Building the Forest-Climate Bandwagon: REDD+ and ...

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Building the Forest-Climate Bandwagon

Constance L. McDermott, Kelly Levin, and Benjamin Cashore

Building the Forest-Climate Bandwagon: REDDⴙ and the Logic of Problem Amelioration •

Constance L. McDermott, Kelly Levin, and Benjamin Cashore1

Introduction Many scientiªc experts, government agencies, professional associations and non-governmental organizations agree that human-caused destruction and degradation of forest ecosystems on the one hand, and the rise of greenhouse gas emissions on the other hand, are two of the most serious and pernicious problems facing the planet. It is arguably for these reasons that forest-focused strategists have championed a range of solutions over the last 35 years, including: tropical forest boycotts, regional trade treaties, global negotiations, market mechanisms including “payment for ecosystem services,” certiªcation of responsible forest management, and removing illegally harvested forest products from global supply chains. Frustrations with the inability of each of these efforts to provide swift results has contributed to the recurrent downplaying or disregard of each instrument in favor of a new instrument purported to be superior to its predecessors.2 The purpose of this paper is to assess whether, when, and how the latest efforts to achieve reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancement in developing countries (REDD⫹) might hold promise in overcoming the limitations of previous initiatives. To answer this question we argue that speciªc prescriptions must carefully consider why previous efforts have not achieved their objectives. Far from presenting a lost cause, we argue that attention to 35 years of institutional and policy failure opens the door for the emergence of problem-focused institutional solutions. A broad review of the literature leads us to consider, consistent with Dauvergne3 and Speth,4 the role of economic globalization and growing con1. 2. 3. 4.

Author order is reverse alphabetical. See, for example, Easterly 2009, 373. Dauvergne 2008. Speth 2008.

Global Environmental Politics 11:3, August 2011 © 2011 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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sumption as key drivers of forest loss and degradation.5 Two important implications emerge. First, mainstream theories within international relations (IR) and public policy that focus on the role of institutions and subsystems are unable to explain long-term logics of deforestation and degradation that have more to do with global capitalism and consumption.6 Second, current and proposed institutional and policy interventions must contain a clear and plausible logic for how they might reverse powerful historical trends. Instead of assuming, as do some neo-Gramscian or economic determinist accounts, that the impacts of economic globalization and consumption are always negative and preordained, we argue that careful attention to institutional design could alter the impact of, rather than reinforce, powerful producing and consuming interests whose current activities, taken together, are the culprits in global forest degradation.7 This leads us to call for much greater attention to the role of experts and scientiªc knowledge in shaping forest and climate responses. We argue that greater attention to constructing institutions and policies that not only are deemed appropriate and ªt strategic preferences,8 but also embrace a “logic of problem amelioration,” offers greater potential for legitimacy and effectiveness. We turn to Levin, McDermott and Cashore’s proposal for the institutionalization of a “dual effectiveness” test to illustrate one plausible approach to achieve this.9 Our approach leads us to identify two countervailing roles of expert knowledge that are currently shaping REDD⫹ negotiations. On the one hand, scientiªc experts have provided highly sophisticated knowledge about what we know about drivers of human-caused climate change. On the other hand, the “rational scientiªc” approach of natural scientists may be inadvertently reinforcing neo-classical cost-beneªt analysis in which the future is “rationally” discounted10 and through which environmental degradation is seen as a logical outcome if the (quantiªable) costs of addressing the problem are deemed too high. We hypothesize that this dynamic has created a highly technical approach in which powerful economic interests are more able to engage, shape, and inºuence policy outcomes over resource poor indigenous communities and other grassroots interests,11 who themselves are often marginalized as uninformed or “radical.” This results in a situation in which problem resolution is directed towards instruments palatable to powerful interests often at the expense of, rather than consistent with, an assessment of the underlying drivers. We elaborate and develop these points in the following analytical steps. We ªrst develop an analytical approach to integrate scholarship on policy subsystems in general, and the role of science and knowledge in particular, with lit5. See DeFries et al. 2010 reviewing evidence of the increasingly dominant roles of domestic, urban, and international trade as drivers of forest loss. 6. Dauvergne 2001, 1997; and Gale 1998. 7. Speth 2008; and Dauvergne and Lister 2011. 8. March and Olsen 1998. 9. Levin, McDermott, and Cashore 2008. 10. Stern 2006; Ackerman and Heinzerling 2004; and Barkin 2006. 11. Wapner 1995.


