Equity and REDD+
Maria Brockhaus, Grace Wong, Cecilia Luttrell and Arild Angelsen
Myanmar, Lake Inle, 1-3 June 2015

Outline
• Equity and REDD+: opportunities and risks
• The need for transformational change: a 4 I
framework
• Case study examples: risks in governance for
equitable (effective, efficient) REDD+
• Conclusion

REDD+ as a (good) idea, beside
being quick, cheap, easy ?
Equity —e.g. in terms of both distribution of costs and benefits
and equal participation in decision making—is essential for
ensuring both the legitimacy and effectiveness of REDD+ (Chhatre
et al. 2012, McDermott et al. 2012)
• globally : turning tables, countries are no longer receivers of
aid but providers of a globally needed service; safeguards
• nationally: incentives for policy mix supporting conservation
PAMs, tenure reforms, other lager policy reforms
• locally: benefits for forest stewards (PES), cash and co-
benefits

Towards equity through
transformational change?
REDD+ especially with inclusion of safeguards,
seemed to be very promising in terms of
achieving transformational change through
 shifts in incentives,
 discursive practices,
 power relations in the REDD+ policy arena

Concerns and risks related to REDD+
• incentive to push out holders of informal rights , IPs
rights
• carbonization and monetarization of nature
Some concerns expressed in discourses:
“cheap excuse” for the off- setters, who want to pay
for their sins without changing : “payment for
indulgence”
 ‘the real’ profits for private investors, carbon
cowboys
‘recentralization’ of forests and benefits not for
communities but for the state and its administration

Equity and REDD+ in the Media
How is equity framed in media representations of
national REDD+ policy debates in Indonesia,
Brazil, Vietnam and Peru?
• 3 major newspapers from 2005 to 2010: articles with
substantive focus on REDD+
• 3 levels of coding: article, media frame; policy actors
associated with frame

Risks related to discourses
• National state actors engage mainly with global equity
issues (except Vietnam); civil society with domestic
equity issues;
• In all 4 countries the most discussed equity issue is benefit-
sharing (state); followed by non-state actors concerns
about livelihood impacts, tenure/indigenous rights and
participation. Almost no discussion on gender equity.
Need for state actors to address
domestic equity issues (connect to
rights-based demands of civil society)

Discourses on ‘who should benefit’?
(Luttrell et al. 2013)
Different discourses which different implications for design of BSMs
 But there are trade-offs: Effectiveness/efficiency vs. equity discourses
 Effectiveness/efficiency = goal of emission reductions; Equity = who has the
right to benefit
– rationale I: benefits should go to actors with legal rights related to carbon
emission reductions ("legal rights" rationale)
– rationale II: benefits should go to those who reduce emissions ("emission
reductions" rationale)
– rationale III: benefits should go to forest stewards ("stewardship" rationale)
– rationale IV: actors incurring costs should be compensated ("cost-compensation"
rationale)
– rationale V: benefits should go to effective facilitators of implementation
("facilitation" rationale)
– rationale VI: benefits should go to the poor ("pro-poor" rationale)

Risks when unclear who should benefit ..
(Contextual, procedural and distributional equity)
Lack of clarity on objectives hampers to define who
‘should‘ benefit
Legitimacy of the decision needs the decision to be
made by those with:
• Legal mandate to make them
• Adherence to due process & to procedural rights

Risks related to unclear tenure, financial procedures,
elite capture
(Contextual, procedural and distributional equity)
Example Cameroon (Assembe et al 2013 and 2014):
Cameroon has two main mechanisms of benefit- sharing, 1) a
decentralized forestry taxation system; and 2) land fees.
In both risks are clearly related to
• institutional path dependencies (e.g. colonial rules) in the
process of establishing land tenure,
• the top-down approach to establishing a governance system
for the distribution of forest fees,
• and a lack of transparency in the fee-distribution process
(Assembe-Mvondo et al. 2013, 2014)

Risks related to representation -
Procedural equity in implementing
• decision-making and discussions on REDD+ in
general and benefit sharing in particular are
dominated by selected powerful actors (Brockhaus
et al 2014)
Example Vietnam (Pham et al 2014):
- dominant role of government agencies in REDD+
policy-making, limited political space for non-state
actors (e.g., NGOs, CSOs) to exert an influence on
the final policy outputs

What hinders translating lessons and
realizing transformational change for
equity into policy/practice?
Seeing REDD+ through 4 Is: institutional stickiness, ideas,
interests, information:
- Discursive shifts?
New agency, but rhetorics of powerful are still BAU
- Shifts in incentives?
Yes, incentives, but legitimacy of those that make decisions about it leads to/
reinforces existing patterns of rent seeking ?
- Shifts in power relations ?
Turning tables – not yet, aidification of REDD+, and in international and
national REDD+ policy arenas BAU remains dominant across levels

Country
Profiles
Media-based discourse
analyses
Info Briefs
Working Papers Journal Articles
Global comparative analysis of policies and processes

We acknowledge the support from:
NORAD, Australian Aid, UKAID, EC, USAID
and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
& all research partners and individuals
that have contributed to the GCS research
Thanks
For more information
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