD+ projects aspire to work on a much broader set of SDG targets (Figure 2). Figure 2 shows how the number of SDG targets addressed varies between the CCB Standards and REDD+ projects. The Second and Third Edition Standards make compulsory criteria relating to only 10 and 14 SDG Targets respectively, across 8 and 10 Goals (respectively). REDD+ projects are on average supporting 48 Targets across 14 Goals in their project design documents. But this value is

not consistent: Project 20 (ID) aspires to support 68 targets across 15 Goals; Project 22 supports just 22 targets across 10 Goals—just above the 16 Targets that CCB requires for its specific Gold Level status.

Figure 3 describes which CCB Standards criterion have been deemed to be explicitly linked to SDG targets. Figure 3 shows that many targets for Goal 15 for biodiversity are encapsulated in the Standards' overall demand that projects have no negative impact on biodiversity within project zones. Targets of Global Goal 16 (Justice) and Goal 8 (Decent Work, and specifically 8.8 for worker rights) are largely covered in the Standards criteria for best practice procedures—which are designed to complement the UNFCCC REDD+ safeguards (a–d).

**Figure 3.** Numbers of REDD+ projects (out of 25) that have sustainability objectives similar to those listed as SDG targets. X = targets corresponding to requirements of both CCB Standards (*N* = 25); O = targets corresponding to the requirements of the Third Edition only. Gold Level Criteria not highlighted here; see Supplementary Material. All 169 targets of Goals 1-17 are shown, with or without labels.

Figure 3 also summarizes how many projects have presented plans in line with each SDG target, showing (as expected) that SDG targets which are strongly linked to mandatory CCB Standards criteria (X and O on Figure 3) were targeted by all projects (of that particular CCB Standards Edition). Overall, the projects reviewed here demonstrated strong alignment with the SDGs in their stated objectives. All but three Goals were supported by more than 12 (of the 25 reviewed) projects. Global Goals 3 (Health and Well-being), 7 (Clean Energy), and 14 (Life below Water) are targeted by only nine, nine, and three projects respectively. Figure 3 points to where: (1) SDG targets which link to optional CCB criteria on climate, community, and biodiversity, are being frequently targeted in REDD+ project design documents, and (2) (perhaps more importantly) where SDG targets are being highly targeted in REDD+ project design documents, to further the requirements of the CCB.

Certain SDG targets are linked to Gold Standard CCB criteria (Figure 3) and so they are only targeted where deemed applicable by project proponents. Targets 13.1 and 13.b, seeking to strengthen adaptive capacity to climate change, fall into this category—the gold-level criteria require proponents to identify the likely regional climate change scenarios and impacts on communities/biodiversity, and to demonstrate the measures that are been taken to assist communities in adapting to these. Many REDD+ project zone communities expect to see extreme climate changes over the project lifetime (increased rainfall, drought severity, temperature rises). Such changes could adversely affect community wellbeing, which is disallowed by the Standards, and additionally could undermine overall project success, as causing communities to suffer. Goals 10.2 and 10.3, for equality and inclusiveness in project participation and outcomes, are also highly targeted, and they are a requirement of the optional gold criteria for 'exceptional' community benefits. Thus, not all projects are required to plan activities to benefit the entire range of project zone households, but those that aspire to community gold standard will need to demonstrate their commitment to addressing inequality and inclusiveness.

Perhaps more notable are instances where projects aim to improve areas aligned with SDG targets which are not CCB criteria (mandatory or optional). Global Goals 2 (Hunger), 4 (Education), 8 (Decent Work) and 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) are examples of this (Figure 3). Many REDD+ project proponents recognize unsustainable farming practices (e.g., slash and burn) as a major threat to deforestation and seek to address these through encouraging more sustainable alternatives, thus preserving the forest. Global Goal 4 for quality education may be supported in recognition of the large role that education plays in sustainable community use and management of the forest environment, and in helping communities cope with changing resources in the context of climate change. Moreover, many REDD+ project proponents will recognize the value of Global Goal 8—job, income, and business creation—for project success. Providing secure employment opportunities in alternative (sustainable) livelihood activities can garner greater support from local stakeholders for project activities. Goal 12, for sustainable production and consumption, brings these three together: in educating and employing local people in sustainable NFTP production/consumption, it is hoped they will be deterred from illegal and damaging (subsistence and/or income-generating) activities (e.g., poaching, logging). Such support activities, among others, could contribute to projects' successful longevity and provide benefits to communities and the environment which extend beyond project lifetimes.

