{"title":"Greening the blue Pacific: Lessons on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+)","authors":"Shipra Shah , Digby Race","doi":"10.1016/j.forpol.2024.103263","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Across the Pacific, deforestation and forest degradation are driving the loss of ecosystem services. Increasing recognition of the need for mechanisms that can bridge economic development and environmental sustainability has led to the emergence of the broad concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS), including Payments for Environmental Services (PES) such as ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’ (REDD+) of forested areas. REDD+ projects are being piloted in the region, but the scale of adoption remains limited raising doubts about whether the concept has much appeal beyond small-scale government-supported initiatives. Although a relatively simple concept, it is proving difficult to translate into an appealing practice that is widely understood and adopted by rural land managers. We conducted a review of the achievements and challenges of REDD+ projects in Melanesia while drawing on global and regional lessons. Most projects are reaping the benefits of enhanced community development, employment, capacity building, and stronger governance. Perverse incentives, lack of systematic assessments of carbon offsets, poor stakeholder engagement, insufficient feedback mechanisms, marginalisation of women, and the lack of prosperous and sustainable alternative livelihoods remain key challenges. This suggests the need for developing policy mixes, understanding the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, addressing equity concerns, strengthening tenure security, removing perverse incentives, and ensuring financially competitive conservation incentives for enhancing the appeal of REDD+ to rural communities, policymakers, and the private sector, so its reach across the Pacific can be extended.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":12451,"journal":{"name":"Forest Policy and Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Forest Policy and Economics","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934124001175","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Across the Pacific, deforestation and forest degradation are driving the loss of ecosystem services. Increasing recognition of the need for mechanisms that can bridge economic development and environmental sustainability has led to the emergence of the broad concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS), including Payments for Environmental Services (PES) such as ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’ (REDD+) of forested areas. REDD+ projects are being piloted in the region, but the scale of adoption remains limited raising doubts about whether the concept has much appeal beyond small-scale government-supported initiatives. Although a relatively simple concept, it is proving difficult to translate into an appealing practice that is widely understood and adopted by rural land managers. We conducted a review of the achievements and challenges of REDD+ projects in Melanesia while drawing on global and regional lessons. Most projects are reaping the benefits of enhanced community development, employment, capacity building, and stronger governance. Perverse incentives, lack of systematic assessments of carbon offsets, poor stakeholder engagement, insufficient feedback mechanisms, marginalisation of women, and the lack of prosperous and sustainable alternative livelihoods remain key challenges. This suggests the need for developing policy mixes, understanding the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, addressing equity concerns, strengthening tenure security, removing perverse incentives, and ensuring financially competitive conservation incentives for enhancing the appeal of REDD+ to rural communities, policymakers, and the private sector, so its reach across the Pacific can be extended.
期刊介绍:
Forest Policy and Economics is a leading scientific journal that publishes peer-reviewed policy and economics research relating to forests, forested landscapes, forest-related industries, and other forest-relevant land uses. It also welcomes contributions from other social sciences and humanities perspectives that make clear theoretical, conceptual and methodological contributions to the existing state-of-the-art literature on forests and related land use systems. These disciplines include, but are not limited to, sociology, anthropology, human geography, history, jurisprudence, planning, development studies, and psychology research on forests. Forest Policy and Economics is global in scope and publishes multiple article types of high scientific standard. Acceptance for publication is subject to a double-blind peer-review process.