Presentation by Anne M Larson, Antoine Libert Amico and Amy E Duchelle for REDD session at Global Landscapes Forum 2018 (Discussion Forum 4, 1 December 2018).

1. Multilevel governance and coordination challenges
in land use negotiations
§ Anne M Larson, Antoine Libert Amico and Amy E Duchelle
§ Global Landscapes Forum
§ 1 December 2018

2. • Multilevel governance research
• Decentralization
o Subnational governments and jurisdictional
initiatives
• The challenge of ”coordination”

3. The complexity of land governance
Village Village Village
Sub-district
Village
Sub-district
District
Province/ State/ Region
National
International e.g. donors
Horizontal
Vertical

4. Research questions
• Across levels and sectors, how and why are land use
decisions made?
• Are investments and interventions in reducing
carbon emissions (e.g. REDD+) leading to changes in
land use decisions, and if not, why?
• What are the challenges to and opportunities for
bringing about transformational change?

5. Phase 2 (GCS REDD+): Peru, Indonesia, Vietnam, Tanzania, and Mexico
(Multilevel governance)
Phase 3: Peru, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Brazil (Multistakeholder forums)

6. Field research site selection
• Nested comparative case studies (54 sites, 700+ interviews)
COUNTRY
REGION
SITE 4
SITE 5
SITE 1:
REDD+
SITE 3: Not
REDD+
SITE 2:
REDD+
“Increasing emissions” sites
“Decreasing emissions” sites
REGION
1
REGION
2
REGION
3

7. Key findings
• Coordination problems across levels and sectors include
barriers to information sharing (Kowler et al. 2016), lack of
clear responsibilities, lack of sound channels of
communication (Deschamps and Larson 2017), and the failure to
integrate local needs (Sanders et al. 2017)
• “Forum shopping” among actors responsible for
deforestation (Kowler et al. 2016)
• Those who deforest may coordinate more effectively
than those seeking low emissions alternatives (Ravikumar et
al. 2018)

8. Key findings (cont.)
• For subnational governments, decentralization policies and
nested REDD+ provide new opportunities for innovation, but
they face barriers due to the national government’s
centralizing tendencies (Trench et al 2018) and limited
budgets and capacities (Libert and Trench 2016)
• Fundamental problems with top-down approaches that solely
focus on the technical* (to ‘avoid politics’) (Sanders et al. 2017,
Myers et al. 2018)
*As in ”rendering technical” (Li 2007)

9. What ever happened to decentralization?
• 1990s-2000s: decentralization debates flourished, with forestry
decentralization playing a prominent role
• Decentralization as part of the recipe of “good governance”: a
simple (technical) step in progress towards greater democracy
o Decentralization often argued as required tool towards efficiency,
promoted to improve government performance, facilitate “good
governance”, and deepen democracy by increasing accountability
• Ideals more as good intentions than practice (“decentralizing while
recentralizing” Ribot et al. 2006)
• 10 years later, fears that would REDD+ foment forestry
recentralization

10. Based on coding in
NVivo 11 of over 700
interviews from 5
study countries
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
Central
government
(GOV1)
1st
Subnational
govt (GOV2)
2nd
Subnational
govt (GOV3)
3rd
Subnational
govt (GOV4)
4th
Subnational
govt (GOV5)
Smallholders Private
Company
Actor mention – Perception of authority on land use decisions
The role of subnational governments

11. Subnational governments…
• 28% of the world’s remaining tropical forests is located in 39
subnational political geographies that have committed to
jurisdictional sustainability agendas
• Nearly half of these jurisdictions have seen declining
deforestation rates in the last half-decade, although the link
between actions taken by subnational governments and
observed trends in deforestation remains to be analyzed
Boyd et al. 2018, Stickler et al. 2018

12. Stickler, C.M., A.E. Duchelle, J.P. Ardila, D.C. Nepstad, et al. 2018.
The State of Jurisdictional Sustainability. Earth Innovation
Institute, San Francisco, USA; CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia;
Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force Secretariat,
Boulder, USA.
The state of jurisdictional sustainability

13. Commitments: Intention vs. Action

14. Decentralization (preliminary findings)
• REDD+ has not created the predicted recentralization
• GOV1 maintains control. When powers are
decentralized, the level of government directly lower in
the hierarchy (GOV2) is favoured, while lowest levels
often complain
• Partial decentralization (e.g. powers without resources)
limits subnational capacities to implement and be
accountable
• Confusion over roles and responsibilities
• Forests remain an important source of state funds and
conflict
• Corruption remains a structural barrier at all levels

15. Why is change so difficult?
• Subnational governments
• Coordination (multilevel, multisector,
multiactor)
• Calls for integrated landscape approaches,
multisectoral initiatives, multistakeholder
platforms…

16. Learning, or repackaging?
• Decentralization -> multilevel governance
• Participation -> integrated landscape
initiatives, multistakeholder processes

17. Some coordination problems cannot be solved
through coordination
• It is important to distinguish between coordination failures in
REDD+ policy and implementation that can be addressed
through improved coordination, and those that arise from
fundamental differences in goals and interests
• Not all solutions can be negotiated, such as when highly
unequal power relations combine with entrenched
differences of interest
• Coordination is not only about who is at the table, but also:

18. Which game are we playing?

19. cifor.org
blog.cifor.org
ForestsTreesAgroforestry.org