As Figure 3 also identified, several goals (especially Goals 3, 7, and 14) are targeted by only a few projects. Whether REDD+ project proponents should see themselves as responsible for the entire spectrum of SDGs, e.g., reducing deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents (Target 3.6), is debatable, and this is discussed further in Section 4. It is also apparent that certain SDGs, such as Goal 14 for 'Life Below Water', will only be applicable in certain locations (as most REDD+ projects are focused on terrestrial activities). For example, 'life below water', will only be applicable in certain locations (as most REDD+ projects are focused on terrestrial activities).

#### *3.2. Evaluation of Outcomes*

Analysis of project verification documents, which report on project progress and demonstrate continued compliance with CCB criteria, tries to differentiate between projects that are and are not monitoring their SDG-related activities, and those that are monitoring, and that can report strong positive outcomes from the project implementation period. Although relatively coarse, this analysis allows for a comparison between hugely diverse REDD+ projects. Table 2 summarizes the progress made by all verified REDD+ projects against each Global Goal, based on the evidence provided in their respective implementation reports. It shows that although reviewed REDD+ projects have far-reaching aspirations in support of the SDGs, very few are actively and systematically monitoring improvement against the goals. The Table exemplifies the diversity of projects, in their activities, monitoring metrics, and importantly that they are all at different stages of their implementation pathways.

**Table 2.** The number of projects (out of 25) that have reached the impact stages (0–3) recorded by SDG. 0 = not targeted; 1 = insufficient info; 2 = monitoring variable identified/variables are being monitored; 3 = evidence of monitoring and improvement.



**Table 2.** *Cont.*

Figure 4 visualizes the marked gap between the number of SDGs identified at the design stage, relative to the various stages of implementation that REDD+ projects have reached. While most REDD+ projects presented plans in line with 14 out of 17 of the SDGs, most only evidence improvement against five of the Goals. The Figure shows the performance of each project with respect to its stated objectives based on evidence provided at project verification. There was a marked gap seen between each projects' SDG-related aspirations, their identification of monitoring variables, and evidencing 'improvement' in these fields. On average, projects were evidencing improvement against 34% of their initial objectives—meaning that two-thirds of their initial SDG-related activities were either being monitored, but not yet demonstrating improvement, or that monitoring variables had not been identified at all (approximately one third each). Some projects demonstrated improvement across a large proportion of their originally identified SDG-variables (Figure A1). Projects 11 and 12 reported improvements towards 64% and 70% of the Goals that they initially identified, respectively. Figure A1 makes apparent that these projects are targeting slightly fewer goals (14 and 10 out of 17 respectively), but they appear to be doing so more efficaciously, and with a specific concern for systematic and verifiable indicators that allow progress to be monitored.

Figure 5 breaks this information down by SDG, showing there is a gap between aspiration and reported progress at the goal level. This indicates which goals had been more successfully addressed by REDD+ project activities, based on where an evidence of improvement (impact score 3) has been provided in project implementation reports. The most notable gap between aspiration and improvement is visible in Global Goals 7 (Clean Energy), 10 (Equality) and 13 (Climate Change), with improvement reported by only 15.3%, 4%, and 15% projects respectively. Activities relating to these Goals were often described in the project design documents, but few projects articulated any monitoring metrics that were aligned with these activities; even fewer could indicate an improvement. Global Goals 4 (Education) and 12 (Sustainable Production and Consumption) were highly targeted, and they had the highest percentage improvement amongst projects (56% and 48% respectively; Figure 5). These Goals were often supported by projects through the provision of technical and vocational training for community members, oriented towards alternative livelihood activities—acai processing, beekeeping, and ecotourism were often mentioned. Proponents might choose to monitor (including but not limited to) the number of training sessions taking place; the number of community members with improved knowledge (through surveys); and the non-timber forest products (NTFPs) production units established. Half of the projects that supported gender in their activities (Global Goal 5) were also able to report an improvement: higher female participation in project activities was often reported; some reported providing sexual health clinics; others ensured improved (local) female inclusion on higher-level councils in project zones. Goal 15 (Life on Land) was unsurprisingly high, as a mandatory requirement of the CCB Standards is to have a 'net positive' effect on project zone biodiversity. What is not stated is how to monitor this—but demonstrably the majority of proponents are choosing appropriate monitoring indicators to clearly signal their continued compliance with the CCB criteria.

