Taking the REDD shortcut: The dangers of excluding social safeguards

REDD programs have the potential to combat climate change, conserve biodiversity, as well as provide social and economic benefits to forest peoples. However, depending on how these initiatives are implemented, they can risk creating perverse incentives and promoting top-down models for forest protection, which in turn, could lead to land disputes and the inequitable distribution of benefits.

Most of the discussion about REDD has focused on technical aspects such as baselines, leakages and carbon monitoring with little consideration of the “social aspects of carbon.” However, REDD has as much to do with the rights of forest inhabitants as it does with trees and the carbon they contain.

Only recently has the discussion about REDD focused on the importance of applying social safeguards. This discussion addresses the basic principles of social safeguards on two different levels. First, we will compare their different safeguards in each of the international initiatives currently underway, such as the World Bank’s Forest and Carbon Partnership Facility, the UNREDD Programme and the REDD+ Partnership.

On another scale, we will discuss how Guyana’s implementation of REDD is shaping the activities of other national initiatives. We will then reflect on how, in practice, the creation and implementation of these REDD programs have proven to be extremely complex and, in many instances, have created more conflicts in the very forests they are trying to conserve. In order to avoid these problems, social safeguards should not be seen as merely an additional step in the design process, but rather as a key determinant of the success and viability of REDD projects.

- Marina Campos