Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: One of the proposed strategies for implementation of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation plus (REDD+) is to incentivize conservation of forests managed by communities under decentralized forest management. Yet, we argue that this is a challenging road to REDD+ because of three general characteristics of forests under existing decentralized management regimes. First, these forests already accumulate biomass and, in some cases, generate leakage, which threatens to undercut REDD+ additionality. Second, these forests are many and small, which will drive up REDD+ transactions costs. Third, beyond the “conservation islands” represented by forests under decentralized management, processes of deforestation and forest degradation continue. Given these challenges, we argue that REDD+ efforts through decentralized forestry should be redirected from incentivizing further conservation of forests under existing decentralized management arrangements toward a push for extending the coverage of forests under decentralized management, making forest rights the hard currency of REDD+.
Source: Conservation Letters
DOI: 10.1111/conl.12067
Authors: Kulbhushan Balooni, Jens Friis Lund
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDGs: Life on land, Climate action
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1604525614