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erature on the processes through which interventions are deemed “politically legitimate.” We draw on this framework to reveal how policies and institutions to address forest degradation, including REDD⫹ mechanisms, have been subjected to rather limited and short-term interventions that conform well to transnational capital and the needs of increasing global consumption. Our concluding section reºects on how REDD⫹ interventions might be more strongly steered by a logic of problem amelioration.

Analytical Framework For decades now, IR scholars have made their reputations by elucidating, defending, and outlining their preference for a “neo-realist,” “neo-liberal institutionalist,” “constructivist” or “Gramscian/neo Marxists” account as to why states do, or fail to, cooperate. Despite ongoing debates about which approach is best suited to understanding international relations, there is arguably much less disagreement among forest-focused IR scholars. This research effort has revealed how discourses,12 norms,13 institutions,14 powerful interests,15 and states16 have facilitated economic globalization and have worked to foster the role of global capital in shaping and expanding global forest products markets into frontier forests on the one hand, and to provide signiªcant incentives to deforest areas in favor of more lucrative crops, such as palm oil, on the other hand.17 There is, in fact, general agreement among resource and environment-focused scholars that economic integration and global consumption are currently intertwined and self reinforcing, leading to an ever-growing appetite of consumers across developed, developing and emerging economies.18 In response, an impressive literature on the ability of institutions to address both relatively narrowly deªned, but important, “tragedy of the commons” challenges, as well as broader global ecosystem degradation challenges, has emerged.19 However, these efforts have failed to be translated into practices that have been able to reverse key trends in global forest degradation. We argue that instead of turning away from an institutional approach, that greater integration of public policy literature on norms,20 ideas,21 and learning22 in general, and the role of experts and participatory knowledge generation,23 in particular, may hold promise. However, this requires integrating the insights of climate and forest scien12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Arts 2000. Dimitrov 2005; and Bernstein 2001. Humphreys 2006. Levy and Newell 2005. Davenport 2005. DeFries et al. 2010. O’Neill 2009; and Clapp and Dauvergne 2005. Young et al. 2006; Young 2001; and Esty and Ivanova 2002. Hall 1989. Jasanoff 2004; and Jasanoff and Wynne 1998. Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993. Haas 1992; Elwood 2006; and Mosse 1994.

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tists, and other forms of knowledge, into prescriptions that contain a “logic of problem amelioration” which expands, but is consistent with, March and Olsen’s emphasis on institutions as holding logics of “appropriateness” and “consequences.”24 In contrast to a utilitarian logic of consequences in which support is granted if an intervention is consistent with strategic preferences of an individual or organizations,25 a logic of appropriateness focuses our attention on the processes through which shared community and norm generation might emerge. While important, neither logic directly addresses whether, when, and how institutions might solve actual problems, which are treated as independent or intervening, rather than dependent, variables. We therefore argue for greater attention to a logic of problem amelioration more in line with the institutional effectiveness literature. As outlined in the following overview of global forest negotiations, REDD⫹ represents a watershed opportunity for nurturing a logic of problem amelioration: this is because REDD⫹ offers, for the ªrst time in history, a widespread consensus on the “problem,” i.e. carbon emissions from forest loss, and an appropriate means to address it, i.e. through ªnancial incentives. A logic of problem amelioration can therefore be cultivated through a clear elaboration of desired outcomes. The approach taken to deªning and measuring outcomes will, to be sure, vary according to the problem at hand. In the case of climate change, there is a consensus among scientists that the buildup of greenhouse gases emissions risks transformation of physical, hydrological and ecological systems. This evidence for, and understanding of, anthropogenic climate change rests on traditional forms of scientiªc method. This stands in contrast to the deªnitions and prioritizing of “sustainable forest management,” in which environmental impacts and socially desirable outcomes will always be subject to dialogue and debate.26 Hence, while the former requires careful attention to understanding the role of scientiªc knowledge, the latter requires much more critical attention to the role of interests and experts in deªning the problem, who in turn may serve as “watchdogs” to assess whether interventions appear to have some logic in addressing the speciªed problems for which they were created.27 In the case of REDD⫹, a dual effectiveness test, in which desired climate and forest outcomes are clearly articulated and assessed, seems a prerequisite 24. March and Olsen 1998. 25. Bernstein and Cashore 2007. 26. We appreciate the importance of the broader philosophy of science literature (Kuhn 1970) and the way in which the scientiªc method (Jasanoff 2004) and “rationalist” (Scott 1998) approaches can shape problem deªnitions and bias some forms of knowledge over others so as to affect state society relations and power dynamics among competing groups and civil society. Our point here is that these relationships, and the role of particular forms of knowledge, can be made transparent through an open focus on problem amelioration. Such an approach leads us to argue that scientiªc knowledge regarding anthropogenic CO2 emissions ought to be included when assessing whether, when, and how a particular intervention ought to be considered, as doing so will make transparent the power dynamics behind those interests who would champion interventions that would never stand a chance at ameliorating the climate crisis. 27. Haas 1992.


