When the nature’s contributions to people approach meets REDD

Abstract

The concept of Nature’s Contributions to People coined by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, IPBES, recognizes the central role that culture plays in defining all links between people and nature. NCP also elevates the role of indigenous and local knowledge in understanding the diversity of relationships between nature and people beyond the dominant instrumental view of natural capital as provider of ecosystem services (Diaz et al., 2018). This can have notable impacts in understanding the design of far reaching conservation and land use practices/activities such as REDD, which was originally conceived with the idea that the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions and conserve and increase carbon stocks in forest, is to provide financial incentives to developing countries directly proportional to their performance in driving down rates of forest loss through a market system. Under REDD frameworks, climate regulation was generally “itemized”, considered in isolation from any other contributions of forests to people, in order to facilitate translating such NCP into a commodity for the purpose of market exchange. Soon it was obvious that a broader framing via national policies and national dialogues across stakeholders, including indigenous people, including setting biodiversity and social safeguards, was necessary. New ways of understanding and operationalizing REDD+, beyond commodification, go hand in hand with emphasizing context-specific NCP. This could help conservationists and those interested in climate mitigation rethink their alliances with social scientists and other knowledge holders such indigenous people, and recognize that in so doing can re-equilibrate issues of social equity and political legitimacy viz-a-viz efficiency of incentive schemes, as emphasized by economists. In this way, the risk of crowding out intrinsic motivations for forest conservation by forest communities (Engel, 2016) may be lowered, and the barriers for sustainable land management by local forest users (Sanz et al 2017) reduced.

Díaz, S., Pascual, U., Stenseke, M., Martín-López, B., Watson, R.T., Molnár, Z., Hill, R., Chan, K.M., Baste, I.A., Brauman, K.A., Polasky, S., et al. (2018). Assessing nature’s contributions to people. Science, 359(6373):270-272

Engel, S., 2016. The devil in the detail: a practical guide on designing payments for environmental services. International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, 9(1–2), pp.131-177.

Sanz , M.J., J. de Vente, J.-L. Chotte, M. Bernoux, G. Kust, I. Ruiz, M. Almagro, J.-A. Alloza, R. Vallejo, V. Castillo, A. Hebel, and M. Akhtar-Schuster. 2017. Sustainable Land Management contribution to successful land-based climate change adaptation and mitigation. A Report of the Science-Policy Interface. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Bonn, Germany