**Figure 4.** The number of Sustainable Development Goals that are being (**A**) aspired to in project design documents, (**B**) are being monitored or have monitoring variables identified in project implementation reports (no improvement yet), and (**C**) monitored and improvement is clearly demonstrable in project implementation reports, by the 25 reviewed REDD+ projects.

**Figure 5.** Numbers of REDD+ projects that target specific SDGs in their project design documents (solid boxes), compared to the number of projects reporting improvement (=impact score 3; unfilled boxes) based on project implementation reports. Colors mimic those that are used for SDG icons [16].

#### **4. Discussion**

Three years since the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was established, and with REDD+ now a decade old, this exploration comes as a timely investigation into the progress of subnational REDD+ projects on-the-ground and the potential of REDD+ to support the global development agenda. Orienting REDD+ project activities to the SDGs has obvious benefits, with the potential to improve projects' overarching success in reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation through the provision of sustainable co-benefits. To tackle the diversity of REDD+ report content, this study has utilized the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 Targets as an evaluative framework. Independently verified REDD+ projects in different stages of their implementation pathway have been reviewed, revealing the potential synergies between REDD+ and a key component of the contemporary global development agenda.

#### *4.1. Matching CCB and SDG Objectives*

As a leading safeguard framework, the CCB Standards (in association with REDD+) seek to avoid both the potential negative impacts of project activities on biodiversity and communities and generate net positive benefits for these entities (Panfil and Harvey, 2014). Since the CCB Standards were created before the SDGs were agreed in 2015, care is needed in explicitly linking the two. However, links are important where they can be found: the CCB Standards make demands of REDD+ project proponents that seek validation, which the SDGs do not—the SDGs being recommendations as opposed to mandatory compliance targets for signatories. Standards could therefore be valuable in suggesting forest management approaches that might better enable countries to deliver challenging SDG outcomes (focused, of course, on the forest sector and allied project activities). Our analysis shows that currently the CCB standards, which are designed to mitigate projects' negative effects, only address a small subset of SDG targets. These targets primarily link to biodiversity and 'best practice' procedures.

#### *4.2. Evaluation of Objectives*

The reviewed REDD+ projects are aspiring to work on a much broader set of SDG targets than what the CCB Standards require (Figure 2). The projects demonstrate a strong alignment with the SDGs in their stated objectives, with all but three SDGs (Goals 3, 7, and 14) addressed by activities proposed by over half of projects (Figure 3). These proposals, described in the project design documents, go beyond the minimum requirements of the CCB Standards—of which there are currently relatively few—and they demonstrate considerable ambition amongst REDD+ project proponents in relation to the wider benefits of the activities that they are intending to undertake in and around their field locations. Importantly, while being demanding, the CCB standards give the project proponents considerable flexibility in the details of project planning, allowing activities to be designed in ways that are locally appropriate. This analysis has shown that project proponents are inclined to contribute multiple and far-reaching co-benefits from their activities, and this indicates the potential use of REDD+ as a vehicle for positive local scale mobilization towards the SDGs.

#### *4.3. Evaluation of Outcomes*

Although reviewed REDD+ projects have such high aspirations in relation to the SDGs, very few are actively monitoring progress and impact against the goals. There is a gap between aspiration and reported progress for each project (Figures 4 and A1), and at the goal level (Figure 5). On average, just over a third of projects' initial objectives are being evidenced as having improved by the projects upon verification. Earlier examinations of REDD+ [33] reported that, relative to the monitoring of carbon stock and forest cover, measurement of co-benefits for REDD+ is still in its infancy. These findings suggest that whilst this is still the case for many REDD+ projects (at least from those reviewed here), some projects are demonstrating competent monitoring across far-reaching activities, but are currently failing to demonstrate where improvements have been made (Table 2). This gap is important. Whilst some changes take time to be realized, 80% of our projects had been in operation for over three years at their most recent verification. It might be hoped that, in this time, improvement could be demonstrated in some of the monitoring variables identified. Thus, we deem the aspiration–performance gap to be indicative of missed opportunities in REDD+ projects, that need to be appropriately addressed by project proponents, as well as those responsible for setting standards and monitoring performance against these standards.

