REDD+ benefit sharing: discourses on who ‘should’ benefit

Grace Wong, Cecilia Luttrell, Lasse Loft (BiK-F), Maria Fernanda Gebara (Getulio Vargas Foundation), Demetrius Kwerka, Maria

Brockhaus, William Sunderlin, Pham Thu Thuy, Januarti S. Tjajadi

Presentation Outline Definition of benefit sharing Discourses on who should benefit Review of benefit sharing mechanisms from a comparative

analysis

What do we mean by ‘benefit sharing’?

• Benefit sharing = distribution of direct and indirect net gains from the implementation of REDD+

• Benefits come with costs:• Direct financial outlays related to REDD+ (implementation and

transaction costs)• Foregone revenues from alternative forest land and resource use

(opportunity costs)• Compensation vs. surplus (REDD rent)

• Benefit sharing mechanism = range of institutional means, governance structures and instruments that distribute the net benefits

Discourses on benefit sharing

Who Should Benefit?

There are several distinct discourses in determining who should gain from REDD+ benefits.

Trade-offs involved in these choices and have implications for design of BSMs.

Effectiveness/efficiency vs. equity discourses

Effectiveness/efficiency = goal of emission reductions

Equity = who has the right to benefit

Efficiency & Effectiveness

REDD+ as a mechanism for paying forest users and owners to reduce emissions:

• Focus on emissions reductions• Payments as incentive to induce change in behaviour• Benefits should go to people providing these services

“REDD benefits should reward large-scale industries/companies for reducing forest emissions”

Data from CIFOR’s GCS policy network analysis, 2011 – current

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

Equity discourses

• Discourse I: Benefits should go to those with legal rights

The legal status of land-use and implications for benefit sharing

Project location

Driver Status

Kalimantan (Indonesia)

Timber, oil palm, mining, concessions, swidden

Legal

Small scale logging & hunting, fishing, NTFPs

Legally ambiguous

Transamazon (Brazil)

Subsistence hunting, small scale forest management, NTFPs

Legal

Swidden, small scale agriculture, small and large scale ranching and logging

Legal/illegal depends on type & location

Commercial hunting Illegal

Equity discourses

• Discourse I: Benefits should go to those with legal rights

• Discourse II: Benefits should go to low-emitting stewards

Equity discourses

• Discourse I: Benefits should go to those with legal rights

• Discourse II: Benefits should go to low-emitting stewards

• Discourse III: Benefits should go to those incurring costs

Opportunity cost to whom?

Project location

….incur the greatest financial losses

…affect the greatest number of people

…create the most significant change in land use over the largest area

…contribute the most to carbon emissions

Kaliimantan (Indonesia)

Large scale: logging, oil palm & mining

Swidden, fishing, NTFP

Large scale: logging, oil palm & mining

Large scale: logging & oil palm

Transamazon (Brazil)

Small-scale cattle

Swidden Small-scale cattle

Small-scale cattle

Acre (Brazil) Large scale ranching

Swidden Large scale ranching

Large scale ranching

Equity discourses

• Discourse I: Benefits should go to those with legal rights

• Discourse II: Benefits should go to low-emitting stewards

• Discourse III: Benefits should go to those incurring costs

• Discourse IV: Benefits should go to effective facilitators of implementation

A comparative analysis of BSM approaches in 13 countries

Pham, T.T. et al. 2013 (in prep)

• Only 4 countries (Brazil, Indonesia, Tanzania, Vietnam) have REDD+ national programs that regulate financial distribution.

• Many of the “enabling factors” necessary for 3E BSMs (PwC 2012) are lacking in all countries.

• All countries lean towards Equity Discourses I (those with legal rights) and III (those incurring costs).

• Implementation of multiple-objective REDD+ is a challenge – Equity Discourse II (low emitting stewards) is not a priority, potentially marginalising sustainable forest users.

• Most pilot REDD+ projects employ a hybrid ICDP-PES approach, and very few are performance-based.