Policy learning in REDD+ Donor Countries: Norway, Germany and the UK

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102106Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Norway, Germany and the UK have increased their spending, institutionalization and coordination efforts on REDD+.

  • Their approaches vary in crucial ways and have generated different kinds of lessons.

  • Funding objectives and approaches have shifted to land-use, co-benefits and global efforts of transformation.

  • Norway’s strongest contribution is financial and political at political/social and institutional/structural levels.

  • Germany’s strongest contribution is systematic and technical at cognitive/technical and social/political levels.

  • The UK’s strongest contribution is pragmatic and analytical at cognitive/technical and social/political levels.

  • Merely adjusting the system in incremental ways will likely not solve the problems at hand.

  • Instead, novel modes of learning to facilitate such a transition are needed.

Abstract

REDD+ has been evolving since 2005, yet its outcomes and effectiveness in reducing deforestation and/or achieving co-benefits are still unclear. The academic literature has focused a great deal on the politics and performance of REDD+ recipient countries and on-the-ground implementation, but less so on REDD+ donor countries and not on the question of how REDD+ donor countries learn in the process of implementing REDD+. We examine the three major REDD+ donors Norway, Germany and the UK and find that their funding objectives and approaches have broadened from the original simple and focused idea of financially rewarding tropical forest countries to keep forests standing and carbon stored to land-use, co-benefits and global efforts of transformation. Modalities of learning have not kept up with the rapid changes in terms of problem definition and characterization (as ‘super wicked’), let alone the transformative organizational or even paradigmatic changes identified as needed. The experience with REDD+ is demonstrating that merely adjusting the system in incremental ways will likely not solve the problems at hand. Instead, novel modes of learning to facilitate such a transition are needed.

Introduction

Almost 15 years have passed since the idea of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries) was adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and local, regional, national, bilateral, transnational and international policies, programmes and projects emerged under the banner of REDD+ (Corbera and Schroeder, 2011, Agrawal et al., 2011, Lederer, 2012). In recognition of the role forests play in climate change, major donor countries around the world, in particular the top five of Norway, Germany, the US, Japan and the UK, have increased their spending and institutionalization efforts on REDD+ (Dooley and Parker 2015). In 2015, the Paris Agreement sent a strong signal in favor of REDD+ in dedicating one whole article (Article 5) to the role of forests in addressing climate change (Korhonen-Kurki et al. 2019).

REDD+ has led to some significant changes in discourses, practices, policies and legal frameworks across tropical forest countries since its inception in 2005 (Angelsen et al., 2012, Mulyani and Jepson, 2013, Luttrell et al., 2014) and reshaped non-governmental engagement in the forest sector (Brockhaus et al., 2014a, Gupta et al., 2016; Betts and Schroeder 2015). It has expanded from an initial idea of focusing on the carbon in the forest to realizing co-benefits (Schroeder and McDermott, 2014, Di Gregorio et al., 2013), recognizing the need to address deforestation drivers outside the forest (Curtis et al. 2018; van Hecken et al. 2019) and mitigating against justice-related pitfalls arising from REDD+ projects, such as displacement, marginalisation and loss of identity (Marion Suiseeya 2017).

On the other hand, the largely neoliberal nature of REDD+ and its commodification of forest carbon have been critiqued repeatedly (McAfee, 2016, Martin et al., 2019, Dunlap and Sullivan, 2019, Fletcher et al., 2016, Osborne, 2015) and have not been able to mitigate resource limitations, political instability, lack of political will, conflict over tenure rights and weak local governance and law enforcement (Lund et al., 2017, Dawson et al., 2018, Korhonen-Kurki et al., 2019, Brockhaus et al., 2017). The significant dominance of donor countries in the process (Dooley and Parker 2015) and their reliance on development assistance goals and national interest (Gulrajani 2017) have led to repeated cases of oversimplified and generalized understanding of local level dynamics and complexities, leading to adverse outcomes and a tendency to not align project goals with local needs and relationships with their territory (Corbera and Schroeder, 2017, Gebara and Agrawal, 2017, Trædal and Vedeld, 2017). Recognition of the ecological knowledge and practices of inhabitants of forests that have historically maintained the balance and wellbeing of these ecosystems remains insufficient (Schroeder et al., 2019).

