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Missing the forest for the trees? Navigating the trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation under REDD

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Abstract

Forested landscapes play a critical role in mitigating climate change by sequestering carbon while at the same time fostering adaption by supporting ecosystem services, the recognition of which is reflected in the recent Paris Agreement on climate change. It has been suggested, therefore, that the conservation of forested landscapes may provide a potential win-win in the fight against global environmental change. Despite the potential synergies between mitigation and adaptation efforts, recent studies have also raised concerns about possible trade-offs. Our research employs the analytic lens of social-ecological resilience to explore the intersection between mitigation and adaptation in the context of a Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) project in Lao PDR. Drawing on ecosystem analyses, group discussions and interviews with policy makers, practitioners and resource-dependent communities, we identify three potential limitations of REDD for achieving climate synergies. First, by disrupting existing disturbance regimes, REDD interventions run the risk of reducing diversity and structural heterogeneity and thus may undermine functional redundancy core to resilience. Second, REDD-as-practiced has tended to select local, rather than structural, drivers of deforestation, focusing disproportionately on curtailing local livelihood practices, reducing local resources for adaptation. Third, REDD risks redirecting ecosystem service benefits away from local communities toward state agencies, incentivizing recentralization and limiting the scope of local governance. We argue that REDD’s potential for delivering synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation in Laos is currently attenuated by structural factors rooted in development policies and broader political-economic trajectories in ways that may not be legible to, or adequately addressed by, current programmes and policy.

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Notes

  1. Such as the provision of clean water, extractable resources of food and fodder, pollination and pest regulation, etc.

  2. In this paper we use ‘shifting cultivation’ and ‘swiddening’ interchangeably.

  3. While the distinction between ‘planned’ versus ‘unplanned’ deforestation is critical within the VCS methodology—which seeks to avoid incentivizing intentional state-sanctioned deforestation that would drive up deforestation rates and thus potential carbon revenues—it is complex and debated. In the context of this feasibility study, and consistent with the way this is assessed in projects in Laos, ‘planned’ deforestation is considered to result from activities for which any written permission by government authorities is available, though it is often not possible to establish whether permission is consistent with law.

  4. The agency responsible for delivering the proposed REDD pilot project, and also the primary beneficiary of revenues generated by the sale of carbon credits.

  5. It should be noted, however, that the degree to which shifting cultivation results in increased erosion and sedimentation and negative impacts on hydrologic flows—and thus whether its cessation would result in enhanced water regulation—is highly contingent on field-level practices and alternative land-uses. Studies have noted that these negative impacts of swiddening tend to be overstated (see for example Forsyth 1996, 1999).

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank WWF Greater Mekong Programme for their cooperation. This paper benefitted significantly from review by Richard Stedman, the Human Dimensions Research Unit at Cornell University and two anonymous reviewers, whom we thank. This and related research carried out by the authors was funded in part by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), to whom we also express our appreciation.

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  1. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Micah L. Ingalls

  2. Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Michael B. Dwyer

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  1. Micah L. Ingalls
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Correspondence to Micah L. Ingalls.

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Ingalls, M.L., Dwyer, M.B. Missing the forest for the trees? Navigating the trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation under REDD. Climatic Change 136, 353–366 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1612-6

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