When Participatory Forest Management makes money: insights from Tanzania on governance, benefit sharing, and implications for REDD+

Abstract

Participatory Forest Management (PFM) and the more recent framework for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) are two resource management strategies that were introduced in part for their cobenefits, including forest protection, employment opportunities, and added income for forest adjacent communities. In this paper we examine the early implementation of PFM in Tanzania's Kilwa District, led and promoted by the nongovernmental organisation Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative (MCDI). This organisation has also recently received support to design a REDD+ project that could potentially realise additional financial benefits for local communities through the sale of carbon offsets in PFM-supported villages. We explore the ways in which MCDI has established a PFM scheme in four villages, how it has supported the emergence of more robust local governance structures, and what villagers perceive to have been the main outcomes and pitfalls of PFM to date. MCDI has managed to reduce many of the challenges that have characterised PFM schemes in other contexts, such as conflicts arising from forest governance restructuring, elite capture, and illegitimate benefit sharing, but has been less successful in addressing some aspects related to participation, such as involving village hamlets and women more effectively in decision making due to spatial configuration of landscapes and settlements and to existing cultural norms. These insights suggest that well-implemented PFM can provide a solid foundation for REDD+ implementation but that full realisation of REDD+'s equitable benefit-sharing principle, particularly at the intracommunity level, may take time and will be dependent upon prevailing local cultural norms

Forestry Decentralization in the Context of Global Carbon Priorities: New Challenges for Subnational Governments

“…Similarly, climate change funds in Peru led to multiple new titling programs in the Amazon (Lozano Flores, 2018). REDD+ projects supported the reinterpretation of the land law to recognize village land rights in Tanzania (see Khatun et al, 2015). However, the increase in the percentage of forests under private ownership, as reported in Table 2, risks undermining pending claims for the recognition of customary rights to forests (RRI, 2018).…”

SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions – A Political Ecology Perspective

“…Sikor (2013) critiques this separation of 'safeguards' from the broader 'technical' design of REDD+, arguing that MRV and other REDD+ technologies of transparency themselves play a central role in shaping the distribution of rights and benefits. Fundamentally, the implementation of REDD+ cannot be separated from the broader governance contexts in which it falls, or from the priorities of those tasked with its enactment on the ground (Khatun et al 2015, Kull et al 2015. This intersection of the global and the local has social impacts much less transparent and amenable to international monitoring than changes in forest cover.…”

How does gendered vulnerability shape the adoption and impact of sustainable livelihood interventions in an era of global climate change?

“…In many settings where decentralization has taken place, women are underrepresented in forest user committees. Cases from Burkina Faso (Khatun et al 2015) illustrate that men disproportionately engage in decision-making in decentralized forest governance systems, which often has ramifications on the types of rules adopted and their enforcement, both of which typically benefit men and their forest use activities, which often center on timber harvesting However, these disparities are starting to change in some locations, and various authors have identified factors that can improve women's engagement with forest governance. In Nepal, interventions designed to make decision-making processes more inclusive have increased women's participation in local forest governance (Maskey et al 2006, McDougall et al 2013b.…”