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for problem solving potential that goes beyond tending to a logic of appropriateness and/or consequences, and actually stands a chance at ameliorating environmental challenges. Hence, a dual effectiveness test for forest-climate policies such as REDD⫹ would involve an evaluation of their potential impacts on carbon emissions, as well as on forest cover, biodiversity and key social welfare parameters. We argue that by making such an approach explicit and transparent, those acting on utilitarian motivations will be forced to introduce creative solutions that simultaneously tend to both a logic of consequences and problem amelioration, or will have to acknowledge, as in the case of most previous efforts to address global forest degradation, that their proposals never had a serious logic of problem amelioration.

A Brief Overview of 35 Years of Global Forest Efforts The development of international forest institutions and policies, beginning in the 1980s, was most certainly shaped by interests hoping to green the global forest sector, but also by those embracing economic globalization through the promotion of neo-liberal growth and/or sustainable development. The interaction of these sometimes competing economic and environmental interests sheds a cautionary but instructive light on how REDD⫹ could achieve the objectives of those vying for policy change. Scholars have traced a series of past efforts to arrive at a global forest agreement28 that would have articulated a coherent set of mutually accepted and supported rights and common principles for global forest governance. The continued lack of such an agreement has been traced to conºicting positions among Parties to the negotiations, consistent with their economic interests within a neoliberal world order. The ªrst is the argument by countries with domestically-oriented timber industries that they have the right to govern their forest resources as they choose. The second is the argument by Southern countries that they have the right to exploit their forests much as Northern countries had earlier or to receive compensation for providing a global good. The third is the argument by other actors—from global intergovernmental authorities to regional to local governments to private businesses to “civil society” to indigenous peoples—that they hold rights to participate in decision-making on matters affecting the global community. The ªrst global forest institution, within which these debates began to take shape, was the intergovernmental International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), launched in 1985. A central mandate of the ITTO was to promote sustainable trade in tropical timber and thus was consistent with Southern development rights and Northern obligations to support those rights. That same year, the Tropical Forestry Action Plan (later renamed the Tropical Forest Action Programme (TFAP)) was launched to support coordinated action on tropical 28. Humphreys 2008.

