19 REDD+ and the global discourse on climate change and poverty
Introduction
With global warming the world has encountered the ultimate “global environmental threat,” one which undeniably affects all people and requires concerted action by all countries. It is a grim irony that those who will suffer most from climate change are generally those that are already among the poorest in the world, and have done least to cause the problem (Leichenko and O’Brien, 2008). The nations of the world are, however, beginning to recognize the threat and are responding, albeit perhaps too little and too late. Climate change has suddenly and dramatically changed the nature of the long-running and complex relationship between countries of the “North” and “South.” It has also changed the global discourse concerning “development” and “environment”; that both shapes and is shaped by these relationships. The aim of this chapter is to examine this discourse; and to assess one specific initiative that has arisen in response to climate change, REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), showing what implications it may have for poverty reduction.
Climate change will necessitate adaptation not only at national level but also at international level: adaptation of the relations among the nations of the world. The old structure, derived from the era of development aid, will have to be replaced by another. The rhetoric of mutual interest – to be found in the Pearson Report of 1969, the Brandt Report of 1980, and even the Brundtland Report – was never very convincing to skeptics. And for those in the rich North it could even encourage a very negative picture of the rest of the world: as a source of disease, terrorism, migrant hordes, etc. But with climate change there is now a more real sense of mutual interest; the people of the world today do truly face a common threat.1 But the simple North/South dichotomy is now even more questionable than it was half a century ago. Countries such as China, India, and Brazil are rich and powerful in aggregate terms, even if they still have many millions of poor inhabitants. As a result, their rights and responsibilities with regard to the challenge of climate change are very different from those of small, poor countries. As regards development, these countries are now powerful global economic actors, and, in Africa and elsewhere, they are increasingly active, whether as aid donors or as investors. What these countries do – especially with regard to climate change – will be of crucial importance for the world as a whole. In summary, the environment and development discourse is now very different from what is was until quite recently, as I shall briefly show by tracing how first the development, and then the environment, discourse has changed over time.
Discourses
How are these changing international relationships affecting, and affected by, the global discourse concerning “development” and “environment”? I shall argue that the global environmental discourse has, from the start, been located within the already established development discourse; but that now, with climate change, the situation is changing. But what is a discourse? Rather than quoting standard authors such as Foucault (1972) or, more specifically in relation to development issues, Escobar (1995), I am tempted to say: “you know a discourse when it hits you.” In other words, the power of a discourse is all too evident to those who, perhaps unwittingly, seek to escape or challenge it. People who take part in international donor meetings on development or the environment, or submit inputs to influential documents such as the World Bank’s annual World Development Report, are very soon confronted by this reality. Certain topics are on the agenda, while others are excluded. And in contributing to the debate certain words can, and even must, be used, while others cannot. As neo-Gramscians would have it, our thoughts are “framed” – and hence, so too are our actions (Bøås and McNeill, 2004). The major effect – and, many would argue, the major function – of such framing is to depoliticize the debate. The study of a discourse is revealing because it tells you where the power lies.
Development – since 1950
Development is a post World War II phenomenon, entirely tied up with development aid (Cowen and Shenton, 1996; Rist, 1997; Degnbol-Martinussen and Engberg-Pedersen, 2003). In the 1950s/1960s, the era of decolonization, aid was seen as a temporary activity, which would be necessary for perhaps a decade or two, involving investment and technology transfer from “developed” to “underdeveloped” countries. Around the 1970s came calls for radical change in North/South relations – a New International Economic Order. But, at least in donor circles, the more reformist agenda of “Redistribution with Growth” (Chenery et al., 1974) predominated – calling for change, not revolution, within countries in the South; and with much less focus on relations between North and South. The 1980s brought reaction, and a neo-liberal agenda – the so-called “Washington consensus”; here the ideology of the market prevailed both at international and national levels. In the 1990s, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the clash of ideologies between East and West suddenly became largely irrelevant. It is at this point that politics was finally allowed to enter explicitly into the policy debate of development agencies. Though largely invisible in official documents, politics has, of course, always been fundamental in shaping the discourse. Throughout the whole development era, the two key development debates have been around “state or market” and “equity or growth”; both clearly very political issues. But even now, politics is treated largely as a technical issue – of “development management.” And the focus of attention has continued to be on intra-national issues; the international dimension still largely excluded from debate.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the aid agenda became increasingly diffuse; every new international conference, commission or report added another new issue to be addressed: gender, population, governance, human rights – and the environment (with the World Commission on Environment and Development: the Brundtland Report, published in 1987). There can be little doubt, however, that it was the last of these that was the most high profile; the 1992 “Conference on Environment and Development” (UNCED), in Rio de Janeiro was the largest such event in history.
