REDD+ as ‘inclusive’ neoliberal conservation: the case of Lindi, Tanzania

ABSTRACT

In recent years, market-based conservation has emerged as the ‘panacea’ to the environmental crises we face today. A prominent example of this trend is REDD+, which turns terrestrial carbon in the global South into fictitious commodities that can be sold for profit. In this paper, we conceptualise REDD+ as a form of ‘inclusive’ neoliberal conservation, highlighting how neoliberalism has embraced notions of good governance, local ownership, social safeguards and active citizenship when promoting global conservation markets. While demonstrating the genuine efforts by project proponents to practice ‘inclusion’, we highlight their limits due to larger structural inequalities and demonstrate how the commodification of carbon inevitably causes new forms of inclusion and exclusion to local forest users. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in two forest-dependent villages in the Lindi Region of Tanzania, where two different REDD+ projects were underway, we show how material and discursive powers shaped ‘inclusive’ strategies to market forest-carbon. We then locate these strategies, concerned with the commodification of forest-carbon, within a historical field of power struggles and local politics over forest resources, strongly evidenced in contestations around establishing community-based forest management. We argue that a sharp disjuncture operated between the ‘inclusive’ strategies to market forest-carbon and the historical dimensions and power relations within the area; resulting in new forms of inclusions and exclusions, both in and outside rural villages.

KEYWORDS:

• REDD+
• neoliberal conservation
• Tanzania
• community forest management
• politics natural resource governance

Acknowledgements

This article is based on Andreas' PhD studies at the University of Manchester. Andreas is grateful to all the villagers, district officials and project proponents for the time they took to answer questions, as well as for their hospitality and generosity during his fieldwork. He would like to thank his former PhD supervisors Prof. Dan Brockington and Prof. Phil Woodhouse for their extraordinary guidance and support. He would also like to thank Dr. Irmeli Mustalahti for fieldwork support. The arguments in this paper benefited from the inputs of the Society and Environment Research Group at the University of Manchester and members of the STEPS Centre/Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. We thank Connor Joseph Cavanagh, Haakon Lein, JEAS editorial team and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Andreas Scheba http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8078-4997

Notes

1. MEA, “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.”

2. Büscher et al., “Towards a Synthesized Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation”; Roth and Dressler, “Market-oriented Conservation Governance.”

3. Bishop et al., “New Business Models for Biodiversity Conservation.”

4. Balderas Torres et al., “Payments for Ecosystem Services and Rural Development”; Pagiola, Arcenas, and Platais, “Can Payments for Environmental Services Help Reduce Poverty?”

5. Corbera, “Problematizing REDD+ as an Experiment in Payments.”

6. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the sustainable management, conservation and enhancement of forest-carbon stocks (REDD+) is a global mechanism and policy framework emerging under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and in the context of voluntary carbon markets. It is a key element of the post-Kyoto climate agreement. The objective of REDD+ is to financially reward measures taken in developing countries that (1) reduce emissions resulting from deforestation and/or forest degradation, or (2) enhance existing forest-carbon stocks through sustainable forest management. Via the REDD+ mechanism, performance-based payments will be dispersed to project proponents in developing countries who can successfully demonstrate that they monitored, reported and verified carbon reductions from forest use.

7. Pistorius, “From RED to REDD+.”

8. Griffiths, “Seeing ‘REDD’?”; Lovera, “REDD Realities.”

9. Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones, “Green Grabbing”; No REDD, “NO REDD Papers Volume One.”

10. See note 5 above.

11. Kosoy and Corbera, “Payments for Ecosystem Services as Commodity Fetishism.”

12. Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones, “Green Grabbing”; McAfee, “The Contradictory Logic of Global Ecosystem Services Markets”; Büscher et al., “Towards a Synthesized Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation.”

13. Büscher et al., “Towards a Synthesized Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation”; Igoe and Brockington, “Neoliberal Conservation.”

14. Barnett, “The Consolations of ‘Neoliberalism’”; Ferguson, “The Uses of Neoliberalism”; Grillo and Stirrat, Discourses of Development: Anthropological Perspectives.