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deforestation. TFAP was initiated with broad-based support from several UN agencies, the World Bank, and the World Resources Institute, an environmental NGO. Within TFAP’s ªrst ªve years international aid to the forest sector rose from an estimated US$ 400 million to US$ 1.3 billion.29 However, within this same brief time period, TFAP was increasingly criticized for failing to reduce deforestation rates and taking a donor-driven approach that was insensitive to national priorities and the concerns of diverse stakeholders.30 TFAP was formally discontinued in 1995,31 and further donor support was channeled through ITTO and an expanding array of other forest instruments, agreements and processes. In the preparatory meetings preceding the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development Earth Summit, leading international NGOs, the US and Northern countries pushed for a legally binding forest convention. Tropical developing countries, including Brazil, responded by demanding that commitments to forest conservation must include Northern countries as well, and asserted their rights to just compensation.32 Addressing the ªrst of these two demands, Earth Summit forest negotiations encompassed the sustainable management of all types of forests worldwide, but failed to produce major ªnancial commitments to compensate developing countries for the costs of reducing deforestation. Unable to agree on a Forest Convention, the Rio Summit produced a set of non-binding Forest Principles and Agenda 21, Chapter 11 on Combating Deforestation. These non-binding proposals lacked speciªc commitments to either slowing deforestation or North/South beneªt transfer. In 1995, an Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) was established to continue negotiations and explore a global forest convention. After two years, the IPF was replaced by the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF), and then later by the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), with each successive institution signifying increased authority within the UN system. During this time, the constellation of interests supporting a global convention shifted,33 but the conºict over sovereign rights remained. In 2007, the UNFF produced a “non-legally binding instrument on all types of forests” that represents the ªrst global intergovernmental consensus document with the stated goal to reverse forest loss, but without speciªc targets for performance. Meanwhile, other international intergovernmental institutions—from the three Rio Conventions (on climate, biodiversity and desertiªcation) to numerous regional and bi-lateral processes—have also engaged, to varying degrees, in forest-related issues. None, however, have produced measurable and binding commitments, and hence any mechanisms of accountability, to address forest loss. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Sizer 1994. Liss 1998; Sizer 1994; and Humphreys 2006. Liss 1998. Humphreys 1996. See Humphreys 2006 for a detailed account of shifting positions regarding a global forest convention.


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While the IPF/IFF/UNFF and other forums struggled over sovereign versus international forest rights and resource transfer, other nonstate actors turned to the marketplace, bypassing state-based processes altogether. International NGOs, labor groups and other sympathetic actors launched a system of “forest certiªcation” involving labeling of forest products that met agreed standards of environmental and social responsibility. This new system, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), institutionalized an alternative set of rights and principles designed to empower nonstate, non-industrial actors and local communities and indigenous peoples. Arguably, the FSC has exerted considerable normative inºuence regarding the need to include multiple stakeholders in forest decisionmaking.34 However, the growth of forest certiªcation as a coherent source of global, non-governmental authority has been considerably complicated by the upsurge of competing certiªcation schemes,35 most of which have now been endorsed by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certiªcation Schemes (PEFC).36 Meanwhile, forest certiªcation and markets for certiªed forest products have been slow to develop in the tropics, and have failed to signiªcantly impact the net rate of tropical deforestation and degradation.37 The emergence of forests in the global climate regime, both within intergovernmental processes and private voluntary carbon markets, has been received by many as nothing short of a “wagon of salvation” capable of breaking past all the barriers to global forest action to date. The main driving force propelling this bandwagon is profoundly simple: Northern countries and/or their polluting industries can pay Southern countries and/or those otherwise engaged in cutting trees and converting forests to conserve forest carbon as a means to offset their fossil fuel emissions or contribute to their ªnancial obligations under a future intergovernmental climate policy. Alternatively, Southern countries can receive funding to reduce emissions from forests and claim such activities as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Activities (NAMAs). This combined interest from the North and the South for a REDD⫹ agenda led to the support of the Coalition of Rainforest Nations which submitted a related proposal to the UNFCCC COP 11 in 2005. By the 2007 COP 13 negotiations in Bali, pursuit of a REDD⫹ agenda was endorsed by all negotiating Parties, as agreed in a COP decision [2/CP.13] on approaches to stimulate action. Detailed draft negotiating text for REDD⫹ was advanced in the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations, and the Copenhagen Accord calls for the establishment of a Green Climate Fund, in part, to fund carbon forest activities. REDD⫹, by potentially linking forests to lucrative carbon markets and by increasing bilateral and multilateral funding ºows targeted towards such activities, promises an unprecedented ºow of ªnancial resources to fund global action on forests. It also links forests across the rapidly proliferating web of en34. 35. 36. 37.

Auld, Gulbrandsen, and McDermott 2008. Cashore, Auld, and Newsom 2004. Cashore et al. 2007. FAO 2010.

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vironmental agreements, interacting with nonstate institutions such as certiªcation, and spanning key forest drivers, such as agriculture, that to date are not well covered by international agreements. Depending on the ultimate outcome, REDD⫹ could offer compelling incentives to Southern countries for quantiªable targets to reduce forest loss, combined with just compensation from Northern countries and ample opportunities for NGO and civil society involvement from the global to the local level. Can this promise lead to solutions in ways that previous global efforts have failed?

