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REDD+: Online Workshop Series

Key messages

Deforestation and forest degradation are complex problems with many connected social, economic and environmental challenges. Reversing deforestation can only be addressed through sustainable land-use management and improved social cohesion.
REDD+ provides incentives to developing countries to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
Improved efforts are needed to boost confidence in carbon markets as potential sources of finance in Indonesia.
Multi-level governance and private sector involvement are crucial to success in DRC.
Vietnam aims to expand REDD+ to mangrove and wetland environmental services.
Peru reduces deforestation and now includes peatlands in its REDD+ focus.
Brazil needs a high-level commitment to REDD+ and a major reduction in deforestation in order to meet its climate goals.

How are we doing? A tool to reflect on the process, progress and priorities of your multi-stakeholder forum

This handbook explains how to implement How are we doing?, a tool that
enables participatory reflective monitoring in multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs).
MSFs are spaces that include a wide range of stakeholders in a topic or
region, to engage in dialogue, decision making and/or the implementation of
activities for common landscape goals. How are we doing? supports enabling
conditions to allow the MSF to achieve its goal(s) equitably and effectively.
Here we provide a step-by-step process on how to do that.
MSFs have gained much attention around the world because of their potential
to improve collaboration between different actors, sectors and governance
levels to address complex challenges, which cannot be resolved by one actor
alone. They can also include actors that, throughout history, have not been
able (or allowed) to participate in decision making on land use and land-use
issues and/or the design of initiatives that may affect their rights, territories,
lives and livelihoods.
This handbook is the product of collaboration between members of MSFs and
researchers from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). The
collaboration emerged from the identification of the need for a simple tool to
allow MSF participants to monitor their forums, and reflect upon and improve
their processes and results. In response, CIFOR held a series of participatory
workshops in Indonesia and Peru to develop How are we doing?, to reflect on
and learn from what the MSF has been doing well (and not so well); examine
progress toward the objective(s), including the challenges faced and the ones
still ahead; and support the annual planning process.
How are we doing? has three main features that set it apart from other tools.
First, it was developed together with members of several subnational MSFs.
Second, it was designed to be used by MSF participants themselves, not to be
applied by external evaluators. And, third, its objective goes beyond a simple
assessment of indicators, rather inviting participants to discuss and reflect on
their answers. The purpose of this reflection is to learn from the past, consider
progress and obstacles to further progress, and collectively plan how to
achieve the MSF’s goals in the future.

Can Multi-Stakeholder Forums Promote Balanced Power Relations, Collaboration, and Sustainable Development? A Comparative Analysis of Territorial Planning in Two Very Different Brazilian States

Multistakeholder forums (MSF) have gained global popularity as an innovative institutional reform in the governance of land use decision-making, including territorial planning processes. The idea, or ideal, is to bring together diverse actors to advance the paradigms of “good governance” and “sustainable development”. However, territorial planning through MSF can constitute a double-edged sword. Advancing certain goals, strengthening certain land use rights and benefiting certain actors can come at the expense of others, with the potential to challenge power asymmetries and/or merely reproduce them. My research analyzes the capacities and challenges of MSF to promote balanced power relations, collaboration and a sustainable development, comparatively in two Brazilian states with very different contexts and history; Acre and Mato Grosso. I give a closer look to the state-level “Ecological-Economic Zoning” (ZEE) commissions of Acre and Mato Grosso, and to the implications of MSF and ZEE commissions for indigenous and traditional populations. I do so, acknowledging that power can be used by elites for coercion, but also as a transformative, empowering force for historically marginalized groups. Based on mixed methods, perceptions and empirical evidence are captured applying different data collection instruments to informants of different types, genders, levels and sectors. I conclude that MSF may promote collaboration, balance power relations, empower indigenous peoples and advance sustainable development, but not necessarily. MSF and territorial planning are not technical but rather highly political processes. Particularly, MSF cannot fully represent the inherent diversity of indigenous and traditional populations nor fully ensure their effective participation. MSF have better chances to achieve their goals when they emerge from (and are nourished by) local social movements and shared values, rather than from external demands and institutions in highly polarized contexts. Where sectors are diverse and values are aligned, power differences can become an incentive to collaborate. Moreover, not only economically and/or politically powerful actors but a diversity of actors can influence processes and results (and thus, shape reality), using different forms of power. Finally, MSF do not operate in a vacuum; additional governance mechanisms utilized by different actors deeply shape the power of MSF and equity and effectiveness beyond MSF.

Governing Landscapes for Ecosystem Services: A Participatory Land-Use Scenario Development in the Northwest Montane Region of Vietnam

Land-use planning is an important policy instrument for governing landscapes to achieve multifunctionality in rural areas. This paper presents a case study conducted in Na Nhan commune in the northwest montane region of Vietnam to assess land-use strategies toward multiple ecosystem services, through integrated land-use planning. The assessment employed the Land-Use Planning for Multiple Ecosystem Services (LUMENS) framework and a number of methods and tools, including land-use mapping, GIS-based land-use change analysis, survey questionnaire, rapid carbon-stock appraisal for different land uses, qualitative ecosystem services assessment, and a backcasting technique. Our findings suggest that a lack of participation and acknowledgement of customary land-use practices inhibit successful implementation of current land-use planning and relevant policies such as payment for forest environmental services and the nationally determined contributions. The study also confirmed the contributions of forests and the land-use sector in achieving national emission reduction targets, especially when local stakeholders are involved early in the planning process. Other findings with important policy implications are: (i) tree-based land uses such as agroforestry are key to securing multiple ecosystem services and are highly relevant to local stakeholders, yet their potentials were not made explicit in current debates at the local level; (ii) local stakeholders are highly aware of the co-benefits of ecosystem services to climate-change mitigation and this should be considered in nationally determined contributions; and (iii) an approach for integrated, participatory land-use planning can help catalyze stakeholder engagement, and hence improve governance in rural landscapes.

