The impacts of REDD+ on the social-ecological resilience of community forests

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) has emerged as an important and cost-effective climate change mitigation strategy internationally (Recio 2014). There has also been considerable interest in the co-benefits that REDD+ programmes can deliver: improved livelihoods, biodiversity conservation, and socio-economic development of rural areas through monetization of standing forests (UN-REDD Programme 2009). REDD+ is currently being implemented in more than 50 countries, with myriad interventions being piloted by multiple actors, from national to local governments, NGOs, and development agencies (Wong et al 2019). While initially envisioned as a market-based instrument for carbon emissions reductions, where landowners could sell REDD+ credits on a carbon market for avoiding deforestation or enhancing carbon stocks, REDD+ has evolved to encompass various funding mechanisms promoting integrated conservation and development projects (Angelsen et al 2017). Several subnational governments have additionally developed jurisdictional approaches that combine carbon market-related mechanisms into broader low-emission development strategies and regulations (Wunder et al 2020). Although only about one third of REDD+ projects have sold verified carbon credits (Duchelle et al 2018), it has been estimated that USD 323 million annually has been directed to REDD+ financing (Martius et al 2018).

Shortly following the conceptualization of REDD+, there was a strong recognition that community forest management (CFM) and other forms of decentralized and localized forest governance can play an important role in REDD+ implementation and success (Agrawal and Angelsen 2009, Cronkleton et al 2011, Tomaselli and Hajjar 2011, Balooni and Lund 2014). Community forests are a promising path for retaining and enhancing forest carbon stocks (Chhatre and Agrawal 2009, Walker et al 2014), and recent calls have been made for titling Indigenous lands as a strategy to conserve tropical forests and mitigate climate change (Fa et al 2020). Community-based carbon monitoring and management can also be cheaper than professional surveys (Danielsen et al 2011, Torres and Skutsch 2015), and enhance participation and transparency in the process (Agrawal and Angelsen 2009). As such, REDD+ mechanisms are superimposed on, and overlap with, existing decentralized institutional arrangements in many localities around the world; in other locations, implementers seek to create new community forests as part of national REDD+ strategies (Hajjar and Oldekop 2018).

REDD+ interventions in community forests often modify local institutions through new rules and practices that comply with mostly carbon-related objectives (Poudel et al 2014, Bayrak and Marafa 2016, Duchelle et al 2018). Early critique of REDD+ included worries that REDD+ could reverse the progress made around the world in devolving rights to Indigenous and local communities, as central governments and technocrats seek to regain control of forest governance by limiting local uses and a community's ability to set their own objectives (Phelps et al 2010, Chomba et al 2016, Khatri et al 2018). Further concerns have been raised around the potential for the commodification of forest carbon to detrimentally impact local, communal forest governance (Osborne 2015, Martin et al 2019). Yet, decentralized decision making and management of natural resources is a central tenet of adaptive management, where the cycle of local monitoring, decision making, and action better allows communities to adapt to changing social, economic, and ecological conditions (Folke 2004, Folke et al 2005, Kinzig et al 2006, Fischer et al 2016). Adaptive capacity is a component of social-ecological resilience that captures the ability of a system to learn, remain flexible, innovate, and respond to changes (Walker et al 2004, Berkes 2017). Should REDD+ limit communities' adaptive capacity through substantial modifications of rules and resources, communities may face difficulties in responding to biophysical and social environments characterized by change, unpredictability, and uncertainty (Magis 2010).

Thus, questions remain about the compatibility of a top-down mechanism such as REDD+ with the decentralized approaches of CFM. Given that REDD+ will likely modify existing local institutions to comply with objectives focused on carbon emissions reductions, it is important to examine the impacts that REDD+ can have on communities' abilities to practice adaptive management and governance. That is not to say that the decentralized approaches of CFM are not without their critique. Several studies have examined the governance challenges that community forests face in many locations, including limitations on communities' natural resources rights (Hajjar et al 2020), unequal distributions of benefits and elite capture (Persha and Andersson 2014), and difficulties in long-term viability of CFM projects and dependence on outside sources (Humphries et al 2012). The question is, does REDD+ ameliorate some of these challenges, or does it further detract from forest communities' social-ecological resilience?

