Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 70, Issue 11, 15 September 2011, Pages 1908-1915
Ecological Economics

Institutional design for improved forest governance through REDD: Lessons from the global environment facility

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.04.001Get rights and content

Abstract

This contribution focuses on carbon mitigation and biodiversity conservation in the context of the UN initiative for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in Developing countries (REDD). The design of REDD is important as it may channel much of the international funding that will potentially be made available for future environmental problem-solving in developing countries. The most important multilateral environmental funding mechanism is the Global Environment Facility (GEF). With its basic structural similarity to the emerging REDD, it provides a good starting point for drawing lessons relevant to the design of REDD. In explaining GEF priorities and performance we discuss the role of key actors as well as the organizational and institutional structure of GEF. These factors do not encourage coalitions for addressing environmental problems in the poorest countries. The institutional setting of REDD in the Convention on Climate Change may further exacerbate this trend, as neither conservation nor socioeconomic concerns like the rights and well-being of indigenous peoples and local communities are addressed. Factors that favour utilizing a similar organization structure include scope for donor trust, for bringing in established competence and a comprehensive approach. REDD must be wary of catering solely to a Northern environmental agenda.

Highlights

► The article focuses on carbon mitigation and biodiversity conservation in the context of UN REDD. ► It draws design lessons on effectiveness and legitimacy from the Global Environment Facility. ► Key actors may discourage coalitions for addressing environmental problems in the poor countries. ► The institutional setting may hamper conservation and socioeconomic concerns. ► Similar organizational design includes high scope for donor trust and a comprehensive approach.

Introduction

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that the world's forests are disappearing at the rate of 13 million hectares annually – and that does not include the loss of natural forests to plantation areas (FAO, 2010). According to the Stern, 2007, IPCC, 2007, deforestation alone contributes about 18 per cent of all man-made CO2 emissions, aggravating the global environmental threat of the greenhouse effect. This was the background for the decision at the Bali conference of the parties (COP 13) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) (Decision 2/CP.13, 2007) to consider measures for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) in developing countries. So far, one of the major institutional efforts to respond to this challenge is found in the UN-REDD initiative. In September 2008, the UN-REDD Programme was launched to support national REDD plus strategies. REDD plus signifies a stronger commitment, albeit no guarantee, that the so called ‘co-benefits’ of protecting biodiversity and livelihoods should be included on an equal footing with carbon storage and uptake.

Are there relevant lessons to be drawn from the largest environmental multilateral funding mechanism, the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), for the design and establishment of UN-REDD? The GEF has existed for close to twenty years and has undergone considerable changes. It has delivered significant results, especially in its two main focal areas of activity: climate change and biodiversity. The donors are developed countries and recipients are countries in the South and economies in transition. However, it took a long time before GEF delivered results, and there are significant differences in perceived legitimacy and effectiveness of GEF activities in the climate and biodiversity issue-areas. The main implementing agencies of the GEF are established international organisations, including the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). As such it has a basic structural similarity to the emerging UN-REDD initiative, which in addition to UNEP and UNDP includes the FAO. Moreover, GEF and UN-REDD are largely preoccupied with the same two global environmental problems, climate change and biodiversity (and respond to the two main international regimes supporting these, namely the UNFCCC and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). These organisational and institutional similarities speak in favour of drawing lessons relating to perceived legitimacy and effectiveness of the GEF for the evolving UN-REDD Programme.

From a governance perspective, the UN-REDD initiative poses major challenges for effectiveness as well as legitimacy with regard to global design and reach, in addition to numerous challenges for national and local governments, not least relating to conflicts over natural resource utilization. The idea of REDD is new and ambitious, incorporating the novel and central idea of payment for environmental services (PES). The design of UN-REDD is important as it may channel a great deal of the international funding that may become available for payment for ecosystem services-related schemes. If agreed, up to US$ 30 billion could be transferred annually from rich countries to poor owners of endangered forests.1 Also relevant is the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, launched at COP 13 in Bali and, along with the Forest Investment Programme, aimed at preparing the ground for REDD.2 However, as the REDD mechanism is essentially still at the drawing-board stage, it is important to focus not only on financing but also the crucial aspect of institutional design.

In methodology, we have used document and literature analysis and also interviews with key actors in the GEF Secretariat, the GEF Evaluation Office, the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP), representatives from selected state actors, the Implementing Agencies and ENGOs (eight in all, Andresen and Rosendal, forthcoming) This allows a wide range of views to be expressed and brings out a variety of perceptions about the effectiveness and legitimacy of GEF. Caution is advisable with actors closely linked to the GEF, as they may be naturally inclined to inflate the positive aspects. Similarly, external actors may be influenced by their own agendas when making statements. Still, this fairly broad and inclusive range of interviews should provide some balance to this methodological challenge. As for REDD we have benefitted from direct insights into the Norwegian REDD process in our role as invited external experts.

We first discuss the concepts of legitimacy, effectiveness and performance and how they relate to the design and functioning of GEF and UN-REDD. In Section 3 we describe the GEF as an organisation and discuss how GEF and UN-REDD intersect with regard to institutional design and policy objectives. Section 4 addresses perceived legitimacy and effectiveness of GEF activities and performance on the ground with regard to its main objectives of responding to climate change and biodiversity problems in developing countries. Next, we examine factors explaining the performance of the GEF and comment on lessons to be learned for designing UN-REDD. In conclusion we briefly discuss the suitability of the GEF as a ‘model’ for UN-REDD.

Section snippets

Securing Effectiveness and Legitimacy

The performance of the GEF in terms of legitimacy and effectiveness is the dependent variable in our study, from which lessons are then drawn for the UN-REDD Programme. Most large-scale studies on the effectiveness of international environmental institutions have tended to focus quite narrowly on performance in terms of results, generally neglecting the issue of legitimacy (Breitmeier et al., 2006, Miles et al., 2002). Effectiveness can be viewed in terms of outputs (rules and regulations),

GEFs Organisational Structure

The GEF membership consists of 178 developing and developed countries. The GEF organizational structure includes a Council, an Assembly where all members participate at bi-annual meetings, a Secretariat, Implementing and Executing Agencies, as well as a Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel and an independent Evaluation Office. The GEF Council is the main governing body of the GEF; it decides by consensus and meets twice annually. It has 32 members who represent GEF member countries through

Outputs: Most Resources to Climate and the ‘rich’ Developing Countries

What outputs – in terms of economic resources, projects and priorities – have been generated by the GEF? Since 1991, the GEF has generated US$8.6 billion in direct grants and over $36 billion in co-financing from other partners. Most of this has funded biodiversity and climate change projects in developing countries.8 GEF allocation by country between 1991 and 2005 shows that despite the large membership from the South relatively

Explaining Performance – Lessons for REDD

As explained in Section 2, problem structure goes a long way in explaining why progress in terms of effectiveness can be expected to be very modest for these two issue areas, particularly biodiversity. As problem structures tend to be rather stable and difficult to change, however, we will deal with the two more dynamic perspectives of actor influence and institutional set-up in explaining varying GEF performance in these two issue-areas.

Conclusions

Our analysis suggests that while the complex and comprehensive GEF model is far from ideal, it is what could be achieved in terms of political feasibility. Those who provide the most resources are bound to be most influential in deciding institutional set-up as well as the overall direction and priorities. The dominant position of the USA as well as the World Bank has contributed to the bias towards a northern environmental agenda and an emphasis on effectiveness in the GEF's climate change

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