1. ©
Cooke
Vieira
CIFOR-ICRAF
Rethinking PES in community
forestry: Understanding
incentives in socio-ecological
context
Steven Lawry
CIFOR Senior Research Associate
s.lawry@cifor-icraf.org
CGIAR Seminar Series
Payments for Ecosystem Services: Win-Win Solutions?
Co-organized by IFPRI, the CGIAR, and BMZ
21 September 2023

2. • REDD+/PES interventions in community forestry have performed poorly overall.
• Many forest communities know what they are doing but local management and stewardship systems are not
acknowledged in intervention design. Importance of social goals is lauded, but the roles of local social institutions and
priorities are largely overlooked or discounted by REDD+ and PES planners.
• Many communities (though not all) manage complex socio-ecological systems for multiple purposes: timber and NTFPs;
water regulation and agricultural sustainability; biodiversity; cultural identity and social solidarity. Successful
stewardship is based on an ethic of care, intrinsic knowledge of context, and agency (full exercise of which is dependent
on secure rights).
• Where good stewardship-based outcomes are already present, the carbon balance may be socially and ecologically
“optimal” and accommodating forest management and payments regimes for carbon additionality may be disruptive.
• The additionality principle rewards “deforesters” while excluding conservers; perceived by many as socially
unacceptable.
• Lack of local market-facing institutions emboldens rent-seeking intermediaries. De jure state ownership of forest land
positions governments for payment capture.
• Where communities manage wholistically, with proven beneficial social and ecological outcomes, Investments
enhancing social and environmental well-being may be preferred to PES. PES incentives may be appropriate for
”deforesters” but more sophisticated understanding of local context and deforestation drivers is needed.
The argument summarized

3. • Failure to account for deforestation drivers in project design. “REDD+ institutionalization [in Indonesia] has focused
mostly on technical aspects, thereby diverting the focus from addressing socioeconomic and political drivers of
deforestation and forest degradation. [T]ransformational change in the forestry and broader land-use sector is still
elusive.” Nofyanza et al (2020).
• Social and income benefits fall short. “The study [of 4,000 households in 148 villages participating in 22 REDD+
programs in 6 countries] finds that REDD+ has not contributed significantly to perceived well-being and income
sufficiency, in spite of the fact that most households have not only engaged with REDD+ interventions but view them
favorably.” Sunderlin, William D., et al. (2017)
• Evidence of limited (and overstated) reduced deforestation. A study of 26 [Verra managed]carbon payment projects
on three continents found that, “most projects have not significantly reduced deforestation. For projects that did,
reductions were substantially lower than claimed. This reflects differences between project ex ante baselines and ex
post counterfactuals according to observed deforestation in control areas.” West, T. (2023).
• Low additionality explained?: Socially unacceptable to reward deforesters while excluding conservers. “Several
studies found that the PES projects achieved low additionality. It was hard or not socially desirable to enroll only those
participants who would deforest their patch of land with high certainty in the absence of payments, in other words,
some payments were given to people who would have not deforested their land anyway.” Burivalova et al., (2019)
PES performance in community forestry

4. • Failure to acknowledge local management systems. “Many
external [REDD+] programmes explicitly state that local
people will serve as the main actor and indeed intend to
prioritise local interests. However, such programmes also
have a tendency in not explicitly acknowledging local
resource management and stewardship systems,
particularly the local values that underpin them.” Yuliani, E.
L., et al., (2022).
• Potential negative impacts on social-ecological resilience.
“Our meta-analysis [of 59 case studies] found that REDD+
has had mixed impacts on communities' social-ecological
resilience. through restrictions on local forest practices,
rigidity in rules, and communities' natural capital being
locked into carbon contracts, REDD+ has limited
communities' ability to manage for uncertainty. Reconciling
REDD+ goals with the need for forest communities to retain
adaptive capacity will be a challenge moving forward. Hajjar
et al (2021)
Performance (continued)
©
Chandra
S.
Karki,
CIFOR-ICRAF

5. • Confronting biases and supporting local problem-solving
Communities know what they are doing; local management a model of democratic
land use. Local user values, aims, and priorities should be supported. Communities
manage forests; governments can’t and markets disrupt (Yulani, et al., (2022);
Hajjar, et al. (2021)
• Re-engineer payment regimes to reward conservers.
Investments in social well-being enhance ecological outcomes, and vice-versa.
Pena, et al., (2016)
• Rights recognition catalyzes internal and external investment.
Donors can support investment readiness post-tenure reform. Baynes, et al.,
(2015); Gynch, et al., (2020)
Policy reforms and investment alternatives

6. References
• Baynes, et al., (2015), Key factors which influence the success of community forestry in
developing countries, Global Environmental Change, Volume 35, 2015, Pages 226-238
• Burivalova et al., (2019), What works in tropical forest conservation, and what does not:
Effectiveness of four strategies in terms of environmental, social, and economic outcomes.
Conservation Science and Practice. 2019; 1:e28. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.28
• Gynch, S., (2020), Is community tenure facilitating investment in the commons for inclusive and
sustainable development?, Forest Policy and Economics, Volume 111, 2020.
• Hajjar. R., et al (2021), The impacts of REDD+ on the social-ecological resilience of community
forests, Environ. Res. Lett. 16 024001
• Nofyanza, S., et al (2020) Revisiting the REDD+ experience in Indonesia, CIFOR Infobrief, 314
• Pena, Ximena, et al., (2016). "Collective Property Leads to Household Investments: Lessons
from Land Titling in Afro-Colombian Communities," Documentos CEDE 14573, Universidad de
los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
• Sunderlin, W. D., et al. (2017), "REDD+ contribution to well-being and income is marginal: The
perspective of local stakeholders." Forests 8.4 (2017): 125
• Yuliani, E. L., et al., (2022). Relational values of forests: Value-conflicts between local
communities and external programmes in Sulawesi. People and Nature, 00, 1–
17. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10389
• West, T., et al., Science 381, 873-877 (2023)
©
Yayan
Indriatmoko,
CIFOR-ICRAF

7. ©
Axel
Fassio/CIFOR-ICRAF
Thank you