After decades of climate policy development, global attention has recently shifted to the mitigation potential of terrestrial ecosystems. The focus is on the world's remaining tropical forests and how developing countries can reduce rates of forest loss while encouraging sustainable development and land-use. Since it was introduced at COP-15 in Montreal in 2005, the program Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDDϩ) has supported many tropical countries to develop carbon mitigation initiatives. REDDϩ has accelerated national and sub-national policy reforms in the forestry sector and the development of on-the-ground carbon forestry projects. The majority of these initiatives are funded through climate aid from multi-lateral and bilateral donors that has targeted cross scale institution building, technology transfers, and in some countries greater involvement of local communities. However, managing carbon in terrestrial ecosystems remains a challenging and problematic undertaking. In developing countries, forests are commonly subject to multiple and competing claims leading to regular disputes between the state, private interests, and forest-dependent communities. Many countries also lack the administrative capacities or political motivation to control deforestation and illegal logging within their territories.The Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and carbon markets more generally have encouraged broad research on the governance of climate change and carbon. 1 This research has focused on governance through voluntary and compliance-based carbon markets and the practices of carbon offsetting, including numerous case studies from forest projects in developing countries. 2 These studies direct attention towards the agency and the shifting authority of public and private actors engaged in market governance, its transnational nature, and the mode or form that governance adopts. 3 For example, the CDM represents a hybrid form of administrative hierarchy with signiªcant regulation by international and national bodies, while the voluntary market operates as a networked domain under the authority of private and civil society actors. 4 Carbon offsets and markets have also been analyzed from a gov-1. See Biermann et al.

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