Intersecting Interests in Climate Bandwagoning and the Need for a “Logic of Problem Amelioration” The Role of Intersecting Interests in Creating the Bandwagon Effect The linkage of forest to climate politics certainly reºects interest-based dynamics similar to those that shaped, or stalled, previous efforts to develop an international forest regime. In fact this linkage, or “bandwagoning,” to date may have worked to solidify the power of transnational capital and associated interests. At a most fundamental level, the framing of global forests as “carbon dioxide emissions” offers to transform even the most lawless, impenetrable frontiers down to a highly “legible”38 unit, in this case a single chemical element. From an economic perspective, this transforms forests into a perfect commodity, potentially fully fungible without qualitative differentiation. From a political perspective, it promises a platform from which to create a rationalized and cohesive global forest order.39 However, while globally powerful interests may arguably have much to gain, it is REDD⫹’s ability to generate support from a diversity of actors that gives it the potential to be legitimate and effective. An examination, therefore, of the range of incentives that might be driving these interests is essential to understanding REDD⫹, and the opportunities and pitfalls that accompany it. Such an examination also helps to shed light on whether the logics of appropriateness, consequences and/or problem amelioration are serving as the primary drivers of stakeholder support. Among these interests, scientists and other experts have emerged as key players in large part because measuring, accounting for, and assessing the impacts of various interventions on carbon dioxide emissions from forests requires major feats of science.40 Furthermore, the creation of an entirely new commodity, linking global markets with tropical forest areas where land titles are often unclear and/or contested, places new demands on social science expertise. Thus, 38. Scott 1998. 39. Easterly 2009. 40. There is still signiªcant uncertainty over measurement, estimation and accounting of emissions from forest-related activities. See Grassi et al. 2008.


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REDD⫹ offers an opportunity to greatly expand and diversify the portfolio of scientists and experts at a time when the pool of educated elites is rapidly expanding and there is an ever-increasing clamor to be heard within an ever more globalized research agenda. There are serious pitfalls, however, when linking complex, analytical assessments of global climate change and its impacts using traditional scientiªc methods, with decisions about the management of natural resources, which involve socially contested knowledge claims and conºicting values and priorities. If such distinctions are not recognized, it is possible that REDD⫹ efforts could create: 1) the favoring of the measurable and marketable over less easily measured social and environmental attributes that may hold the key to natural and social resilience; 2) excessive focus on global processes and ªnancial instruments at the expense of grounded, ªeld-based learning; and 3) the over-reliance on experts and advanced technology leading to the failure to foster widespread understanding and support. In addition to experts’ vested interests in a REDD⫹ agenda, Northern governments and polluting industries also have a lot to gain from the coupling of forests with climate initiatives. REDD⫹ has promised a “cost effective” means for these actors to offset fossil fuel emissions and thus meet global targets—in other words to deºect responsibility for more costly emissions reductions while promising a “win-win” transfer of resources to the global South. And even if developed countries do not receive the REDD⫹ credits—e.g. in the example of a global fund mechanism for REDD⫹ that is sheltered from the carbon market— they can claim support of such efforts through ªnancial contributions. This short-term interest-driven action could lead to global agreements that legitimize a further consolidation of power among leading countries and industries, doing little to change their business-as-usual emissions trajectory, while the globally least powerful pay the highest price with regard to their vulnerability to climate impacts. Also, insofar as developing countries could have emission reduction commitments in future decades—and some have already adopted NAMAs under the Copenhagen Accord—the sale of REDD⫹ credits could lead to the “lowest hanging fruit” being plucked by developed countries rather than credited to developing country mitigation actions (or at worst the double counting of such activities). On the other hand, Southern countries were the actors most instrumental in getting REDD⫹ on the international agenda. By so doing, they have greatly increased their inºuence. For example, Brazil’s and Indonesia’s commercial and other activities have led to signiªcant greenhouse gas emissions,41 and the two nations are pivotal actors within the context of REDD⫹ policy development. If, as anticipated,42 global REDD⫹ funds are to be funneled through national governments, the potential direct ªnancial beneªts to these governments could be substantial. Also, since scientiªc uncertainties, governance hurdles and acting 41. Humphreys 2008. 42. Angelsen 2009.

