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Journal ArticleDOI

Land tenure and REDD+: The good, the bad and the ugly

TL;DR: In this paper, a global comparative study on REDD+, led by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFR), was conducted to investigate how tenure concerns are being addressed at both national and project level in emerging REDD+ programs.
Abstract: A number of international donors, national governments and project proponents have begun to lay the groundwork for REDD+, but tenure insecurity - including the potential risks of land grabbing by outsiders and loss of local user rights to forests and forest land - is one of the main reasons that many indigenous and other local peoples have publicly opposed it. Under what conditions is REDD+ a threat to local rights, and under what conditions does it present an opportunity? This article explores these issues based on available data from a global comparative study on REDD+, led by the Center for International Forestry Research, which is studying national policies and processes in 12 countries and 23 REDD+ projects in 6 countries. The article analyses how tenure concerns are being addressed at both national and project level in emerging REDD+ programs. The findings suggest that in most cases REDD+ has clearly provided some new opportunities for securing local tenure rights, but that piecemeal interventions by project proponents at the local level are insufficient in the absence of broader, national programs for land tenure reform. The potential for substantial changes in the status quo appear unlikely, though Brazil - the only one with such a national land tenure reform program - offers useful insights. Land tenure reform - the recognition of customary rights in particular - and a serious commitment to REDD+ both challenge the deep-rooted economic and political interests of ‘business as usual'.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper analyzed the key issues and new challenges existing in or arising from China's land system, and discussed specific measures taken to deepen the reform of land system in China at present and finally pointed out the future LSR's direction.

172 citations

Book
09 Jun 2015
TL;DR: In this article, a new World Bank report walks policymakers through three steps for a smooth transition to a zero-carbon future and provides data, examples and policy advice to help countries makes the shift.
Abstract: This report lays out three steps for a smooth transition to a zero-carbon future and provides data, examples and policy advice to help countries makes the shift. Overview Getting to zero net emissions and stabilizing climate change starts with planning for the long-term future and not stopping at short-term goals. It means getting prices right as part of a broad policy package that can trigger changes in both investments and behaviors, and it requires smoothing the transition for those most affected. A new World Bank report walks policymakers through those three steps with data, examples and policy advice to help put countries on a path to decarbonizing their development in a smooth and orderly way. The solutions exist, and they are affordable – if governments take action today, the report says.

