Title: Inherent Tensions: The Contradictions Between Global Climate and Local Forest Governance

As many of the world’s most fertile and accessible lands have already been deforested, most of the remaining large forest areas are found in remote or otherwise economically unattractive regions. These economically marginal lands tend to be inhabited by economically and politically marginalized populations, in particular Indigenous Peoples, who are disproportionately dependent upon the freely accessible, non-monetary wealth that forests provide. In these forest-dependent communities, the women, most of all, tend to have little or no monetary income, resulting in their high dependency upon free access to fuelwood, medicinal and edible plants, and other forest products for their daily livelihoods.

Theoretically, the 2015 commitment of the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and to enhance forest carbon stocks (REDD+) could generate significant synergies between global environmental policy objectives and local socio-economic well-being. However, these synergies are often not realized in practice, due similarly to the political marginalization of women, Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent communities. A review of early experiences with REDD+ implementation revealed that most projects did not sufficiently involve locally affected communities in their design, and thus disrupted local livelihoods by restricting free access to forest resources. REDD+ projects were also found to trigger illegal land acquisition, increase food insecurity, and introduce or expand monoculture tree plantations that come with a range of negative social and environmental impacts.

An important factor in the negative impact of forest conservation strategies like REDD+ that are designed at the global level is the lack of secure forest governance rights for forest-dependent communities. Specifically, many women in these communities do not have any formal rights related to the forests they depend on, even though they play a significant role in sustainably managing them. Now that these life-giving forests have become subject to global policy objectives, there is a significant risk that the needs and formal and customary rights of these politically marginalized actors will be overlooked. While it is laudable that climate policy and nature-based solutions like REDD+ have gained the attention of transnational corporations, financial institutions, and UN agencies, this awareness also implies that climate policy is increasingly dominated by powerful, global actors whose interests do not necessarily align with those of local, forest-dependent communities. The commercial interests of large logging, bioenergy, or pulp companies, for example, are often juxtaposed to the livelihood interests of the forest-dependent communities that seek access to food, medicines, and other needs apart from wood.

While the IPCC increasingly recognizes that community forest governance is more beneficial for long-term biodiversity than strict conservation measures , governments and other powerful actors continue to be weary of the practical and political complications associated with community forest governance. Climate policies’ growing dependence on public-private partnerships and other forms of blended finance has further increased the influence of corporate interests over climate policy-making. This compromises not only the potential social benefits of REDD+ but also the environmental impact. Due to a combination of flawed carbon accounting rules, unclear forest definitions, and other inherent problems, the REDD+ regime continues to attract support for the establishment of monoculture tree plantations using REDD+ and other forest climate funding. Indeed, climate finance tends to provide a small, but crucial, subsidy to an otherwise already profitable wood and pulp-producing enterprise.

Multi-scale and polycentric governance approaches have been proposed to bridge the tensions between global climate objectives and local forest-related rights and interests. The so-called landscape approach, for instance, has been advertised as a participatory and multi-actor form of forest governance. However, these approaches do not fully account for the significant power imbalance between global, corporate actors, and local rights-holders. Furthermore, they ignore other practical challenges such as local language barriers. Women especially are sometimes hampered by local cultural norms that discourage them from speaking up freely in multi-actor consultations; at the same time, increasing violence against local environmental defenders only compounds the power imbalance. On average, three environmental defenders are killed per week, and in a growing number of countries, indigenous representatives who speak out against corporate interests during public meetings face death threats and even assassination attempts. Without halting this extreme violence, landscape approaches and other multi-actor forms of governance become more and more of an illusion.

The inherent tensions between global climate policy and local forest governance cannot be addressed in a simplistic manner. Tools like safeguards, for example, are often well-intended, but tend to overlook the fact that many forest-rich countries that have strong regulatory frameworks struggle with the persistent challenge of non-compliance in remote forest areas. Another set of theoretical standards will not be able to address such non-compliance.

More attention needs to be paid to both the impacts of power imbalances on environmental governance and to the perverse incentives and tensions created by increasing the financial value of forests, which are home to some of the most marginal actors in society. The international climate regime’s current focus on both increased corporate dominance of climate policy and greater financial incentives for corporate involvement in forest governance exacerbates existing power imbalances and associated tensions. Financial incentive schemes, such as payments for environmental services, are likely to attract powerful commercial actors who will undermine or even replace community forest governance.

Therefore, it is recommended that future forest governance focuses on rights and responsibilities rather than on financial incentives. It is necessary that policymakers give forest governance rights to Indigenous Peoples, women, and local forest-dependent communities that possess the governance structures necessary to ensure long-term conservation and restoration of forests. Most importantly, international, national, and local stewards will need to develop policies, regulations, and frameworks that are independent of the commercial interests of a few powerful forestry industries. For this to occur, the trend of increasing corporate capture of climate and forest policymaking through blended finance instruments must be addressed and reversed.

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Simone Lovera-Bilderbeek is executive director of the Global Forest Coalition, a coalition of 99 Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations and NGOs from 65 countries striving for rights-based, gender-responsive, and socially just forest conservation and restoration. She has a PhD in international environmental governance and has performed elaborate research on forest and climate policy and the challenge of right-based global governance approaches. She has over 30 years of experience working as an international policy advisor for international and national environmental NGOs.