Creating property out of insecurity: territorialization and legitimation of REDD+ in Lindi, Tanzania

Abstract

The international REDD+ programme to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation emphasises financial incentives, property rights in forest carbon and control over forest land to attain market-based conservation goals in the Global South. REDD+ territorialization attempts are shaped by carbon markets and by their embeddedness in institutional and legal contexts, where different actors struggle to establish authority, legitimacy and claims to land and forests. In Tanzania, the market-oriented pathways of REDD+ projects have been integrated into land use planning, land titling and the creation of village land forest reserves. Through a case study of a pilot project in Lindi, Tanzania, this article analyses how particular kinds of property rights and territorial control are contested and legitimated through market-based and human rights-based discourses invoked by project actors, government officers and village communities in REDD+ projects. These processes bring together different rationalities and practices of territorialization over property rights in carbon, forests and land. The case study illustrates the role that property languages play in legitimating and persuading different audiences, as REDD+ projects reconfigure property rights over forest land, fuelling land conflicts and heightening insecurity.

Keywords:

• Carbon territories
• legitimation
• property
• REDD+
• rights-based discourses
• Tanzania

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Helen Dancer, the anonymous reviewers for their comments, Professor James Fairhead and the participants of Human-Forest Relations Workshop for their insightful comments. Special thanks go to all research participants, especially in Lindi, for their patience and generosity. The research was made possible thanks to the support of University of Eastern Finland and University of Sussex.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In political ecology, forest carbon is identified as a commodity created for market exchange through singling out, abstracting and pricing of a particular biochemical ecological process that keeps forests alive by sequestering atmospheric carbon through photosynthesis.

2 One carbon credit corresponds to one ton of sequestered carbon dioxide.

3 Donors included Norway, Sweden, The World Bank, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, the World Bank Forest Carbon Facility, and several UN agencies including FAO, UNDP and UNEP that were involved in the implementation of UN REDD.

4 Pilot projects were proposed by the Jane Goodall Institute, the Wildlife Conservation Society, WWF, Care Zanzibar, the Mpingo Conservation initiative (MCDI), the Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania (WCST), the Tanzanian Traditional Energy Development Organization (TaTEDO), and TFCG/MJUMITA.

5 The Village Land Act defines general land as a residual category, as all public land that is not reserve land and village land. However, the Land Act extends this definition of general land to include village land that is unoccupied and not used.

6 These included pressure from shifting agriculture, overgrazing by livestock, biofuel investments, timber and charcoal production, wood harvesting and uncontrolled wildfires.

7 Katoomba Group/Forest Trends works worldwide in the marketing of forest-based carbon and ecosystem services.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland and the British Academy Newton International Fellowship Grant number NIF\R1\181576.