161 citations

MonographDOI
05 Mar 2014
TL;DR: More than 300 subnational REDD+ initiatives have been launched across the tropics, responding to both the call for demonstration activities in the Bali Action Plan and the market for voluntary carbon offset credits as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: REDD+ is one of the leading near-term options for global climate change mitigation More than 300 subnational REDD+ initiatives have been launched across the tropics, responding to both the call for demonstration activities in the Bali Action Plan and the market for voluntary carbon offset creditsThis book describes 23 initiatives in six different countries, including their:diverse biogeographic and socioeconomic contextsstrategies to reduce emissions over the three or more years that they have been in operationlocal populations of smallholders, whose agricultural activities are important drivers of deforestation in most sites and who are thus key stakeholders in these initiativesefforts to overcome or work around challenges in financing, implementing and monitoring REDD+Early expectations of significant funding for REDD+ encouraged proponent organizations to test a wide range of strategies to reduce emissions while also delivering co-benefits Only some have chosen the strategy of direct payments conditional on actions to reduce deforestation or degradation, and only a very few have sold carbon credits, demonstrating how REDD+ on the ground is actually a mix of old and new strategiesFaced with enormous challenges, proponents have developed a menu of ways to: secure financial support; clarify forest tenure; cooperate and act across scales; measure, report and verify emissions; and respond to the imperative of safeguarding local livelihoodsWhile subnational initiatives have successfully piloted and generated lessons for REDD+, many now face the choice of either ending or transforming into something else, due to the political uncertainty and funding constraints stemming from the failure to reach a global climate change agreement This book highlights both the critical importance of such an agreement and in its absence, the creative ways that subnational initiatives are operating on the groundContentsExecutive summaryPart 1 Introduction1 REDD+ on the ground: The need for scientific evidencePart 2 Case reportsBRAZIL2 Acre's State System of Incentives for Environmental Services (SISA), Brazil3 Bolsa Floresta, Brazil4 Cotriguacu Sempre Verde, Brazil: Conservation and sustainable management of natural resources5 Jari/Amapa REDD+ Project, Brazil6 Sustainable Landscapes Pilot Program in Sao Felix do Xingu, Brazil7 Sustainable Settlements in the Amazon, BrazilPERU8 The REDD Project in Brazil Nut Concessions in Madre de Dios, Peru9 Valuation of Environmental Services in the Managed Forests of Seven Indigenous Communities in Ucayali, PeruCAMEROON10 REDD+ around Mount Cameroon, southwest region of Cameroon11 Community Payments for Ecosystem Services in the south and east regions of CameroonTANZANIA12 Building REDD Readiness in the Masito Ugalla Ecosystem Pilot Area in Support of Tanzania’s National REDD Strategy13 Piloting REDD in Zanzibar Through Community Forest Management, Tanzania14 Making REDD Work for Communities and Forest Conservation in Tanzania15 Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative: Combining REDD, PFM and FSC certification in southeastern Tanzania16 Pilot project on Community-Based REDD Mechanisms for Sustainable Forest Management in Semiarid Areas: The Case of Ngitilis in the Shinyanga Region, TanzaniaINDONESIA17 Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia18 Katingan Peatland Restoration and Conservation Project, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia19 Ketapang Community Carbon Pools, West Kalimantan, Indonesia20 Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve Project, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia21 TNC's initiative within the Berau Forest Carbon Program, East Kalimantan, Indonesia22 Ulu Masen REDD+ initiative, Aceh, IndonesiaVIETNAM23 Cat Loc Landscape – Cat Tien National Park Pro-Poor REDD+ Project, VietnamPart 3 Synthesis24 REDD+ on the ground: Global insights from local contexts

147 citations


Cites background from "Land tenure and REDD+: The good, th..."

  • ...This outcome results from state appropriation of rights to forests long ago, as well as a long legacy of powerful actors exploiting forestlands and resources at the expense of their inhabitants (Larson et al. 2013; Sunderlin et al. 2014b)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Sustainability criteria are needed to guide development and implementation of AFOLU mitigation measures with particular focus on multifunctional systems that allow the delivery of multiple services from land, and policies need to be flexible enough to allow such assessments.
Abstract: The agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector is responsible for approximately 25% of anthropogenic GHG emissions mainly from deforestation and agricultural emissions from livestock, soil and nutrient management. Mitigation from the sector is thus extremely important in meeting emission reduction targets. The sector offers a variety of cost-competitive mitigation options with most analyses indicating a decline in emissions largely due to decreasing deforestation rates. Sustainability criteria are needed to guide development and implementation of AFOLU mitigation measures with particular focus on multifunctional systems that allow the delivery of multiple services from land. It is striking that almost all of the positive and negative impacts, opportunities and barriers are context specific, precluding generic statements about which AFOLU mitigation measures have the greatest promise at a global scale. This finding underlines the importance of considering each mitigation strategy on a case-by-case basis, systemic effects when implementing mitigation options on the national scale, and suggests that policies need to be flexible enough to allow such assessments. National and international agricultural and forest (climate) policies have the potential to alter the opportunity costs of specific land uses in ways that increase opportunities or barriers for attaining climate change mitigation goals. Policies governing practices in agriculture and in forest conservation and management need to account for both effective mitigation and adaptation and can help to orient practices in agriculture and in forestry towards global sharing of innovative technologies for the efficient use of land resources. Different policy instruments, especially economic incentives and regulatory approaches, are currently being applied however, for its successful implementation it is critical to understand how land-use decisions are made and how new social, political and economic forces in the future will influence this process.

