This document summarizes discourses around who should benefit from REDD+ programs. It describes existing benefit sharing mechanisms at the national and local levels in some countries. It also outlines different perspectives on who has the right to benefit, including discussions around efficiency versus equity. The tradeoffs between prioritizing emissions reductions versus distributional fairness are examined. Key questions are raised around defining legitimate beneficiaries and establishing efficient and legitimate decision-making processes for benefit sharing.

1. REDD+ benefit sharing:
discourses on who ‘should’
benefit
Cecilia Luttrell , Lasse Loft (BiK-F) , Maria Fernanda Gebara
(Getulio Vargas Foundation), Demetrius Kwerka , Maria
Brockhaus; William Sunderlin
;
Bogor 27th Sept 2012

2. Overview of what we looked at
 Description of incipient BS arrangements at national and local
levels
 Discourses on who should benefit
 Tradeoffs between objectives of REDD+
 Data from GCS work on national policy processes in 6 countries
and 21 projects,

3. Definitions

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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)

7. BS proposals and policy at the
national level
National level-proposals & activities Proposals financial arrangements
Brazil No national policy to date; state & sub- Public funding: Amazon Fund & Bolsa Verde;
state projects define own BS
arrangements ; Incl. few direct PES
schemes
Indonesia Min. of Forestry regulations (2009 & Contested Min of Forestry (2009)
2012) projects need to obtain regulations specifies % to gov. project
ministerial approval; number of developers and communities; Presidential
projects without approval
Taskforce designing parallel funding
mechanism
Vietnam Draft REDD+ strategy: benefits to be UNREDD+ proposes a National Fund
shared between communities, overseen by multi-stakeholder body;
organisations and local authorities revenues according to provincial
Provincial level PES trialled performance. Projects moving away from an
expectation of a voluntary market

8. REDD+ projects and their proposed and
actual BSM in Tanzania
Project Details of BSMs
TFCG- Dividends paid to village member of the village (under village by-laws); up-
Kilosa & front funds & individual payments based on the potential average avoided
Lindi emissions per year; village assemblies decide whether to use dividends on
community projects
Mpingo Acquiring land certificates; boundary clarification; assistance in selling
timber through FSC and land use and management plans. Originally the
project planned to pass on profits to communities after deducting costs but
this was controversial so now they are discussing a percentage arrangement
CARE Distribution of carbon revenues will use existing village savings and loan
systems. The rights to carbon will be negotiated between CARE and the
community through an exisiting intermediary organisation

9. Discourses on benefit sharing

10. Discourses on ‘who
should benefit’?
 There are tradeoffs involved in these choice implied
by the different discourses which the implications
for design of BSMs
Effectiveness/efficiency vs. equity discourses
 Effectiveness/efficiency = goal of emission
reductions
 Equity = who has the right to benefit

11. Efficiency & Effectiveness
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. “REDD benefits should reward large-scale
industries/companies for reducing forest emissions”
Data from CIFOR’s GCS’ policy network analysis by Maria Brockhaus (coordination), 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. The legal status of land-use and
implications for benefit sharing
Project Driver Status
location
Kalimantan Timber, oil palm, mining, Legal
(Indonesia) concessions, swidden
Small scale logging & hunting, Legally ambiguous
fishing, NTFPs
Transamazon Subsistence hunting, small scale Legal
(Brazil) forest management, NTFPs
Swidden, small scale agriculture, Legal/illegal
small and large scale ranching depends on type &
and logging location
Commercial hunting Illegal

16. 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

17. 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

18. Opportunity cost to whom? The carbon
emitting activity that if reduced would …..
Project ….incur the …affect the …create the …contribute
location greatest greatest most the most to
financial losses number of significant carbon
people change in land emissions
use over the
largest area
Kaliimantan Large scale: Swidden, Large scale: Large scale:
(Indonesia) logging, oil palm fishing, NTFP logging, oil logging & oil
& mining palm & mining palm
Transamazon Small-scale Swidden Small-scale Small-scale
(Brazil) cattle cattle cattle
Acre (Brazil) Large scale Swidden Large scale Large scale
ranching ranching ranching

19. 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?

20. Negotiating choices:
legitimacy of the process
 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

21. Key questions for WP5
 Who are the legitimate beneficiaries?
 Criteria
 Need to reward performance
 Liability
 What is an efficient distribution of costs?
 Property rights
 What are the structures needed for financial transfers?
 What should be the processes for decision making and
implementation
 Oversight and monitoring

22. Sectors to learn from:
some examples
- PES /CBNRM
- Development and public administration: PFM,
anti corruption, performance assessment
- Financial structures: fiscal transfers , subsidies,
sovereign wealth fund etc
- Specific processes: extractive sector
mechanisms, FLEGT, CBD, ecological taxation