The document discusses benefit sharing mechanisms for REDD+. It defines benefit sharing and outlines different discourses on who should benefit, including those focused on effectiveness/efficiency versus equity. Equity discourses argue benefits should go to those with legal rights, low-emitting stewards, those incurring costs, or effective facilitators. A comparative analysis found that while some countries regulate financial distribution, enabling factors for equitable benefit sharing are often lacking. Approaches generally favor legal rights-holders and cost-incurring actors over low-emitting stewards.

1. REDD+ benefit sharing:
discourses on who ‘should’ benefit
Grace Wong, Cecilia Luttrell, Lasse Loft (BiK-F), Maria Fernanda
Gebara (Getulio Vargas Foundation), Demetrius Kwerka, Maria
Brockhaus, William Sunderlin, Pham Thu Thuy, Januarti S. Tjajadi

2. Presentation Outline
 Definition of benefit sharing
 Discourses on who should benefit
 Review of benefit sharing mechanisms from a comparative
analysis

3. What do we mean by
‘benefit sharing’?
• Benefit sharing = distribution of direct and indirect net gains
from the implementation of REDD+
• Benefits come with costs:
• Direct financial outlays related to REDD+ (implementation and
transaction costs)
• Foregone revenues from alternative forest land and resource use
(opportunity costs)
• Compensation vs. surplus (REDD rent)
• Benefit sharing mechanism = range of institutional
means, governance structures and instruments that distribute
the net benefits

4. Discourses on benefit sharing

5. Who Should Benefit?
 There are several distinct discourses in
determining who should gain from REDD+
benefits.
 Trade-offs involved in these choices and have
implications for design of BSMs.
Effectiveness/efficiency vs. equity discourses
 Effectiveness/efficiency = goal of emission
reductions
 Equity = who has the right to benefit

6. Efficiency & Effectiveness
REDD+ as a mechanism for paying forest users and owners to reduce
emissions:
• Focus on emissions reductions
• Payments as incentive to induce change in behaviour
• Benefits should go to people providing these services

7. “REDD benefits should reward large-scale
industries/companies for reducing forest emissions”
Data from CIFOR’s GCS policy network analysis, 2011 – current

8. Equity discourses
Equity discourses take a distributional perspective and ask who are the
actors who have the “right“ to benefit from REDD+:
• Focus on preventing unfair distributional results
• Strengthening moral and political legitimacy of REDD+ mechanism

9. Equity discourses
• Discourse I: Benefits should go to those with legal rights

10. The legal status of land-use and
implications for benefit sharing
Project Driver Status
location
Kalimantan Timber, oil palm, mining, Legal
(Indonesia) concessions, swidden
Small scale logging & Legally ambiguous
hunting, fishing, NTFPs
Transamazon Subsistence hunting, small scale Legal
(Brazil) forest management, NTFPs
Swidden, small scale Legal/illegal
agriculture, small and large scale depends on type &
ranching and logging location
Commercial hunting Illegal

11. Equity discourses
• Discourse I: Benefits should go to those with legal rights
• Discourse II: Benefits should go to low-emitting stewards

12. Equity discourses
• Discourse I: Benefits should go to those with legal rights
• Discourse II: Benefits should go to low-emitting stewards
• Discourse III: Benefits should go to those incurring costs

13. Opportunity cost to whom?
Project ….incur the …affect the …create the …contribute
location greatest greatest most the most to
financial losses number of significant carbon
people change in land emissions
use over the
largest area
Kaliimantan Large scale: Swidden, Large scale: Large scale:
(Indonesia) logging, oil palm fishing, NTFP logging, oil logging & oil
& mining palm & mining palm
Transamazon Small-scale Swidden Small-scale Small-scale
(Brazil) cattle cattle cattle
Acre (Brazil) Large scale Swidden Large scale Large scale
ranching ranching ranching

14. Equity discourses
• Discourse I: Benefits should go to those with legal rights
• Discourse II: Benefits should go to low-emitting stewards
• Discourse III: Benefits should go to those incurring costs
• Discourse IV: Benefits should go to effective facilitators of
implementation

15. A comparative analysis of BSM
approaches in 13 countries
Pham, T.T. et al. 2013 (in prep)
• Only 4 countries (Brazil, Indonesia, Tanzania, Vietnam) have REDD+
national programs that regulate financial distribution.
• Many of the “enabling factors” necessary for 3E BSMs (PwC 2012)
are lacking in all countries.
• All countries lean towards Equity Discourses I (those with legal
rights) and III (those incurring costs).
• Implementation of multiple-objective REDD+ is a challenge – Equity
Discourse II (low emitting stewards) is not a priority, potentially
marginalising sustainable forest users.
• Most pilot REDD+ projects employ a hybrid ICDP-PES approach, and
very few are performance-based.