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challenges stand in the way of REDD⫹ credits being truly comparable and accordingly fungible with non-REDD⫹ credits, some Southern countries favor a fund for REDD⫹ rather than integration into the market. A fund would furthermore keep beneªts within developing countries rather than allowing industrialized nations to claim such emission reductions. Among the many potential pitfalls of such interests are inequitable Southern inºuence depending on the country’s level of development and size of its forest resource. The very high rates of corruption among favorable REDD⫹ participant countries43 also raise numerous questions regarding the appropriate use of REDD⫹ funds being channeled through government coffers and the fungibility of generated emission reductions. Specialized carbon investors, and the cadre of others involved in forest insurance and other derivative markets, seek utilitarian self interested gains with the creation of a new forest carbon commodity. Such speculative opportunities can drive investors to engage with inadequately informed forest users into invalid contracts, as witnessed for example, by recent scandals in Papua New Guinea.44 Global ªnancial institutions such as the World Bank, while subject to more careful governance and scrutiny than private investors, nevertheless also carry a vested interest in transitioning global markets towards forest carbon fungibility. Civil society in general, including well coordinated networks of NGOs, indigenous peoples and organized local community groups, also potentially have much to gain, and lose, from forest-climate bandwagoning. Many have been involved in previous efforts to develop a legally binding forest regime and see the climate regime as a new opportunity to address the declining state of forest health. As a result, many of those NGOs supportive of REDD⫹ have captured substantial funding by involving themselves in the design and facilitation of numerous REDD⫹-related projects worldwide.45 Accordingly, numerous NGOs have been instrumental in shaping the development of carbon certiªcation schemes that embed environmental and social safeguards within both regulatory and voluntary markets.46 Indigenous peoples and local communities are a favored focus of both NGO-supported REDD⫹ projects and NGO-backed carbon certiªcation schemes.47 These local forest users are also well positioned to monitor REDD⫹ activities.48 However, whether communities beneªt depends largely on the existence of clearly deªned land tenure and use rights.49 In countries such as Brazil, where government recognition of indigenous rights has facilitated indigenous communal land titling, there is considerable evidence of 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

World Bank 2009; and Nussbaum et al. 2009. Melick 2010, 359. Wertz-Kanounnikoff and Kongphan-apirak 2009. Levin, Cashore, and Koppell 2009. Skutsch 2006; and Wertz-Kanounnikoff and Kongphan-apirak 2009. Skutsch 2006. Cotula and Mayers 2009.


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indigenous capacity to protect their forests, making them prime candidates for REDD⫹-related funds.50 Such favorable conditions are absent in the majority of the world’s tropical areas. Where land use rights are unclear and/or very unevenly distributed, the commoditization of forest carbon greatly increases the risk that governments and/or competing private interests will further appropriate the rights and resources of the rural poor leading to increasing inequity and widespread forest conºict. Also, while conservation organizations see REDD⫹ as a new vehicle for stemming deforestation and degradation, depending upon how REDD⫹ mechanisms move forward—especially with regard to the accounting rules for emission reductions51—concerns regarding the conservation of nonquantiªable attributes of forest health and biodiversity may be overlooked as a result of an overwhelming focus on emission reductions. While it is not surprising that these various interests are motivated by strategic considerations, it is clear that these motivations alone may not solve the problems that interventions were designed to address.

Towards a Problem-Based Approach to REDDⴙ: The Role of ProblemFocused Knowledge in Policy Change While the knowledge scientists have created with regard to the role forests play in global climate change served as a determinant of early efforts to link forests with the climate regime, as we outline above, recent policy decisions suggest that powerful economic interests have played an overriding role in determining policy outcomes. Had a problem-driven approach to REDD⫹ served as the major determinant of the development of related policies instead of interests, would policy have taken shape differently? The answer is almost certainly yes. A signiªcant body of scientiªc research developed over the past 20 years exploring the role that emissions from forests play in anthropogenic climate change has concluded that emissions from the land use sector, primarily from deforestation, constituted roughly 20 percent of global annual emissions in the 1990s.52 If interventions were required to be developed in a manner consistent with knowledge about both climate and forest health problems, accounting rules for emissions would most certainly have been different than the current approach. As Daviet, Goers and Austin revealed,53 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol developed a set of rules for accounting for land use, land use change, and forestry emissions for developed nations that signiªcantly underestimate emissions and fail to protect non-carbon attributes of forest health. For example, developed countries can currently replace natural forests with plantations without penalty as a result of a “temporary destocking rule.” They found that “accounting loop50. 51. 52. 53.

