Avoiding Re‐Inventing the Wheel in a People‐Centered Approach to REDD

One important debate regarding Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in developing countries concerns the manner in which its implementation might affect local and indigenous communities. New ways to implement this mechanism without harming the interests of local commu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Conservation biology 2014-10, Vol.28 (5), p.1380-1393
Main Authors: HOLMES, IGNACIA, POTVIN, CATHERINE
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
best practices
carbono de bosque
Caribbean Region
community development
community-based conservation
conservación
conservación basada en la comunidad
conservation
Conservation biology
Conservation of Natural Resources - legislation & jurisprudence
Conservation of Natural Resources - methods
Conservation practices
Contributed Papers
Deforestation
desarrollo rural
Developing Countries
emissions
Environmental conservation
Farming communities
forest carbon
Forest conservation
Forest management
Forestry policy
Forests
governance
implementación de REDD
issues and policy
Land degradation
Latin America
learning
livelihood
monitoring
qualitative analysis
REDD program
REDD+ implementation
rural development
Socioeconomic Factors
stakeholders
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable communities
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Summary:One important debate regarding Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in developing countries concerns the manner in which its implementation might affect local and indigenous communities. New ways to implement this mechanism without harming the interests of local communities are emerging. To inform this debate, we conducted a qualitative research synthesis to identify best practices (BPs) from people‐centered approaches to conservation and rural development, developed indicators of BPs, and invited development practitioners and researchers in the field to assess how the identified BPs are being adopted by community‐level REDD+ projects in Latin America. BPs included: local participation in all phases of the project; project supported by a decentralized forest governance framework; project objectives matching community livelihood priorities; project addressing community development needs and expectations; project enhancing stakeholder collaboration and consensus building; project applying an adaptive management approach; and project developing national and local capacities. Most of the BPs were part of the evaluated projects. However, limitations of some of the projects related to decentralized forest governance, matching project objectives with community livelihood priorities, and addressing community development needs. Adaptive management and free and prior informed consent have been largely overlooked. These limitations could be addressed by integrating conservation outcomes and alternative livelihoods into longer‐term community development goals, testing nested forest governance approaches in which national policies support local institutions for forest management, gaining a better understanding of the factors that will make REDD+ more acceptable to local communities, and applying an adaptive management approach that allows for social learning and capacity building of relevant stakeholders. Our study provides a framework of BPs and indicators that could be used by stakeholders to improve REDD+ project design, monitoring, and evaluation, which may help reconcile national initiatives and local interests without reinventing the wheel. Evitar la Reinvención de la Rueda en un Acercamiento a REDD+ Centrado en Personas
ISSN:0888-8892
1523-1739
DOI:10.1111/cobi.12301