Chewing the fat with a colleague recently we were musing upon what has happened to REDD. Clearly the biggest problem is the lack of any global agreement to mitigate climate change, and the consequent collapse in the price of carbon on many markets. But even if this were fixed would there be a long queue of sellers about to push carbon credits from REDD on to the marketplace? We didn’t think so.
The problem is that, as I have remarked before, REDD is far from easy. In fact it contains multiple challenges on so many different levels that, we thought, these difficulties had obscured the strategic focus on the hardest problem of all: actually delivering carbon savings.
Firstly there are the technical and technological challenges around MRV (Measuring, Reporting and Verifying the carbon fluxes) and defining appropriate reference points (the business-as-usual scenario) against which to measure progress. Secondly there are the social justice issues: who will benefit from REDD, elites or local forest dwellers? There were genuine fears that REDD could initiate another land grab by governments, reversing the trend in recent decades towards decentralised and community-based forest management. Finally there were fears that mono-specific plantations might prove more efficient at carbon sequestration than existing natural forests, and that biodiversity might therefore take another beating.
All three sets of issues posed serious challenges which urgently needed addressing. Without the capacity to monitor their own forest carbon stocks developing countries would be effectively barred from participating, or, at best, find themselves dictated to by others who had the necessary technological nous. And there is no doubt that, in some countries at least, the technical and institutional gaps were, and largely still are, quite substantial. Similarly, there is a huge amount to be said for getting the social justice issues properly incorporated from the start, because, like the proverbial oil gusher, once the money starts to flow, it might be very hard to bolt on the relevant safeguards later.
To donors and other big aid sector players these multiple technical and social challenges must have appeared rather like stumbling upon a car crash scene for an ambulance-chasing lawyer. “Aha!” they said, “Here is a role for us.” Projects were created left, right and centre, the dollars flowed, and the consultants came and feasted. People were trained in analysing satellite imagery, whilst gender and indigenous peoples experts galore advised on how to ensure REDD delivered benefits to all. I expect there were even strategies drawn up for dealing with HIV/AIDS in REDD.
But where are the carbon savings that all of this work would support? Here we meet what is both the great strength and the great weakness of REDD: it is almost impervious to fudged or sticking-plaster type solutions. In order to succeed in REDD one must not just conserve a patch of forest, but reduce the drivers of deforestation, so that another forest loss (and hence carbon emissions) are not simply displaced elsewhere. This is hard. Seriously hard. Most of the time someone will lose out, whether it is big business intent on industrial-scale logging or adding another oil palm plantation, or poor farmers pushing further into the bush in order to find more fertile soils.
Such challenges are not susceptible to ‘projectisation’ in the standard aid model that works with mid-level managers plus advisers. Instead they require tough political decisions, probably at cabinet level. It is clear that in some countries (Brazil, Indonesia and Guyana come to mind) REDD has reached this level of serious political engagement, even if (in the case of Indonesia) the desired outcomes are not yet secured. However, elsewhere REDD appears stuck a rung or two lower on the government bureaucratic ladder, and thus the actual mechanism by which forest carbon savings will be generated remains either theoretical or entirely undefined. In such a context all the investment in MRV and social justice seems like the football team that plays very pretty football, with lots of neat passing, but too often fails in its primary goal: to get the ball in the actual net.
All is not yet lost, every country’s situation is different, and if the fundamental carbon markets issues do get worked out I expect a decent price should start to act as a pretty big incentive for countries to get serious about REDD. But it will all, no doubt, take considerable time, which, given the urgency of addressing the problems of climate change is worrying. Certainly it is all a far cry from the hope that major forested countries could all start selling REDD-based carbon credits from the beginning of 2013 when the successor to the Kyoto protocol was originally expected to kick in. Donors might like to consider what all good football managers know: all the pretty passing patterns in the world count for nowt if the team still gets relegated at the end of the season; REDD countries will each need a big-name striker to lead the line if they are to succeed.
ps. All this also makes me wonder what other big development initiatives might similarly have been donorised and projectised into ineffectiveness. Anti-corruption efforts seem a good candidate. Suggestions welcomed in the comments.
Posted by David on March 27, 2013 at 4:54 pm
MJ, your analysis is spot on, but I find myself confused as to the attribution of challenges to donor agency. REDD is seriously hard, because embedded in it are requirements of high levels of political will to tackle the problem seriously. Hence, it has not necessarily moved forward, except in countries that have achieved a very high-level commitment to doing something about it.
I’m not clear where it follows from this that REDD’s success or failure is because donors have projectized it. Donor efforts may not have affected REDD greatly at the margins, due to an unwillingness to work on the challenge as an issue of building political coalitions and aligning incentives of powerful actors, rather than just providing small technical expertise – I don’t know enough about its details to comment.
You include a strong criticism of projectization, particularly where those projects emphasize technical assistance for a small and discrete problem that is not well linked into a broader expectation for how change will happen at national scope. Donors may well have therefore wasted much of their effort, working on MRV and social justice in a way that didn’t contribute to building political will. But I remain unconvinced that success or failure of REDD is much determined by donor action. The critique of donors would be more constructive if it didn’t have a sense of “if only they had done differently, everything would be different.” That broader criticism seems to belong more to the political leadership and institutions of countries where REDD has not gotten necessary higher level support, as well as of the global leadership that failed to create a market for carbon credit trading.
Just because “we” (aid industry/donors & NGOs) are working on the problem doesn’t mean that its solution is within our power to achieve. We’re more the right winger or perhaps the nutritionist of the football team than its manager, to use that analogy. Still,you outline what would be an interesting research study – comparative case studies of how donor projects did or didn’t contribute to political will for real commitment to REDD reforms in different countries; there is probably lots of useful learning from it. Might help us get our tactics better next time (say, hitting a few more early crosses against a weaker team, or sorting out our role in the zonal marking against a tougher team).
Posted by MJ on March 29, 2013 at 1:07 pm
David you raise some very valid points. Of course donors cannot be held responsible for lack of political interest in recipient countries. Indeed some may even suggest that a certain level of donor investment might be required to generate the political interest. However, I do think REDD is a prime case of strategic focus being obscured by some easy-to-fund displacement activities. The donors have chosen to fund this. Once again they find themselves in something or a mire because they find it so difficult to resist giving money to such things.
The illusion of progress this approach gives can be damaging. Especially if donor fatigue sets in and promising projects are canned with the rest because the overall portfolio performance is so bad.
Overall I would agree: a few more early crosses to tempt the big name striker are probably required. If s/he doesn’t take the bait then punt them in the direction of another striker/country. In the meantime, though, do not forget your defence (base) just because the attack is a bit feeble: a few 0-0 draws can be just the ticket to avoid relegation. Now time to blow the whistle on that particular analogy, I think!
Posted by Killing cuddly animals and REDD updates | Bottom Up Thinking on April 6, 2013 at 11:48 am
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