Nepstad et al. 2006. Daviet, Goers, and Austin 2009. Denman 2007, 514–515. Daviet, Goers, and Austin 2009.

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holes,” which appeal to economic interests but limit impacts, have been maintained for years, despite attention brought by NGOs. Likewise if scientiªc information with regard to the role of forest-related emissions in global climate change had been the determinant of policy change, it is unlikely that developed countries with boreal (and potentially some temperate) ecosystems would be able to offset their industrialized emissions with sinks produced via afforestation54 efforts. This is because, as a recent study by Bala et al.55 determined, while forests sequester carbon dioxide and can enhance cloud cover, which bounces solar radiation away from the Earth, conversion of forests to other vegetation types (or vice versa) is associated with a change in albedo, or surface reºectivity, as the darker tree-covered surface is converted into a lighter vegetation cover. Their preliminary research ªndings,56 if conªrmed, would mean that while deforestation of the tropics would lead to warming—as forests recycle more water and form clouds, which reºect solar radiation much like ice or snow—deforestation activities in some northern latitudes would lead, it appears, to a net cooling effect—given that the albedo difference between a forested vs. non-forested area is greater than that of its snowless tropical neighbors. Contrary to the evidence of Bala et al., emissions reduced via afforestation activities are now permitted to offset emissions from other sectors within highlatitude industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol without studies to assess whether carbon sequestration beneªts outweigh any increased absorption of solar radiation. Likewise, efforts to propel a REDD⫹ agenda have not diminished, despite recent scientiªc ªndings regarding emissions from forests contributing less to global emissions than originally estimated (estimates have since been revised downwards to 12 percent57 as a result of updated data), consistent with the interests of tropical forest focused corporations, developing country governments, government aid agencies, research units, civil society organizations, and developing nations who stand to beneªt from REDD⫹-focused projects. The Role of Scientiªc Knowledge about the Problem Scientiªc knowledge has been instrumental in catalyzing forest-climate bandwagoning, but has played much less of a role in directing where the “wagon” will go. Given the fundamental role science plays in telling us about the state of problems, as well as their drivers, it is important to make decisions that are not inconsistent with scientiªc and other problem-focused knowledge. Failure to link decisions with evidence of their on-the-ground effects may otherwise result 54. The UNFCCC deªnes afforestation as “planting of new forests on lands that historically have not contained forests.” 55. Bala et al. 2007. 56. Other scientiªc articles have come to similar conclusions. See Gibbard et al. 2005; and Govindasamy, Duffy, and Caldeira 2001. 57. Van der Werf et al. 2009.


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in policy choices that are consistent with the preferences of powerful organizations and their strategic interests but which have little to do with solving the actual problem. To be sure, we are not arguing for scientiªc determinism. We are well aware of the dangers of positioning science in a way that hides implicit but powerful norms inherent in a “rational scientiªc approach,”58 where an emphasis on technical knowledge masks powerful economic and other interests. Rather we are arguing for a problem-focused approach that makes transparent such normative pulls and which exposes, rather than obfuscates, technical decisions that have no real hope of ameliorating the problem they are supposed to address. Hence, the future success of the forest-climate bandwagon rests, we argue, on developing a “logic of problem amelioration” in which what we know, and don’t know, about the problem is made transparent. Such an approach would have forbidden the strategic decisions reviewed above. Likewise, bandwagoning climate and forests requires, as Levin, McDermott and Cashore (2008)59 have argued, that interventions must not only be evaluated for their potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions reductions, but also for stemming both forest degradation and deforestation.

