Enabling communities to benefit from REDD+: pragmatic assessment of carbon benefits

Keywords::

• accounting
• additionality
• carbon benefits
• leakage
• livelihoods
• permanence

The role that REDD+ can play in mitigating climate change is recognized by Parties to the UNFCCC [1]. Many countries have started to develop REDD+ schemes and REDD+ credits are already being transacted in the voluntary carbon market. The livelihoods of some of the world’s poorest communities depend directly on the resources and services provided by forests and woodland [2]. Logically, REDD+ ought to benefit some of the world’s poorest people and the global climate, provided communities can be involved meaningfully, and in ways that improve livelihoods and resilience.

The scale at which GHG emission reductions and removals from REDD+ should be assessed has been debated in UNFCCC negotiations [3], with most Parties favouring national or subnational approaches over the project-scale accounting that is common in the voluntary carbon market. Achievement of REDD+ in areas where the livelihoods of communities depend upon forests and woodland requires action at a local level, however, regardless of the scale of REDD+ accounting. There is therefore a need for approaches to the management and monitoring of land-use projects that empower local communities, and that deliver meaningful local benefits while also contributing to larger scale REDD+ programs. Quantification of emission reductions and removals (or ‘carbon benefits’) provides a link to performance-related finance in REDD+ projects, but is of little direct relevance to rural poor communities. To ensure communities benefit directly from performance-related payments, alternative metrics for assessing project effectiveness are needed, along with approaches to assessing carbon benefits that divert a minimum of attention and resources away from activities that directly support livelihoods.

Methodologies for assessing carbon benefits from REDD+ projects typically require demonstration that:

	▪ Emission reductions and removals are additional to what that which be achieved without the project (‘additionality’);
	▪ A project accounts for any increase in emissions outside the project area (or ‘leakage’) that results from project activities;
	▪ Carbon benefits are maintained for long periods of time (‘permanence’).

The issues of additionality, leakage and permanence help frame and define approaches to monitoring carbon benefits. The large uncertainties involved in estimating what would have happened without the project, what is happening elsewhere because of it and what is going to happen in the future, mean that highly precise estimates of local carbon stocks and their rates of change generally offer spurious precision. Measuring the carbon stocks or flows associated with REDD+ projects is one of the most tractable issues that has to be dealt with, and one that has received a lot of technical attention, and yet it is rarely the main source of uncertainty in the carbon benefits that can be ascribed to a project.

Here, we discuss whether the assessment of additionality, leakage and permanence is both possible and desirable in the context of community REDD+ projects, and suggest approaches that could help local communities to benefit from performance-based payments linked to the delivery of carbon benefits.

Additionality

It is self-evident that the livelihood benefits from a project that provides training, resources or finance that a community could not otherwise access can be considered additional, as without the project those benefits would not be realized. For carbon benefits, however, the situation is more complicated. Carbon benefits are usually estimated by comparing emissions and removals with the project to a counter-factual reference emission level (REL) describing emissions that would have occurred without the project [4]. The development of RELs may be possible if there are existing well-defined management plans for an area, or where emissions result from predictable processes, but major influences on carbon stocks are often contingent, unplanned or beyond the control of local communities. Estimating the future occurrence of illegal logging or forest clearance by outside interests based on past patterns in the region may be possible across a broad landscape, but predicting specific areas that will be affected is little more than guesswork [5,6].

An alternative to the production of spatially explicit RELs for areas managed by community groups is to adopt an approach similar to the assessment of livelihood benefits. Assuming a continuation of current practices in the absence of the project can provide a baseline against which carbon benefits can be assessed. Excluding the impacts of outside influences from RELs may underestimate the carbon benefits from a community REDD+ project but, if low cost approaches to improving land management are implemented, even conservative etimates of carbon benefits can generate sufficient finance to support the activities that improve livelihoods and reduce emissions [7]. Focusing on activities over which communities have direct control can also help to ensure that REDD+ finance is used to improve local land use, rather than for efforts that try to address intangible and indirect external influences.

Leakage

If influences over which communities do not have direct control, such as commercial logging and commercial agricultural operations, are not included in RELs for a community REDD+ project, it follows that it should not be necessary for that project to account for leakage from such activities. This is convenient, as assessing leakage that results from the activities of organizations that operate over large areas is likely to be impossible. To demonstrate this type of leakage it would be necessary to first identify the areas that have been affected – for example, by logging operations – then prove that the activity is attributable to the management of a specific project area. It is hard to imagine how this causal relationship could ever be demonstrated, particularly for the management of areas of forest or woodland that are tiny in comparison to the scale of commercial operations that typically span regional and national boundaries.

Identifying areas where leakage has occurred within the area over which a community has direct influence is more feasible. Combining monitoring of leakage of carbon benefits with efforts to assess and understand livelihoods throughout the community can also help to understand and address the causes of any leakage that does occur, so that monitoring can directly contribute to positive outcomes for the community.

Permanence

It is generally assumed that for REDD+ to be comparable with other emission reductions, carbon must be permanently removed from the atmosphere, or at least stored in vegetation or soil for a long a period of time. This assumption creates a concern that REDD+ contracts could drive communities towards practices that they no longer wish to support when better alternatives come along. It is not clear, however, why permanence should be treated differently for REDD+ than for other emissions reducing activities. Activities that reduce fossil fuel use, such as the use of renewable energy sources, reduce the rate of use of fossil fuels, not the total stock available to be used. With REDD+, it is also the rate of emissions that is being reduced and, if leakage is adequately addressed, the carbon benefits from REDD+ are no less secure than from reductions in fossil fuel use [8].

As well as being unfair and unnecessary, contracts that require community groups to manage their land in a given way for long periods without a continuation of performance-related support are also likely to be unenforceable. It would be unreasonable to expect any community group striving to improve their livelihoods to honor a contract that affected them negatively, particularly if the aim of the project was to strengthen livelihoods. Contract periods should therefore be short enough for communities to make a meaningful commitment, which will typically mean periods of 10 years or less. For activities where significant carbon benefits take longer to accrue, such as the establishment of agroforestry systems, assessment of carbon benefits over longer periods may be appropriate, provided the livelihood benefits are sufficient to ensure that the activities will be maintained beyond the period of performance-related support.

Conclusion

Local land-use interventions that meet the needs of communities while contributing to emission reductions are needed. To ensure that REDD+ projects benefit communities, appropriate metrics and monitoring approaches should be adopted to track performance. Reducing the cost of estimating carbon benefits is particularly important when additional spending diverts funding from activities that could improve the livelihoods of poor communities [9]. We believe the pragmatic approaches suggested here provide part of the solution for REDD+ projects that aim to improve the livelihoods of local communities, while demonstrating that they also contribute to climate change mitigation. We encourage consideration of these approaches by standards bodies and governments contemplating frameworks to support community action on REDD+.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.