Financial constraints likely play a role in creating this gap: project proponents often face a trade-off between investing funds in actually delivering social and environmental improvements, as opposed to investing resources into monitoring. This resonates with our observation (Section 2.4) that SDG-relevant activities are likely to be under-reported by project proponents. While this is probably true, most project proponents are also likely to be aware that, without explicit monitoring of progress against baselines or without project scenarios, they cannot credibly claim that they have been delivering real improvements. Some level of investment in measuring performance, thus, is likely to be important for projects to demonstrate their wider achievements across a range of social and environmental indicators.

Another important constraint of the present analysis is the short time period that has elapsed since the start of most of the projects currently under review, we acknowledge that some SDG-related parameters (especially those relating to institutional and social change) will only show real improvements in generational timescales, as opposed to the annual/biennial timescales that are visible in current verifications and monitoring reports. But, even where it is more appropriate to expect change to be visible over longer periods, monitoring metrics are important to allow baselines to be established, so that real improvement can eventually be evidenced. Reflecting this, the scoring system utilized here rewards projects that have identified monitoring variables, compared to those that have not.

The analysis also shows which goals are most frequently targeted, and which are the least frequently. Global Goals 4 (Education) and 12 (Sustainable production and Consumption) are highly targeted and demonstrate the highest improvement amongst all projects. Goals 3, 7, and 14 are targeted by fewer projects, but the most notable gap between aspiration and improvement is visible in Global Goals 7 (Clean Energy), 10 (Equality), and 13 (Climate Change). This analysis has not sought the 'best' REDD+ project, nor is there a presumption that addressing a wider range of SDG targets is necessarily an indication of a 'better' project. The projects reviewed have been in operation for different periods of time, so it is unsurprising that they differ in their progress. However, it is important to identify where and how projects have been able to provide strong evidence of improvement, to suggest how projects might better support the global development agenda, and to provide independently verified evidence of their progress towards the global goals.

The CCB has recently introduced a monitoring template [34,35] that is designed for project proponents, to help them highlight important project benefits according to standardized benefit metrics. We find that the two strongest scoring projects (projects 11 and 12) are verified using the CCB's recently introduced CCB/VCS Monitoring Report template, which offers some standardized monitoring metrics to proponents, some of which are strong correlates to the SDGs—including improved access to, and quality of, healthcare (Global Goal 3), education (Global Goal 4), and clean water (Goal 6). These projects are not the only ones to use the new template, nor does it require that all the suggested variables be monitored—hence, it should not be seen as a prerequisite for success. It does, however, provide a reporting framework that is consistent and comparable across a wide range of local interventions. All CCB projects will be expected to monitor the same quantifiable information when they undergo their next rounds of verification. We might expect that an eventual programme-wide rollout of the template across all VCS/CCB projects will encourage more proponents to engage in astute monitoring and targeted activities, generating positive SDG outcomes. It might also facilitate future comparison between the relative achievements of different projects.

#### *4.4. Policy Implications*

This analysis places strong emphasis on the need for clearly articulated and measurable targets as a key element of successful project implementation, which corresponds with other investigations of conservation outcomes [25,36]. The introduction of the monitoring template for REDD+ proponents marks a step in the right direction to ensuring that projects generate lasting co-benefits, and by directing needed attention towards critical fields. Currently, however, relatively few SDG targets are mandatory in the existing CCB criteria. Since CCB does not require that specific variables are monitored, closing the gap between aspiration and improvement relies upon motivated, responsible proponents who go beyond the minimum reporting requirements for certification. Despite this, our findings suggest that REDD+ projects already target a diversity of SDGs beyond what is required by the CCB Standards. Whilst some projects are making demonstrable improvements in the SDG fields, many projects' objectives remain abstract aspirations, or else isolated accounts of project activities that are unable to systematically indicate progress towards these targets. It seems that while REDD+ could be a vehicle to elicit strong positive change in vulnerable communities, these opportunities are currently being missed—projects with high aspirations are not delivering real co-benefits (or at least not monitoring and reporting these under the CCB Standards). This is not a criticism of the programme itself, but the process of reporting and monitoring, which is potentially missing an opportunity to provide proponents a structure for demonstrating their progress towards the Global Goals.

