Discourses on Benefit Sharing, Legitimacy and Equity in REDD+: Lessons for Social Forestry
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This presentation details the various discourses surrounding benefit sharing, legitimacy and equity in REDD+
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Discourses on Benefit Sharing, Legitimacy and Equity in REDD+: Lessons for Social Forestry
- 1. Discourses on Benefit Sharing, Legitimacy and Equity in REDD+: Lessons for Social Forestry Maria Brockhaus, Cecilia Luttrell, Grace Wong, Pham T.T.,, L.N. Dung, J.S. Tjajadi, L. Loft, and S. Assembe Mvondo Fifth Conference of the ASEAN Social Forestry Network - Kota Kinabalu – 24.05.2014
- 2. From Forest Management and Biodiversity Conservation to REDD+ • Part of UNFCCC mitigation efforts, early idea was a simple PES market idea (history of green markets .. CDM A/R carbon offsets etc.) • but controversial: sovereignty, land use autonomy in tenure complex, verification issues
- 3. REDD+ challenges And numerous other challenges, most still unresolved: among others ... • Coordination across sectors and administrative levels (in decentralized systems) • Tenure, financing systems, benefit sharing and participation • MRV systems and capacity • Scope, scale, permanence, leakage • Sovereignty and ownership over process and reform(s) • Capacity and political will to address the drivers of forest carbon change (driven oftentimes by interests of powerful elites) and identifying an effective policy mix
- 4. From Readiness to Results • REDD+ is moving through different phases (Meridian 2009) • With introduction of performance based payments, it becomes important to link MRV systems to benefit (and cost) sharing systems • Monitoring data gets more and more robust, but payment mechanisms, clear rules, and measures for performance are still lacking
- 5. What do we mean by ‘benefit sharing’ • Benefit sharing is the distribution of direct and indirect net gains from the implementation of REDD+ • Two types of direct benefits: • Monetary gains from international and national finance related to REDD+ • Benefits associated with the increased availability of forest products & ecosystem services • Indirect benefits e.g. improved governance infrastructure provision
- 6. What is a BSM • Range of institutional means: governance structures and instruments that distribute finance and other net benefits from REDD+ – Direct incentives e.g. cash transfers, PFM, ICDPs – Policy and governance processes e.g. tenure clarification, law enforcement, agricultural intensification
- 7. Benefits come with costs: net benefits are what matter • Direct financial outlays related to REDD+ (implementation and transaction costs) • Costs arising from changes in forest land and resource use (opportunity costs) Cost recovery (compensation) vs. the surplus (REDD rent)
- 8. Discourses on benefit sharing
- 9. Discourse Discourse is critical in public policy-making because it shapes how a policy problem is perceived and, consequently, what kinds of solutions are conceivable or could be considered the ‘right’ choice (Hajer and Versteeg, 2005)
- 10. Discourses on ‘who should benefit’? 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
- 11. Efficiency/Effectiveness discourse REDD+ as a mechanism for paying forest users & owners to reduce emissions: • Focus on emissions reductions • Payments as incentive for those who change in behaviour • Benefits should go to people providing these services
- 12. Agreement with “REDD benefits should reward large-scale industries/companies for reducing forest emissions” Data from CIFOR’s GCS’ policy network analysis by Levania Santosa & Moira Moeliano (Indonesia), Maria Fernanda Gebara & Shaozeng Zhang (Brazil)
- 13. Equity discourses Equity discourses take a distributional perspective and ask who are the actors who have the „right“ to benefit from REDD+: • Focus on preventing unfair distributional results • Strengthening moral and political legitimacy of REDD+ mechanism
- 14. Equity Discourse I: Benefits should go to those with legal rights But no REDD+ country has legally defined carbon rights Will existing tenure rights be the legal basis for REDD+ BS? carbon rights not necessarily vested in rights to land or trees? Distinct from right to benefit from sale Will state claim carbon rights? Risk that those without formal rights may lose out
- 15. Equity Discourse II: Benefits should go to low emitting forest stewards Many of these are low-emission situations No additionality A possible solution is a baseline definition based on future threats
- 16. Equity Discourse III: Benefits should go to those incurring costs Compensate for implementation, transaction and opportunity costs regardless of emission reductions In early stages of REDD+ implementation there is a need to incentivize actors to get involved Inputs are easier to define than to measure emissions reductions
- 17. Equity Discourse IV: Benefits should go to effective facilitators of implementation What is the ‘right’ proportion? • to attract investors • but prevent windfall profits? Right for governments to retain some revenue for incurring implementation and transaction costs? What‘s the exact level of costs occurring to government?