141 citations


Cites background from "Land tenure and REDD+: The good, th..."

  • ...…is positive or negative for local actors depends upon two factors: (i) the institutions regulating land tenure and land-use rights (e.g. laws, policies) and ii) their level of enforcement (Corbera & Brown, 2008; Araujo et al., 2009; Rosemary, 2011; Albers & Robinson, 2013; Larson et al., 2013)....

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  • ...laws, policies) and ii) their level of enforcement (Corbera & Brown, 2008; Araujo et al., 2009; Rosemary, 2011; Albers & Robinson, 2013; Larson et al., 2013)....

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  • ...For example the context in Latin America, where over 25% of the forest is managed by local communities, facilitates that these communities get benefits from mitigation activities in the forest sector (Larson et al., 2010, 2013)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A framework is presented that identifies three common ways in which land tenure security can impact human and conservation outcomes, and suggest practical ways to distill tenure and tenure security issues for a given location.
Abstract: Insecure land tenure plagues many developing and tropical regions, often where conservation concerns are highest. Conservation organizations have long focused on protected areas as tenure interventions, but are now thinking more comprehensively about whether and how to incorporate other land tenure strategies into their work, and how to more soundly ground such interventions on evidence of both conservation and human benefits. Through a review of the literature on land tenure security as it relates to conservation practice, predominantly in the tropics, we aim to help conservation practitioners consider and incorporate more appropriate land tenure security interventions into conservation strategies. We present a framework that identifies three common ways in which land tenure security can impact human and conservation outcomes, and suggest practical ways to distill tenure and tenure security issues for a given location. We conclude with steps for considering tenure security issues in the context of conservation projects and identify areas for future research.

120 citations


Cites background or methods from "Land tenure and REDD+: The good, th..."

  • ...These often begin with an evaluation of the local tenure setting, including the policy and governance environment and local norms with the goal of identifying sources of insecurity, conflict, and inequality (van Gelder 2010; Katz 2010; Larson et al. 2013; Bruyn & Veer 2014)....

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  • ...These often begin with an evaluation of the local tenure setting, including the policy and governance environment and local norms with the goal of identifying sources of insecurity, conflict, and inequality (van Gelder 2010; Katz 2010; Larson et al. 2013; Bruyn & Veer 2014)....

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  • ...These might include documenting rights through land titling programs (Deininger & Feder 2009; Larson et al. 2013; Holland et al. 2017), incorporating customary systems into a statutory framework (Knight 2010), or gaining rights from the state through a process of devolution of management (Jagger et…...

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  • ...These might include documenting rights through land titling programs (Deininger & Feder 2009; Larson et al. 2013; Holland et al. 2017), incorporating customary systems into a statutory framework (Knight 2010), or gaining rights from the state through a process of devolution of management (Jagger et al....

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  • ...…registry, clarifying institutional responsibilities, simplifying overlapping and plural tenure systems, resolving disputes, or improving monitoring and evaluation of tenure governance systems (Deininger & Feder 2009; FAO 2012; Naughton-Treves & Day 2012; Larson et al. 2013; Bruyn & Veer 2014)....

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Land questions have invigorated agrarian studies and economic history, with particular emphases on its control, since Marx as mentioned in this paper, since the early 1970s, and have been associated with various forms of accumulation, frontiers, enclosures, territories, grabs, and racialization.
Abstract: Land questions have invigorated agrarian studies and economic history, with particular emphases on its control, since Marx. Words such as ‘exclusion’, ‘alienation’, ‘expropriation’, ‘dispossession’, and ‘violence’ describe processes that animate land histories and those of resources, property rights, and territories created, extracted, produced, or protected on land. Primitive and on-going forms of accumulation, frontiers, enclosures, territories, grabs, and racializations have all been associated with mechanisms for land control. Agrarian environments have been transformed by processes of de-agrarianization, protected area establishment, urbanization, migration, land reform, resettlement, and re-peasantization. Even the classic agrarian question of how agriculture is influenced by capitalism has been reformulated multiple times at transformative conjunctures in the historical trajectories of these processes, reviving and producing new debates around the importance of land control. The authors in this col...