If the CCB and other safeguarding frameworks were to broaden and tighten REDD+ performance criteria in synergy with the SDGs, the opportunities that REDD+ offers to support global development—that are currently being missed—might be better fulfilled. This might involve introducing more obligatory standardized metrics into the new monitoring template, which align with the entire spectrum of SDG targets, and rewards for project proponents that engage with these metrics. CCB validation criteria could potentially require proponents to describe why certain Global Goals are not being supported—recognizing that in many cases this will be because it is inappropriate, or not relevant to the project zone communities. We are not arguing that it is the responsibility of REDD+ proponents to tackle all aspects of the contemporary global development agenda; clearly, individual project-level forest sector interventions cannot realistically address the entire range of issues that the SDGs identify as global priorities. However, such an approach to reporting

and monitoring under the CCB, which encourages REDD+ alignment with the SDGs, could maintain a degree of programmatic flexibility, while also incentivizing proponents to actively engage with the global development agenda, as is appropriate to local needs and contexts.

#### **5. Conclusions**

This paper has used the Sustainable Development Goals as an evaluative framework to assess the aspirations and achievements of REDD+ projects under the CCB Standards to positively support broader global development agendas. Our analysis suggests that safeguards, such as the CCB, which seek to alleviate concerns for social and environmental justice relating to REDD+, are currently potentially too narrow in their expectations and monitoring requirements, thereby missing an important opportunity for greater alignment of REDD+ activities with the SDGs. Our analysis shows that REDD+ project proponents aspire to address a much wider range of social and environmental issues than what is currently required under the CCB Standards. Thus, such safeguards are falling short in their requirements (or lack of) for project proponents to demonstrate progress towards these stated aspirations. Our analysis reveals a gap between what projects aspire to, and what is reported as being improved upon in project implementation documents. More stringent performance reporting criteria, relating to the full range of SDGs targets, could be imposed upon proponents by safeguarding frameworks like CCB, and to facilitate more effective documentation of evidence for the delivery of positive co-benefits of REDD+ in support of broader development agendas.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.M. and B.V.; Methodology, C.M and B.V.; Software, Microsoft Excel 365 and R.; Validation, C.M., D.C., and B.V.; Formal Analysis, C.M.; Investigation, C.M.; Resources, VCS Project Database.; Data Curation, in-depth content analysis, Microsoft Excel 365 and R; Writing—Original Draft Preparation, C.M.; Writing—Review & Editing, C.M., D.C. and B.V.; Visualization, C.M., D.C. and B.V.; Supervision, B.V.; Project Administration, D.C. and B.V.; Funding Acquisition, CCI Collaborative Fund. Authorship is limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) Collaborative Fund.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors gratefully acknowledge all those involved with the CCI Collaborative Fund, and colleagues of Permian Global, Flora and Fauna International, and the RSPB for their insight as REDD+ project proponents. Further thanks to Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge for his scholarly input at the early stages of the project.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

#### **Appendix**


**Table A1.** The 25 CCB-verified REDD+ projects reviewed in this analysis; project design documents and project implementation reports are made publicly available at http://www.vcsprojectdatabase. org/#/ccb. Projects were given unique IDs during the analysis.


#### **Table A1.** *Cont.*

**Table A2.** Links between SDG targets and REDD+ CCB Standards criteria, as they appear in the Second and Third Editions of the CCB Standards. None of the 25 REDD+ projects reviewed by us were validated using First Edition criteria, so these criteria are excluded from the analysis. Acronyms used for CCB Standard are G = a general criterion (blue); B = related to biodiversity (green); CM = related to community; GL = a "gold level" criterion (yellow/gold); N/A = not applicable to Edition (grey).



#### **Table A2.** *Cont.*

**Figure A1.** The number of Sustainable Development Goals addressed in the project design documents of 25 REDD+ projects, compared to the number of SDGs that are monitored (=impact score 2) and improved (= impact score 3), based on the project implementation reports.

#### **References**


© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
