Roots of inequity: how the implementation of REDD+ reinforces past injustices

TY - JOUR

T1 - Roots of inequity

T2 - how the implementation of REDD+ reinforces past injustices

AU - Chomba, Susan Wangui

AU - Kariuki, Juliet

AU - Lund, Jens Friis

AU - Sinclair, Fergus

N1 - Available online 26 October 2015

PY - 2016/1/1

Y1 - 2016/1/1

N2 - The extent to which REDD+ initiatives should be a mechanism to address poverty and provide other co-benefits apart from carbon storage, is hotly debated. Here, we examine the benefit distribution policy and practice of a prominent REDD+ project in Kenya with the aim of understanding the extent to which it addresses equity. We reveal that while the project design was attentive to equity concerns in distributing benefits amongst the project implementer, landowners and the wider population of small-scale farmers and pastoralists in the area, in practice, the initial flow of benefits were concentrated in the hands of a few. This was because developments in land tenure since pre-colonial times had involved processes of dispossession and elite capture, enabled by colonial and post-colonial land policies that left the majority of local people with little or no land entitlement. As the distributive policy of the project maps onto the existing unequal land distribution, it reinforces inequality. By illustrating how current, well-intended, REDD+ efforts inadvertently come to entrench a long process of dispossession of marginalized people, we call attention to the pivotal importance that historical context plays in discussions of equity and social safeguards related to implementing REDD+ initiatives and related policy.

AB - The extent to which REDD+ initiatives should be a mechanism to address poverty and provide other co-benefits apart from carbon storage, is hotly debated. Here, we examine the benefit distribution policy and practice of a prominent REDD+ project in Kenya with the aim of understanding the extent to which it addresses equity. We reveal that while the project design was attentive to equity concerns in distributing benefits amongst the project implementer, landowners and the wider population of small-scale farmers and pastoralists in the area, in practice, the initial flow of benefits were concentrated in the hands of a few. This was because developments in land tenure since pre-colonial times had involved processes of dispossession and elite capture, enabled by colonial and post-colonial land policies that left the majority of local people with little or no land entitlement. As the distributive policy of the project maps onto the existing unequal land distribution, it reinforces inequality. By illustrating how current, well-intended, REDD+ efforts inadvertently come to entrench a long process of dispossession of marginalized people, we call attention to the pivotal importance that historical context plays in discussions of equity and social safeguards related to implementing REDD+ initiatives and related policy.

KW - REDD

KW - Kenya

KW - Benefit sharing

KW - Small-scale farmers

KW - Land tenure

KW - Equity

U2 - 10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.09.021

DO - 10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.09.021

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0264-8377

VL - 50

SP - 202

EP - 213

JO - Land Use Policy

JF - Land Use Policy

ER -