789 citations


"Land tenure and REDD+: The good, th..." refers background in this paper

  • ...And certainly, formalization can always be used against local people (Peluso and Lund, 2011), even if laden with equity discourse....

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  • ...In addition, policies of ‘rights recognition’ and formalization have been used historically at least as often to usurp lands as to secure them local people, or to secure them for powerful elites; these policies continue today (Peluso and Lund, 2011), including in the name of conservation....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the use of what they call internal territorialization in establishing control over natural resources and the people who use them and examine the emergence of territoriality in state power in Thailand.
Abstract: Weber and many other theorists have defined the state as a political organization that claims and upholds a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force in a given territory.1 Writers who draw on this Weberian approach have devoted considerable theoretical attention to political organization, legitimacy, and physical coercion in the making of modern states. Until recently, however, the meaning of territory as a key practical aspect of state control has been relatively neglected by many theorists of the sources of state power. Territorial sovereignty defines people's political identities as citizens and forms the basis on which states claim authority over people and the resources within those boundaries.2 More important for our purposes here, modern states have increasingly turned to territorial strategies to control what people can do inside national boundaries. In this article, we aim to outline the emergence of territoriality in state power in Thailand, formerly called Siam. In particular, we examine the use of what we call internal territorialization in establishing control over natural resources and the people who use them.

707 citations


"Land tenure and REDD+: The good, th..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Much has been written about the centralization of forest tenure historically (e.g. Dixon and Sherman, 1991; Fay and Michon, 2003; Harrison, 1992; Peluso, 1992; Pyne, 2009; Vandergeest and Peluso, 1995; Westoby, 1987, 1989), and the wave of reforms formalizing forest tenure rights since the late 20th century (Cousins, 2007; Larson et al....

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  • ...…the centralization of forest tenure historically (e.g. Dixon and Sherman, 1991; Fay and Michon, 2003; Harrison, 1992; Peluso, 1992; Pyne, 2009; Vandergeest and Peluso, 1995; Westoby, 1987, 1989), and the wave of reforms formalizing forest tenure rights since the late 20th century (Cousins,…...

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Book
01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a survey of the history of forest access control in Java, focusing on the following: 1. TRADITIONS OF FOREST CONTROL in JAVA 2. Gaining Access to People and Trees 3. State FORESTS and CHANGES in State 4. Organized Forest Violence, Reorganized Forest Access, 1942-1966 5. PEASANT POWER TO RESIST 6. A Forest without Trees 7. Teak and Temptation on the Extreme Periphery: Cultural Perspectives on Forest Crime
Abstract: Acknowledgments Part I. INTRODUCTION 1. Structures of Access Control, Repetoires of Resistance Part II. TRADITIONS OF FOREST CONTROL IN JAVA 2. Gaining Access to People and Trees 3. The Emergence of "Scientific" Forestry in Colonial Java Part III. STATE FORESTS AND CHANGES IN STATE 4. Organized Forest Violence, Reorganized Forest Access, 1942-1966 5. State Power to Persist: Contemporary Forms of Forest Access Control Part IV. PEASANT POWER TO RESIST 6. A Forest without Trees 7. Teak and Temptation on the Extreme Periphery: Cultural Perspectives on Forest Crime Part V. CONCLUSION 8. Toward Integrated Social Forestry