Then, in 2000, came a return to poverty as the central issue, with the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This was regarded by many as a necessary, and even overdue, refocusing of attention and resources, to counter what had been a tendency to overload the development agenda by adding yet another “decoration on the Christmas tree” (to quote a staff member of a major multilateral development bank). In this situation, the response of those who still wished to promote a particular issue, such as gender, was often to argue that this was the best means of achieving the now overarching purpose – of poverty reduction. Thus, for example, it was argued that gender planning helps to focus on the needs of women – often the most seriously disadvantaged group; or that good governance is a necessary prerequisite for poverty reduction. But protecting the environment, by contrast, could not easily be reformulated as a means to the end of reducing poverty; indeed some, and in fact many in the South, saw poverty reduction and environmental conservation as conflicting objectives, as noted below. It is therefore relevant to note that in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the emphasis is clearly on poverty reduction and improved welfare; potential conflicts between this and environmental goals are not addressed. Of the eight goals, only one is directly concerned with environmental sustainability, with one sub-goal specifically focused on climate change. And yet again we find, in the MDGs, that the main focus is on the national obligations of poor countries; international obligations receive only very limited mention.
Environment – since 1970
The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, could be said to mark the beginning of the environment discourse at the international level. But it was mainly concerned with the agenda of countries in the North. Indeed, developing countries were skeptical of supporting the initiative. At a meeting in Founex in Switzerland, before the conference began, Mahbub ul Haq, then at the World Bank, was brought in to persuade the developing country delegates that “there really was good cause, both then and in the future, for them to be concerned about these matters” (Wade, 2004: 74). But their skepticism remained.
The global discourse on environment did not really take off until the Brundtland Report of 1987 (Redclift, 1987; Sachs, 1993). In that report the environmental discourse was intimately linked with the already established development discourse, and debate easily fell into a “North/South” dichotomy. This was not surprising in view of the resistance by the South just noted, which was manifest also in the discussions by the commission members as they traveled around the world. For some of those from the North it was a challenge to have to reconsider their views about the environment in the light of the realities of poverty faced by many in the South. In the Brundtland Report, environment and development were brought together into a single discourse, as manifest in the famous concept of “sustainable development.” But the adoption of this term did not in practice resolve the conflicts between environment and development, or between North and South. And this became apparent in subsequent international conferences – from Rio de Janeiro 1992, through to Rio de Janeiro again in 2012. But in many of the central documents concerning sustainable development, the structural inequalities of wealth and power between North and South were largely excluded; and in negotiations the South adopted the well-established position of demanding “new and additional” development assistance. It is also worth noting that the uncomfortable issue of sustainable consumption was avoided.
In brief, environment and development (or poverty reduction) have for many years enjoyed an uneasy relationship: vying for attention as the primary objectives of international cooperation, while at the same time being lumped together under the somewhat unconvincing term “sustainable development.” But since about 2005 the world faces a new situation – thanks to climate change.
Climate change and REDD+
The “win-win” vision of sustainable development appeared optimistic when the Brundtland Report came out in 1987. It can be argued on both theoretical and empirical grounds that some environmental problems, notably pollution of various kinds, can be reduced with rising income levels; while others, notably the consumption of non-renewable resources, cannot.2 But sustainable development seems almost a utopian ambition now that the correlation between high income and consumption, and resulting emissions of greenhouse gases, is so glaringly apparent.
As noted above, the MDGs were predominantly about poverty reduction; the environment received fairly marginal treatment.3 With climate change the global agenda has changed: for better or worse. Global warming is – incontrovertibly – a global issue. I would even claim, that it is the first (or perhaps second) truly global environmental issue. Most, if not all, other environmental issues, such as urban air pollution, shortage of water, or desertification, even if they are experienced in many countries, are still geographically limited in scope. The depletion of the ozone layer can justifiably claim to be the first truly global issue: in this case, however, the magnitude of the impacts was less, and the problem was simpler to resolve – both technically and politically (Falkner, 2007). With climate change, then, environment and development are more “truly” linked than in the Brundtland Report. The interconnections are much closer: but more in the sense of a potential “lose-lose” situation – by contrast with the (optimistic) “win-win” hopes of the Brundtland Report. Those who will suffer most from climate change are those who are already most disadvantaged.
And this new situation also changes the North/South relationship. The North now needs the South in a way that it did not before. Development assistance has never been merely altruistic; many would justifiably argue that a good deal of aid was, and still is, not charity but payment for services rendered, such as political support in international relations. But payments by rich countries to induce poor countries to reduce emissions are manifestly, and indisputably, payments for services rendered. If development assistance is replaced by mechanisms such as carbon trading and REDD+, what will this mean for the environment-development relationship, and the North-South relationship?