Thus impacts from REDD+ vary greatly across geographies and scales (Angelsen et al., 2012, Mulyani and Jepson, 2013, Luttrell et al., 2014) as well as on the evaluation or impact assessment method used (Bos et al. 2017). Studies touching on the performance of results-based approaches have emerged in recent years (Arts et al., 2019, Wong et al., 2019, Angelsen et al., 2018, Duchelle et al., 2018, Chiroleu-Assouline et al., 2018). In-depth studies on the major REDD+ donor countries are especially scarce or now dated, although a few reports, articles and working papers exist (Westholm et al., 2011, Streck, 2012, Pistorius and Kiff, 2014, Dooley and Parker, 2015, Norman and Nakhooda, 2014, Well and Carrapatoso, 2017). Yet, none of the studies has focused on processes and outcomes of policy learning within REDD+ decision making, despite the recognition of its importance for improving REDD+ outcomes and needing reflexive responses, rather than blueprint solutions. Hence, we ask: How do policymakers in REDD+ donor countries learn? and sub-questions of (1) What modes and types of learning are used? (2) What are the roles of scales of individual to institutional, generalist to specialist and incremental to transformative learning? (3) How deep is the learning? We examine the three major REDD+ donors Norway, Germany and the UK, which have jointly pledged USD 5 billion for 2015–2020 (for funding volumes see Atmadja et al. 2018).

The paper is structured as follows. We begin with summarizing how learning is conceptualized in the global governance literature. Next, we explore learning for REDD+ and the REDD+ funding landscapes in Norway, Germany and the UK. We then introduce our conceptual framework and methods before analyzing the types, modes, scales and depth through which learning is practiced in the three countries. We end with a discussion and concluding remarks.

Section snippets

Policy learning

It has long been acknowledged that learning matters in policymaking (e.g. Nye, 1987, Haas and Haas, 1995), in particular for tackling problems that are described as ‘super-wicked’, being highly urgent, uncertain, non-linear, untested, symptomatic of other problems, novel, ever evolving and lacking a central authority (Levin et al. 2012). Where problems are characterized in this way, as is the case with climate change and accelerating deforestation, special attention to learning about how to

Research design and methods

To examine what is learned and how learning takes place in REDD+ donor countries to reach stated objectives on REDD+, we analyze primary/secondary literature and expert interview data. We then apply key learning frameworks discussed above and a learning matrix to the latter question to identify patterns that can be generalized and compared with other issue domains to facilitate future learning. Borrowing from Howlett et al. (2017) and Kemp and Weehuizen (2005), the learning matrix combines

The REDD+ Funding landscape

The original idea of REDD+ was that developed countries would financially incentivize developing countries with substantial forest cover to measurably reduce deforestation and thus forest carbon emissions beyond what would have occurred in its absence (UNFCCC 2011). Backed by scientific estimations that deforestation was accounting for some 17–20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC 2012) and economic projections that reducing deforestation was a cheap and effective mitigation

What is Learned: Shifting objectives and approaches to REDD+ Funding

Across the landscape of key European donors, a general policy shift from narrow to broad, from focused to multiple and from directed to interactive has gradually emerged in response to challenges with regard to governing and implementing REDD+ (Corbera and Schroeder 2011). REDD+ “has become a shorthand for a more expanded version of what it was meant to be” (I-N5). This shift includes the broadening from forests to land use, from carbon to co-benefits and from focusing on forests and forest

How it is Learned: Underlying levels and modes of learning

The broadening of REDD+ from a rather simple and focused idea to including additional elements, such as safeguards, co-benefits and Indigenous Peoples rights (McDermott et al. 2012), has slowed down progress and made it harder to demonstrate results (I-U5), putting it “in the category of very hard to assess” (I-N2). Curiously, whilst “our means of electronically recording and storing information is easier today than ever before, analyzing and learning from it and identifying essences and key

Discussion: Modes, types and resulting scales and depth of learning

In terms of modes and types of learning, the analysis above shows that learning in REDD+ donor countries takes place primarily through experience and interaction, somewhat through observation and less so through study. Whilst learning happens to a large extent in an informal manner, the formalized and intermittent processes of evaluation and reporting are not deemed quite as useful in all cases. On-the-ground learning in recipient countries is obviously useful, and all countries have some

Conclusion

The historical, institutional, organizational, operational and political approaches of Norway, Germany and the UK vary in crucial ways and have generated different kinds of lessons over the past 10 + years. Whilst experience with the forest and land use sectors more broadly is longer standing in Germany and the UK, Norway entered with the emergence of REDD+. Norway’s financial commitment has been higher from the get-go and focused more squarely on carbon emission reductions than the other two

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Heike Schroeder: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Project administration. Monica Di Gregorio: Visualization, Writing - review & editing. Maria Brockhaus: Funding acquisition, Writing - review & editing. Thuy Thu Pham: Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

A special thank you goes to all interview partners from Norway, Germany and the UK who generously offered their time to participate in this research. We also thank some interview partners as well as Sabine Reinecke (Freiburg University) and Ilan Chabay (IASS) for the substantive comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript and their corrections of factual information. This research is part of CIFOR's Global Comparative Study on REDD+ (www.cifor.org/gcs). It was funded by the International

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