“I feel more empowered being involved in REDD+ for the last three years and can speak with confidence on different issues of indigenous peoples. It is not because of politics but as I am involved in a lot of REDD+ trainings, I got to know more about indigenous rights and provisions”. “I received buffalo-calf from the user group but I do not know anything about REDD+. It’s the same user group under which we have…
In many countries worldwide, development projects are asked to comply with the “mitigation hierarchy” in environmental impact assessment. They must avoid environmental impacts as much as possible in the project design phase, minimize unavoidable impacts through specific measures during implementation, address impacts on-site through specific remediation and restoration environmental activities, and finally offset the residual environmental impacts of the project that cannot be mitigated either near the affected habitats or further afield. The latter are…
Before, nobody could tell me what to do with my trees, because each of us is the owner of his parcel. But now, with the PES programme, it is forbidden to cut trees. [The consultant] said it only concerns members of PES working groups, but the ‘comisariado’ says everyone is affected (farmer NOT involved in PES, Chiapas, Mexico). What if Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) interfere with local collective action institutions and contested leaderships? Would…
As originally conceived, Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes provide conditional cash transfers directed to poor farmers and land users in exchange for greener land use practices that enhance carbon sequestration, water provision, or biodiversity protection. Two decades of experience with the PES approach has demonstrated that few, if any, initiatives conform to the assumptions that underlie the original economic model. This collection of articles, guest edited by Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza, Pamela McElwee, Gert van Hecken…
In a Letter led by Rose Pritchard and Dan Brockington (University of Sheffield), published in Nature last Thursday, we respond to a recent Commentary in the same journal by Lewis et al. The authors advocate for increasing carbon sequestration uptake through forest restoration, in order to mitigate climate change. Lewis et al. call to do so promoting the growth and protection of ‘natural forests’, particularly in tropical and sub-tropical countries, and avoiding the use of…