15. Peck, “Explaining (with) Neoliberalism”; Castree, “Neoliberalising Nature.”

16. Brenner and Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism’”; Peck and Theodore, “Reanimating Neoliberalism”; Castree, “From Neoliberalism to Neoliberalisation.”

17. Igoe and Brockington, “Neoliberal Conservation,” 434.

18. Ibid., 435.

19. Benjaminsen et al., “Wildlife Management in Tanzania”; Igoe and Croucher, “Conservation, Commerce, and Communities”; Green and Adams, “Green Grabbing and the Dynamics of Local-level Engagement”; Gardner, “Tourism and the Politics of the Global Land Grab”; Pilly, The Impact of Community Based Forest Management on Communities’ Livelihoods; Ribot, Lund, and Treue, “Democratic Decentralization in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

20. Büscher and Dressler, “Commodity Conservation.”

21. Loveless, “Establishing WMAs in Tanzania”; Igoe and Croucher, “Conservation, Commerce, and Communities”; Dressler et al., “From Hope to Crisis and Back Again?”; Bluwstein, Moyo, and Kichelen, “Austere Conservation: Understanding Conflicts over Resource Governance.”

22. McAfee, “The Contradictory Logic of Global Ecosystem Services Markets.”

23. Golooba-Mutebi and Hickey, “Governing Chronic Poverty under Inclusive Liberalism.”

24. Li, The Will to Improve.

25. Hickey, “The Government of Chronic Poverty,” 1141.

26. Silori et al., “Social Safeguards in REDD+”; Krause and Nielsen, “The Legitimacy of Incentive-based Conservation and a Critical Account of Social Safeguards.”

27. Springer, Campese, and Painter, “Conservation and Human Rights”; Springer, “Addressing the Social Impacts of Conservation.”

28. Hickey, “The Government of Chronic Poverty.”

29. Amin, “Local Community on Trial.”

30. Kamat, “The Privatization of Public Interest”; Cooke and Kothari, Participation.

31. TFS, “National Forest Resources Monitoring and Assessment of Tanzania.”

32. URT, “National Strategy for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+).”

33. Safeguards can be broadly understood as policies and measures that aim to address both direct and indirect impacts on communities and ecosystems, by identifying, analysing, and ultimately working to manage risks and opportunities (Murphy, 2011 in URT, “National Strategy for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+).”

34. See note 32 above.

35. Lund et al., “Promising Change, Delivering Continuity.”

36. For the project website see: http://www.tfcg.org/makingReddWork.html

37. For the project website see: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/tzredd-actionresearch/

38. Scheba and Mustalahti, “Rethinking ‘Expert’ Knowledge in Community Forest Management.”

39. More details about the ethics of his research and specifically fieldwork can be found in his PhD dissertation (Scheba, “Commodifying Forest Carbon”).

40. McAfee, “Selling Nature to Save It?”

41. These participatory methods have become very popular in international development over the past decades. In valuing local knowledge and experience they aim to build local skills and capacity for the purpose of increasing community independence and self-sufficiency. Researchers take the role of facilitators who guide participants in data collection and analysis (Mukama et al., “Participatory Forest Carbon Assessment and REDD,” 3).

42. Sundström, “Making the Forest Carbon Commons,” 35; Mukama, Mustalahti, and Zahabu, “Participatory Forest Carbon Assessment and REDD.”

43. Mukama, Mustalahti, and Zahabu, “Participatory Forest Carbon Assessment and REDD,” 2.

44. Mukama, Mustalahti, and Zahabu, “Participatory Forest Carbon Assessment and REDD.”

45. Ibid.; Sundström, “Making the Forest Carbon Commons”; Mustalahti and Tassa, “Analysis of Three Crucial Elements of REDD+”; CCI, “Angai Village Forest Reserve: Tanzania, Forestry Project Overview”; Mustalahti et al., “Can REDD+ Reconcile Local Priorities and Needs?”