Conclusion: Towards a Logic of Problem Amelioration? Given that the success of REDD⫹ efforts will be contingent upon making transparent decisions that are consistent with both the forest and climate problem dimensions, how might institutions be developed so that bandwagoning of forests and climate might succeed in ways that forest-focused institutions over the last 35 years have been unable? The answer appears surprisingly clear. Institutions must nurture a logic of problem amelioration. While logics of consequences and appropriateness will always contribute to the development of institutions, our point is that a logic of problem amelioration must be paramount. It is time for political scientists to treat it as equally carefully as they have done for logics of appropriateness and consequences. This is not, to be sure, the same thing as assessing effectiveness; rather, we argue that problem amelioration must be part of the institutional design, rather than something measured after the fact. One way to do so is to institutionalize a dual effectiveness test of proposed interventions that assesses the likelihood of REDD⫹ and other instruments to address the dual goals of maximizing forest health and abating greenhouse emissions. The effective establishment and enforcement of such an approach will require well-rounded involvement from both forest and climate epistemic communities, as well as the involvement of multiple stakeholders in monitoring and adaptive policy learning. How might a dual effectiveness test use scientiªc and other forms of 58. Scott 1998. 59. Levin, McDermott, and Cashore 2008.

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Table 1 The “Dual Effectiveness Test” Type of Impact

Forest Degradation/ Deforestation

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction

Minimal

No discernible global impact

No discernible global impact

Worse

Did the global problem accelerate?

Did the global problem accelerate?

Better: Reduces decline

Did the policy reduce the global rate of forest deterioration? What are the implications?

Did the policy reduce growth in global emissions? What are the implications?

Better: Reverses decline

Did the policy halt, or reverse, further forest deterioration? Was there an improvement in forest status?

Did the policy reduce net global emissions? Was there a reduction in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases?

Source: Levin, McDermott, and Cashore 2008

knowledge to provide such assessments, particularly given the limited and contested nature of such knowledge? While it is beyond the scope of this paper to review such an effort in general, it seems fundamental that such evaluations would have to assess potential effectiveness of an intervention according to the following results: 1) no discernible impact; 2) a worse outcome than before; or 3) positive progress on the problems the policy was designed to address (Table 1), applied to both forest health and climate change.60 This test could be designed in a manner that highlights relatively easy-to-measure trends that, if they show no signs of improvement or reversal, refute a close coupling of forest and climate incentives. At the same time these tests could promote adaptive, participatory learning regarding a wider range of more complex, disputed and/or less easily measurable impacts (i.e. long-term effects on biodiversity and social welfare) and causal factors (i.e. precisely what combination of policy and other interventions are producing the desired outcomes under what conditions). The assessment would require institutions that were able to respond, and adapt, to new knowledge as well as to learning about the intervention (akin to Cashore and Howlett’s notion of “thermostatic” institutions61 in which the very institutional design requires that policies are directly attuned, and respond, to environmental conditions). We would also expect, following March and Olsen’s 60. Levin, McDermott, and Cashore 2008. 61. Cashore and Howlett 2007.


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emphasis on developing institutions that are deemed “appropriate” by those they seek to govern, that such an assessment would require widespread learning, dissemination, and participation in order to build broad-based understanding and support. We are not arguing that a dual effectiveness test is the only route through which successful bandwagoning might occur. Rather, our broader argument is that without careful attention to the causes of the limited impacts of 35 years of forest focused intervention, it seems possible that efforts to link forestry to climate may end up being no better than previous forest focused efforts. However, if a range of actors and strategists can embrace the need to institutionalize a “logic of problem amelioration,” then there would seem to be a greater likelihood of either uncovering “win-win” solutions that both solve problems and address strategic interests, or making it transparent when policy choices have nothing to do with the problem for which they were developed. REDD⫹ offers a unique opportunity to nurture such a problem-focused logic because, unlike past global negotiations conªned to the forest sector, it has deªned forest loss as a global problem in need of amelioration, and one that can be ªnanced in a manner consistent with a wide range of North and South economic interests. Application of a “dual effectiveness test” focused on problem amelioration could, we believe, reinforce a “logic of appropriateness” that would strengthen political legitimacy of the forest-climate linkage by ensuring that interests are not permitted, either by design or inadvertently, to advocate forestclimate linked policy interventions that might reduce forest degradation, but which have no hope of addressing climate change, or that reduce emissions while degrading forest health. Such an approach is arguably necessary to overcome the trendiness and short attention spans that leave us all vulnerable to cooption by our collective short-term self interest.

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