- 18. Negotiating choices: Legitimacy of the process Learn from existing benefit sharing mechanisms at the local level (e.g. from social forestry), be aware of trade offs between new and old institutions! Clarify objectives of national REDD+ implementation before designing BSMs Clarity on objectives help to define who ‘should‘ benefit Lack of clarity over what is the ‘competent agency’ with these decision making powers 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 Requires a legitimate decision-making process and institutions
- 19. Some further reading: Pham, T.T., Brockhaus, M., Wong, G., Dung, L.N., Tjajadi, J.S., Loft, L., Luttrell C. and Assembe Mvondo, S., 2013. Approaches to benefit sharing: A preliminary comparative analysis of 13 REDD+ countries. Working Paper 108. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia. Luttrell, C., L. Loft, F. M. Gebara, D. Kweka, M. Brockhaus, A. Angelsen and W. Sunderlin 2013. Who should benefit from REDD+? Rationales and Realities. Ecology and Society. Assembe-Mvondo, S., Brockhaus, M., Lescuyer, G., 2013. Assessment of the Effectiveness, Efficiency and Equity of Benefit-Sharing Schemes under Large-Scale Agriculture: Lessons from Land Fees in Cameroon. European Journal of Development Research 25, 641-656. Loft, L., Pham, T.T., and Luttrell, C. 2014. Lessons from payments for ecosystem services for REDD+ benefit sharing mechanisms. CIFOR Infobrief No.68.
- 20. We acknowledge the support from: NORAD, Australian Aid, UKAID, EC, USAID & all research partners and individuals that have contributed to the GCS research Thanks
Editor's Notes
- The first problem we faced with analyzing BS was to define what we were analyzing . We solved this by using a wide definition of BS as ‘the distribution of direct and indirect net gains from the implementation of REDD+’ We distinguish between two types of direct benefits: First, the monetary gains from finance related to REDD and secondly the are benefits generated through the increased availability of forest products & services In addition there are indirect benefits such as infrastructure provision and improved governance etc
- We also took a broad definition of the term ‘benefit sharing mechanism’ in order to reflect the broad way the term is being used in REDD policies and practise, Thus we use it to refer to the ranges of institutional means, governance structures and instruments that distribute finance and other net benefits from REDD+
- But an equally important part of looking at benefits is to consider costs as it is the NET benefits that matter Again, there are conceptual distinctions to be made between the direct financial outlays related to REDD+ implementation And the costs arising from benefits forgone by using forests in ways that reduce emissions i.e. the opportunity costs
- Ok so now I will focus one of the questions dominating the benefit sharing debate who should receive the benefits associated with REDD+.
- There are a number of discourses around this questions, and what we did was to explore some o the tradeoffs involved in each discourse and the implications these bring for the design of the benefit sharing mechanisms A broad distinction can be made between effectiveness/ efficiency discourses on the one hand and equity discourses on the other.
- The „Efficiency / Effectiveness discourse“: suggests that benefits should be used as an incentive to bring about a reduction in emissions and should go to the actors providing these reductions. One implication of this discourse is that REDD+ revenue might end up be used predominantly to reward large-scale actors for reducing carbon emissions—as in many cases these are the current dominant emitters
- Interviews with national-level actors in Brazil and Indonesia show a divergence of views over this. In Indonesia, the idea that REDD benefits should reward large-scale industry was strongly supported by government and private sector respondents, and around half of the NGO/research and donor respondents. In Brazil however , a minority of government and NGO/research respondents agreed with this and there was concern from many that illegal operators would be rewarded as much of the deforestation is carried out by large landowners who do not comply with regulations.