A Tentative Theory of Change to Evaluate Jurisdictional Approaches to Reduced Deforestation

Sub-national jurisdictions are promoted as strategic levels of governance for achieving reduced deforestation objectives. Jurisdictional approaches (JA) emerged as government-led, holistic approaches to forest and land use management across one or more legally defined territories. Despite increasing popularity amongst the science and practitioner communities, there is a lack of robust empirical data documenting their effectiveness in delivering environmental, social and economic outcomes. In this paper, we contend that further clarification of the JA concept would help its evaluation. More specifically, we suggest that current evaluation practices of JA would be strengthened if they were based on a theory of change clarifying the causal linkages between the interventions associated with a given JA and their effects. By integrating select empirical knowledge on JA with a selection of middle-range theories from the literature on collective environmental governance, we design a generic theory of change for JA, which is articulated around two intermediary outcomes, namely the emergence of collaboration and social learning. We also formulate hypotheses regarding the conditions that enable or hinder these collective intermediary outcomes of JAs. We acknowledge that another fundamental challenge for JAs is to remove or block the external contradicting signals that still fundamentally drive deforestation. Thus, JA interventions need to operate not only at the jurisdictional level, but also beyond.

REDD+ in Indonesia

Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), was adopted in Indonesia with an ambitious vision to promote a new mode of governance for Indonesia’s forest, replacing a mode of ‘projectification’. Projectification, as described by Li (2016), is understood as a process through which plans for systematic long-term change collapse into incremental, simplified technical solutions. These proposals often fail to address complex socio-economic problems and political-economic contexts, allowing large-scale deforestation drivers to persist.
We analyze whether Indonesia is on track toward transformational change or is conversely locked into projectification. We construct our analysis using results from a long-term study comprising surveys in 2012, 2015, and 2019 analyzing the evolving role of REDD+ in Indonesian forest governance. Combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, we examine changes in (i) discursive practices and policy beliefs; (ii) institutions and power relations; and (iii) informal networking relationships.
Our findings show that despite high hopes and some promising developments, REDD+ has not yet fully succeeded in creating transformational change. Ideas of REDD+ remain focused on efficiency and technical aspects of implementation and do not question business as usual and the current political economic conditions favoring deforestation. The changing structure of the REDD+ policy network and exchanges between actors and groups over time suggest government actors and large funding organizations are becoming increasingly dominant, potentially indicating a return to established patterns of project-based governance.

The Rise and Fall of Protected Areas in Central Africa: A Historical Perspective

In view of their commitments to the Convention on Biological Diversity, many countries are deciding how to increase their Protected Areas (PAs) by 2030. However, not all proposals are entirely new, with some having colonial roots. Colonial PAs have histories related to land dispossession and loss of natural resource rights. These PAs were created in “frontier spaces”, which upended customary property systems, social dynamics, and disregarded customary rights. Territorialisation is the strategic use of bounded space to control resources. We use territorialisation to understand the links between colonial and modern PAs. In some cases, modern PA proposals propose to resurrect colonial reserves. Through the lens of territorialisation over time, we trace the creation of the Mont Fouari colonial hunting reserve complex (Gabon/Republic of Congo), the Reserve Floristique de Yangambi (Democratic Republic of Congo-DRC), Lomami National Park (DRC), and the Plateaux Batéké National Park (Gabon). Community consultation was non-existent when many PAs were created, but newer ones now consider it. Despite these new efforts, we show how colonial territorialisation through the creation of reserves lives on in new proposals for many modern PAs. We reflect on the consequences of these proposals, and whether creating or expanding PAs with colonial histories is good for people and biodiversity.

Making change happen at CIFOR-ICRAF

This infographic presents some CGIAR-endorsed Monitoring, evaluation, learning and impact assessment (MELIA) definitions to enable CIFOR-ICRAF streamlined reporting in projects such as Governing Multifunctional Landscapes in Sub-Saharan Africa (GML) and similar interventions. The definitions are designed to be used at each stage of a project, from inception to delivery to project closure.

The definitions are designed to be used at each stage of a project, from inception to delivery to project closure.

Between Co-Management and Responsibilisation: Comparative Perspectives from Two Reservas Comunales in the Peruvian Amazon

Peru introduced co-managed Reservas Comunales (Communal Reserves) as an alternative to the ‘fortress conservation’ approach that characterises other protected areas where Indigenous Peoples tend to be excluded from both the physical space and managerial aspects of conservation regimes. Although these Reserves are lauded internationally as supporting Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination, this article examines the challenges that arise from the cogestión (co-management) regime for Indigenous organisations and communities. Focusing on the ‘responsibilisation’ relationships created in the co-management of two Communal Reserves, the article reflects on the different trajectories of this transfer of responsibilities, and the processes through which Indigenous co-management organisations are expected to adopt the government’s conservation goals.

A review of the Enabling Environment for Transformative Land Investment in Ethiopia, Ghana and Mozambique

Sub-Saharan African development strategies emphasize optimizing agricultural and forestry resources through foreign and domestic investments in large-scale farms and plantations. While these land-based initiatives are believed to enhance economic development, concerns arise regarding their impact on marginalized groups and the environment. Issues like land tenure security and the agri-food sector’s investment climate play pivotal roles, highlighting the need for transparent and inclusive decision-making involving local communities.

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