1. The document summarizes research on indigenous experiences with REDD+ initiatives and identifies challenges regarding environmental justice. 2. It finds that while REDD+ emphasizes indigenous rights, many initiatives have failed to ensure access to land tenure, participation in decision-making, and address gender inequality. 3. The researchers argue REDD+ must do more than avoid harm and instead enable access to rights through strengthened safeguards that recognize indigenous peoples as rights-holders rather than just beneficiaries.

1. Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti and Anne Larson
Center for International Forestry Research
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN THE
REDD+ FRONTIER
INDIGENOUS EXPERIENCES FROM THE SCHOLARLY
LITERATURE AND PROPOSALS FOR A WAY FORWARD

2. Can REDD+ be a justice-enabling tool?
1. Reports of transgressions of the rights of IPs in the REDD+ frontier over
the past decade (e.g. Sarmiento Barletti and Larson 2017).
2. Systematic search of scholarly articles to understand rights enablement
and transgressions; yet, the solution is not only more rights but access.
3. Access gap is an issue of justice; impacts access to land tenure,
participation, and misrecognizes gendered experiences.
4. IPs, allies and donor efforts show REDD+’s potential to address the gap.
5. Need safeguards that do more than ‘no harm’ and re-engage with
indigenous men and women as more than beneficiaries.

3. From Rights to Justice
UNFCCC’s initiative for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
• Rights-based REDD+ depends not on UNFCCC, but on national
frameworks
• Countries must support safeguards for results-based payments.
o Interpretations of safeguards based on national frameworks,
built on histories of interactions between states and IPs.
• IPs have used REDD+ as a platform to put their rights on the global
agenda and influence national policy.
• Donors have influenced policy through related agreements.

4. Can REDD+ be a justice-enabling tool?
• Systematic search of REDD+ and rights terms in scholarly articles.
o P1 - 135  P2 - 86  P3 - 53 articles.
• UNDRIP recognizes a wide scope of rights than may be violated in
non-physically violent actions.
• From understanding rights, to look at access to rights as in/justice.
• Way forward understand the contextual factors that can inform a
justice-enabling REDD+ (how do we close the access gap?).

5. REDD+ as a justice-enabling tool
• Cross-cutting challenges beyond the emphasis on distributive and
procedural justice land tenure, participation, gender.
• Fraser’s three kinds of claims of injustice within capitalist systems:
o Redistribution - unjust distribution of resources
o Recognition - different identities of groups and individuals
o Representation - participation in decision making that affect
them
• Intertwined, but single them out to understand how to resolve
them.

6. Land Tenure and Redistributive Justice
Potential to help close the gap between rights and access to land
• Central to UNDRIP/ILO169; yet recognition and access challenges.
• Review REDD+ discourse emphasizes tenure clarity and security,
but this is not reflected in practice.
• In 21 subnational REDD+ initiatives in 5 countries, tenure has only
been addressed marginally (challenged by national frameworks).
• After pressure from grassroots, allies and some donors, tenure now
recognized as a key enabling factor for REDD+ readiness and
targets.

7. Gender and Recognitional Justice
Potential to address gendered differences in access
• Initiatives often fail to recognize the intersectionality of indigenous
experiences (incl. gendered experiences of inequality; SDG 5).
• Review when there are benefits, they are not distributed
equitably along gender lines, partly due to local norms.
• Despite discursive emphasis on gender equality, women have less
opportunities to participate, access to information, and benefits.
• Avoid reinforcing inequality Go beyond ‘gender’ as means to
improve efficiency, or equating “gender problem” to poverty.

8. Participation and Procedural Justice
Potential to realize access to decision-making
• Review most failed to apply FPIC; made decisions before
consulting; some withheld information to manage expectations
• FPIC commonly used to communicate something already decided.
o Commonly applied for implementation, tends to reproduce
norms that grant women unequal access.
o Variation based on national systems and voluntary standards.
• Processes may exclude IPs from REDD+ processes when not
recognized by national law, or as having the right to FPIC.
• Procedural justice access to decision-making in the whole process.

9. Is an environmentally just REDD+ possible?
1. Dimensions tenure security, participation equity, and gendered access.
2. REDD+ slanted to the symptoms, not structural causes of injustice.
o Different experiences of REDD+ are not erroneous interpretations;
o Ex. of power inequalities and histories of interactions between IPs and
governments, and of the structures that create inequalities.
3. Access beyond rights to whether people can benefit from those rights.
o Opportunity in ensuring safeguards that enable access and re-engage
with IPs as rights-holders.
4. Justice potential is alive at the grassroots, in efforts that may not have
transformed REDD+ globally, but have won special attention (e.g. RIA)