The challenge, and opportunity, involved in seeking to reconcile poverty reduction with combating global warming is well illustrated by REDD+. This initiative, which gained increased international backing at the December 2009 United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Copenhagen, is based on the idea that one rewards individuals, communities, or countries that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from forests. A number of countries in the North have indicated their willingness to finance countries in the South which undertake to implement REDD+ projects.
Precisely because they are poor, and have not yet cut down all their forests, countries in the South now have something to sell to the rich North. In some respects this is surely good news. The amount of money involved would far exceed foreign aid (Meridian Institute, 2009). And because these are payments for services they are more akin to automatic transfers, almost like a global income tax – which has long been an apparently unattainable dream (McNeill, 1980). But there is also some bad news. REDD+ may involve massive international transfers, but the money will not go only to poor countries and not necessarily to poor people. The countries which have most to gain include several – such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Indonesia – which do not enjoy particularly good governance. In recent years, aid has increasingly been made conditional on its being used for the benefit of the poor; but REDD+ will create huge scope for “misuse” according to standard aid thinking. It is already becoming apparent that reconciling the primary goal of REDD+ – reduction of deforestation and forest degradation – with that of poverty reduction can be difficult in practice. In fact, measures to inhibit or prohibit access to the forest may come largely at the expense of poor and marginalized groups – and especially indigenous communities. A further complicating factor is that REDD+ is also meant to protect biodiversity; but such a “win-win-win” strategy may prove even more elusive.
To quote an authoritative source: “REDD has the potential to deliver large cuts in emissions at a low cost within a short time frame and, at the same time, contribute to reducing poverty and sustainable development” (Angelsen, 2008: viii). The quote continues: “This sounds too good to be true. REDD is based on a simple and appealing idea, but turning the idea into action is much more complex” (ibid.). It is becoming increasingly recognized that REDD+ constitutes a major governance challenge – even in dealing with well-intentioned and honest governments. The problem is not merely the technical difficulty of measuring emission reductions, and attributing them to specific groups. Equally, if not more challenging, is how best to channel funds to these groups – to individuals, villages, districts, or projects – in a way that is fair, efficient and effective (in terms of incentives). It is becoming apparent that local people may not benefit from REDD+. Evidence comes both from NGOs, many of which have been actively mobilizing against REDD+;4 and also from independent research – including my own, in collaboration with Signe Howell (Howell, 2013). Phelps et al. (2010: 326) note that “Many observers have criticized REDD+ projects for their rapid development that has often overlooked the rights, tenure, and engagement of forest-dependent and indigenous peoples.” In addition, Börner et al. (2010: 280) assert that “Unequal land distribution in the Brazilian Amazon, for example, means that regulatory mandated reductions in deforestation will especially hurt smallholder families struggling to maintain soil productivity in traditional slash-and-burn systems on relatively small plots.” And Schroeder (2010) refers to experience from the Noel Kempff National Park in Bolivia launched in 1997, and quotes Griffiths (2008) to conclude that:
payments for ecosystem services reinforce state and private sector control over forests as benefits are captured largely by state agencies, local governments and international conservation NGOs and not indigenous and forest communities. Design and implementation of such projects are top-down, limit stakeholder participation and exclude indigenous peoples from the benefits arising from such projects.
(Schroeder, 2010: 322)
In conclusion
Climate change has substantial implications not only for international North-South relations but also for the “environment-development” discourse. Climate change is necessarily a “development-and-environment issue.” And – if the REDD+ initiative is implemented on a large scale – the South (or at least forest-rich countries) may no longer be dependent on the benevolence of the North for financial transfers, but rather receive payment for services rendered in the form of reduced CO2 emissions.
But will REDD+ benefit the poor people in those countries? The prospects are not very encouraging. Local communities living in or near forests risk not only missing out on the benefits, but even finding their livelihoods threatened. This is particularly ironic, if this is the price they pay in order that the rich North can avoid having to find other ways of mitigating climate change.
1 Ironically, the recent financial crisis also constituted a global threat; and in combating this threat the continued economic growth of China and India was very important for the North. It is ironic because it is precisely this continued rapid growth which is exacerbating climate change; the same “emerging middle classes” in these two countries that are saving the North from recession are also generating massive CO2 emissions.
2 Debate has often been based on the so-called “environmental Kuznets curve” (Stern et al., 1996), which is claimed to be analogous to the, also disputed, Kuznets curve relating to economic growth and inequality (Kuznets, 1955).
3 If a more wide-ranging interpretation of “environment” is adopted, including for example drinking water quality, then more MDGs become relevant.
4 See, for example, the website of the coalition organization “Rights and Resources” at http://www.rightsandresources.org/ and numerous postings on “REDD+ monitor” http://www.REDD+-monitor.org/.
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