46. Forrester-Kibuga et al., “Integrating the Principles of Free, Prior and Informed Consent.”

47. Mjumita, “MJUMITA Community Forest Project Report Lindi CCB PDD.”

48. See note 46 above.

49. Leach, The Lie of the Land; Roe, “Development Narratives, or Making the Best.”

50. cf. Brockington, “The Politics and Ethnography of Environmentalisms”; cf. Conte, “The Forest Becomes Desert.”

51. M Interview 10.

52. M Interview 11.

53. R Interview 21.

54. R Interview 33.

55. See note 38 above; Taku Tassa, “Benefit Sharing and Governance Issues.”

56. R Interview 3.

57. R Interview 7.

58. M Interview 16.

59. M Interview 26.

60. R Interview 13.

61. Leach and Mearns, The Lie of the Land; Brockington, “The Politics and Ethnography of Environmentalisms.”

62. Brockington, “The Politics and Ethnography of Environmentalisms.”

63. Mukama, Mustalahti, and Zahabu, “Participatory Forest Carbon Assessment and REDD.”

64. M Interview 21.

65. R Interview 17.

66. Blomley and Iddi, Participatory Forest Management in Tanzania: 1993–2009.

67. See note 38 above; Mustalahti, “Msitu Wa Angai: Haraka, Haraka, Haina Baraka!”; Mustalahti and Lund, “Where and How Can Participatory Forest Management Succeed?”

68. See note 47 above.

69. R Interview 42.

70. R Interview 50.

71. Scheba and Rakotonarivo, “Territorialising REDD+.”

72. Peluso and Lund, “New Frontiers of Land Control”; Vandergeest and Peluso, “Territorialization and State Power in Thailand.”

73. M Interview 21.

74. M Interview 54.

75. Scheba, “Commodifying Forest Carbon: How Local Power, Politics and Livelihood Practices Shape REDD+.”

76. Taku Tassa, “Benefit Sharing and Governance Issues”; The Guardian Tanzania, “Probe into Forest Mafia Syndicate down South.”

77. In February 2012, households in Ruhoma were among the first in the project to receive REDD+ trial payments. The TFCG/Mjumita project used funding financed by the Government of Norway to distribute money among villagers. The payments were not based on actual conservation performance but on estimations about potential future incomes from the protection and sale of forest-carbon. The amounts distributed were calculated on the basis of local annual deforestation rates in the village, average carbon stocks in village forests, total area of village forest with age above 10 years and area of forest with age above 10 years put into village forest reserve Deloitte, “Mid-term Review Report of Nine NGO REDD+ Pilot Projects in Tanzania – Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG) – ‘Making REDD Work for Communities and Forest Conservation in Tanzania’”.

78. On the basis of satellite images TFCG/Mjumita estimated that the annual deforestation rate in Ruhoma amounts to 33 hectares. Because of the village assembly decision to protect 88% of the total forest area, it was calculated by project staff that an area of 26 hectares, which would lead to 2693 tCO₂ per year if deforested, would be protected every year if REDD+ efforts succeed. With an estimated, and rather optimistic, net carbon income of 5 USD (= 7826.011 TShs in February 2012) per avoided tCO₂, a total sum of 21,081,960 TShs (12,730 USD) was made available by the project proponents for distribution.

79. Residents were defined as people who were born and live in the village or who migrated into the village to reside there permanently.

80. R Interview 26.

81. R Interview 11.

82. R Interview 15.

83. R Interview 33.

84. R Interview 6.

85. Leach and Scoones, Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes; Green and Adams, “Green Grabbing and the Dynamics of Local-level Engagement”; Pamela McElwee, “Payments for Environmental Services and Contested Neoliberalisation”; Roth and Dressler, “Market-oriented Conservation Governance”; Arsel and Büscher, “Nature^TM Inc.”

86. Büscher, “Anti-politics as Political Strategy.”

87. Swyngedouw, “Apocalypse Forever?”

88. Bernstein, Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change.

89. Blue areas are nature, wildlife and forest reserves. I redrew the regional boundaries and drew up the district boundaries as best as I could by hand.