Global forests, local development? An Assessment of REDD Readiness in Latin America

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is often portrayed as a policy that will mitigate climate change whilst fostering social and environmental improvements in the most isolated and under-developed regions of the world. Our work sets out to assess this cl aim by evaluating whether REDD is effectively designed as an instrument that is suitable for generating local development in forest regions. After revealing the underlying governance rationale through which REDD is expected to generate positive outcomes on the global and local levels, we develop a framework to assess whether the REDD strategies developed through the FCPF and the UN-REDD Readiness initiatives are putting in place the policy environment that is necessary for REDD to function as a development mechanism. Through the comparative analysis of six national Readiness strategies from the Latin American region, we reveal that policies designed under Readiness systematically pay more attention to the development of baseline emissions scenarios and MRV systems than to the establishment of the policy conditions that must be in place for REDD to generate local development. Our analysis suggests that a number of policy design elements might be resulting in the failure of national REDD strategies to address underlying governance problems. The phased approach to Readiness creates incentives for governments to rush through the institutional reform stages, and REDD’s current design only rewards quantifiable GHG emissions reductions, providing few incentives for countries to invest in social and environmental improvements. Furthermore, the reliance on carbon market finance and the operational structure of the FCPF may also result in overinvestments in MRV systems to the detriment of more complex institutional reforms. We conclude by presenting a set of recommendations for reforming the underlying governance logic of REDD in order to enhance its potential as a local development mechanism