- Equity-related discourses around BS have therefore emerged from the concern that a focus only on effectiveness and efficiency could result in unfair incentives. We identified four main strands in the equity discourse
- A dominant strand is that benefits should be distributed to those with the legal rights (whether statuatory or customary) to those benefits. However in most countries and projects we looked at establishing these legal rights is not straightforward. In none of the countries have the carbon right been clearly legally defined Some commentators assume that existing land and forest tenure and existing policy instruments for sharing benefits from the forests will serve as the basis for allocating payments for carbon emission reductions. But this assumption may be problematic: owning land or trees does not necessarily mean a legal right to benefit from carbon sequestration. There are at least 2 further aspects to consider : The first is that the property rights to sequestered carbon, does not necessarily coincide with the rights over the physical resource within which it is contained The second is that property right to sequestered carbon may be distinct from the right to benefit from selling carbon credits. And interestingly in the few examples where carbon rights have been legally clarified (e.g., New Zealand until 2008) and the state of Amazonas and Acre in Brazil) the carbon rights did not reflect existing land and forest tenure but were vested in the state. In Tanzania, for example, the majority of REDD+ projects are taking place on land registered as Village Forest Reserves, which means that there is no legal requirement for the income from these projects to go to the government. However despite the recent shift of control of NR to communities some, particularly at the national level continue to perceive natural resources as nationally owned goods and there are suggestions that carbon rights may be claimed by the state
- Another strand of the equity discourse is that REDD+ benefits should not only go to those actors that have been causing high emissions but also to indigenous groups or other users that have a record of responsible forest management. By taking this approach, a community whose customary rights are not legally recognised but that has been protecting the forests would have strong claims to benefits from REDD+. The effectiveness dilemma of this is that in many of these low-emission situations, additionality cannot be proved
- A third strong discourse is that the actors who shoulder costs should receive benefits. This debate reflects concerns to ensure that actors are compensated for inputs regardless of the emission reductions that they are directly responsible for. And this concern is reflected in the design of many emerging benefit sharing arrangements at the project level partly due to the recogistio need to give actors upfront incentives in order to get them involved.
- Finally, there is a discourse that a proportion of REDD+ benefits should be shared with those actors that are essential for facilitating the implementation of REDD+ , for example project developers and government. However, the determination of the proportion of the benefits that should accrue to these actors is an area of contestation. The challenge is to ensure that project implementers receive enough incentive to guarantee effective implementation, while at the same time guarding against them getting windfall profits This question also relates to the rights of governments to retain some revenue to cover ‘admissable costs that they have incurred, such as setting up MRV and enforcement systems (this retention practise is common in natural resource management)
- Our exploration of the discourses show that emphasis on either effectiveness and efficiency or equity has significant implications for the design of benefit sharing mechanisms. Managing the tradeoffs between the different objectives which the dsicourses reflect requires clarity concerning i) the primary objective of REDD+ and ii) the degree to which co-benefits should and/or can be paid for by REDD+. However, these fundamental questions have yet to be resolved at both the national and project levels What is clear is that a common constraint is a lack of clarity about which is the competent agency to make these decisions on benefit sharing arrangements. And this is potentialy is stalling the development of REDD+ implementation. For example, in Indonesia, the REDD+ benefit sharing regulation developed by the Ministry of Forestry has been challenged by the Ministry of Finance, which contends that the Ministry of Forestry does not have the legal authority to make fiscal decisions. At the same time, the REDD+ Task Force is developing parallel proposals for benefit sharing connected to Norwegian funding for REDD+. Overcoming this requires a process that brings legitimacy to any decisions that are made. We are now beginning in WP5 to think about what it means to ensure the legitimacy of process for making decisions about benefit sharing design. Another area to explore is how to design BSM in a suboptimal policy context. For example, as getting legal clarity over carbon rights may not be realistic in the short term, the benefit sharing mechanism might need to rely on specific contracts. On the other hand giving too much attention to minor details of the design of benefit sharing mechanisms before fundamental questions (such as the due process for making decisions and which bodies have the legal right to do so) are resolved can be problematic.