626 citations

Book
15 Apr 1992
TL;DR: Based on 15 years of research in Brazil, an interdisciplinary documentation and analysis of the process of frontier change in one region of the Brazilian Amazon, the southern region of Brazil, is presented in this article, based on the idea that what they documented in the field - deforestation, settlement patterns, and the intensity of rural violence, for example -were the outcomes of the competition for resources among social groups capable of mobilizing varying degrees of power.
Abstract: Based on 15 years of research in Brazil, this book is an interdisciplinary documentation and analysis of the process of frontier change in one region of the Brazilian Amazon, the southern region of the state of Para. The authors' analysis was based on the idea that what they documented in the field - deforestation, settlement patterns, and the intensity of rural violence, for example - were the outcomes of the competition for resources among social groups capable of mobilizing varying degrees of power. The analysis of these contests illustrates how national and international factors often shaped events at the local level, thereby propelling the story of frontier expansion in different and unexpected directions. Part One focuses on Amazonia as a whole. The authors review the history of the region, and analyze the federal and state policies that set into motion the contemporary process of frontier expansion. In parts Two and Three, they present the results of their empirical work on the evolution of frontier communities in southern Para. Each local history develops the general themes put forth in the first section. The final chapter brings the text back to larger issues of understanding such frontier change, especially in light of the country's anthropological, sociological, and demographic shifts and collisions.

520 citations


"Land tenure and REDD+: The good, th..." refers background in this paper

  • ...…of local landholders, prior to the existence of REDD+. Tenure reform emerged in response to decades of serious conflict, including high profile murders of rural activists such as Chico Mendes and others, with fundamentally unbalanced land distribution patterns at the root (Schmink and Wood, 1992)....

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  • ...Tenure reform emerged in response to decades of serious conflict, including high profile murders of rural activists such as Chico Mendes and others, with fundamentally unbalanced land distribution patterns at the root (Schmink and Wood, 1992)....

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01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: White et al. as mentioned in this paper presented an analysis of who owns and who should own the world's forests, highlighting trends in tenure and providing data for more informed decisions by policy makers, governments, companies, investors, local communities, research institutions and concerned NGOs.
Abstract: There has been much attention and effort—on national and international levels—devoted over past decades to global problems of deforestation and forest degradation and to improving forest management and conservation. The number of protected areas has increased dramatically; new funds have been established to finance protection. Also, many international and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have moved to develop markets for sustainably-produced forest products. Despite these efforts, forest degradation has steadily increased throughout much of the world. At the same time there is growing realization that insecure property rights are a key underlying problem and cause of degradation. Property rights to forest lands and resources are often contested, overlapping or simply unenforced. Much of the global forest estate is characterized by confusion and insecurity over property rights. This insecurity undermines sound forest management, for without secure rights forest holders have few incentives—and often lack legal status—to invest in managing and protecting their forest resources. While secure property rights cannot ensure sustained protection and investments in an asset, they are often a necessary condition. This growing global recognition of the importance of property rights is mirrored by longstanding preoccupation with rights issues at local levels. The questions of who owns the forests, who claims them, who has access to them and further, who should own them, are hotly contested in many forest regions of the world. These are often the primary concerns of local people most directly dependent on forest resources. Growing interest in developing markets for environmental services has also brought new attention to property rights issues. Many governments, local organizations and private-sector actors are beginning to consider questions of ownership regarding the services provided by forests, such as carbon sequestration, biodiversity habitat and watershed protection. They are considering who should pay for the production and maintenance of these services. The ways in which existing cultural, legal, and regulatory mechanisms should be applied to these potentially marketable services is likewise becoming a source of considerable debate. This publication is designed to highlight trends in tenure and to provide data for more informed decisions by policy makers, governments, companies, investors, local communities, research institutions and concerned NGOs. We also intend to highlight gaps in available information and raise the question of who owns—and who should own—the world's forests. Andy White and Alejandra Martin led the analysis presented here, working with Owen J. Lynch of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Given that official …

491 citations


"Land tenure and REDD+: The good, th..." refers background in this paper

  • ...White and Martin (2002) and Sunderlin et al. (2008) document the shift in forest ownership from the state to more substantial – though still minority – community control, referring to this change as the ‘global forest tenure transition’ (Sunderlin, 2011)....

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