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of peer-reviewed studies that describe current or previous REDD+ interventions in community forests. Our global meta-analysis of 59 cases found that there are several key areas where REDD+ is further limiting communities' abilities to practice adaptive management and retain resilience, whereas some changes caused by REDD+ can aid communities' adaptive capacity. Given the global scale and scope of REDD+ implementation, this analysis highlights reforms that should be considered by REDD+ implementers to ensure that changes to local systems are not diminishing their resilience.

2.1. Search strategy and inclusion criteria

2.2. Data extraction and analysis

We developed an analytical framework from the social-ecological systems concept of resilience (examining a system for characteristics related to diversity, openness, tightness of feedbacks, system reserves, and modularity (Walker et al 2010)—see table 1 for definitions), combined with the community capitals framework used in vulnerability assessments (Emery and Flora 2006, Magis 2010—table 2). From these theories, we developed indicators and a protocol to extract information from the studies included in our review to document the impacts that REDD+ has had on communities' social-ecological resilience; indicators covered community governance structures, natural and social capital, and livelihoods (figure 1; table S1). While almost none of the reviewed articles used the language of resilience, we connected changes described in the articles with characteristics of resilient systems (see supplementary information for details on development of the theoretical framework and how it has been applied to the context of community forestry and REDD+).

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Table 1. Attributes of general resilience (adapted from Walker et al 2010).

Attribute of resilience	Definition	Effect on resilience
Diversity	The presence of many different components in a system, such as biodiversity or diversity in stakeholders	Little or no diversity may make the system more vulnerable to a loss of function
Openness	The connection and interaction of the system with other systems	Extremely open or extremely closed systems can reduce resilience
Tightness of feedbacks	The speed at which a system recognizes and responds to a disturbance	Tighter feedback loops lead to more resilience
System reserves	The ecological, social, and economic resources a system can draw on, such as wood, knowledge, and money	More reserves generally contribute to greater resilience
Modularity	The degree to which the different components of a system are connected; modularity entails loosely connected components of a system that tightly interact	A modular system leads to more resilience, while a fully connected system may more rapidly transmit shocks

Table 2. Forms of community capital (adapted from Emery and Flora 2006, Magis 2010).

Type of capital	Definition
Natural	The natural resources, ecosystem services, and features connected to a community's location, such as water, weather, and geography
Human	The innate and acquired attributes of the individuals in a community, including health, skills, and knowledge
Cultural	Community-based values, traditions, and ways of knowing
Financial	Monetary resources available to the community for capacity-building and development
Built	A community's physical assets and infrastructure, such as roads, buildings, and equipment
Political	A community's access to power and ability to impact the rules and regulations that affect it
Social	The connections between people within a community that allow them to collectively take action; includes cohesion between community members (bonding), the ties between them (bridging), and their links to others with resources (linking)

We extracted qualitative data on 22 indicators linked to changes in resilience of social-ecological systems (defined in table S2). We noted whether the article described a change in the chosen indicators (increased, little/no change, decrease, or mixed) after REDD+ had been implemented. For publications presenting multiple cases of CFM, we extracted data separately for each case where possible. To reduce coding bias and enhance rigor in data extraction, each article was assigned to at least two coders (authors) who first extracted data independently, then conferred with each other to justify their coding and reach consensus on the data extracted from each article and case. We use this information to describe how REDD+ has affected community resilience and adaptive capacity in community-managed forests.

Lastly, given concerns about the potential negative and marginalizing impacts of forest carbon commodification (Ribot and Larson 2012, Osborne 2015, Martin et al 2019), we sought to examine whether REDD+ projects that are selling carbon credits were impacting community resilience differently than projects that were not selling carbon credits. For each case in our sample, we searched for project names, project proponents, and keywords in two online databases: the Verra Registry (which lists projects that have received Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) or Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards (CCB) certifications), and the International Database on REDD+ Projects and Programs (ID-RECCO). Cases that were listed as selling verified carbon credits with any certifications, or cases that were listed as being in the process of verification (a sometimes multi-year process), were considered 'certified.' These cases were then compared to the remaining, non-certified cases to ascertain whether any trends in impacts could be related to the certification status (and thus key financing and implementation mechanism) of the REDD+ project.

From our initial pool of 495 articles, we extracted data from 43 articles (figure S1 shows inclusion results at each filtering stage of the systematic review). From these papers, we identified 59 unique cases of implemented REDD+ projects superimposed on community forests. These cases stemmed from 14 countries, although Tanzania and Nepal accounted for 66% of cases ¹ . Sixty-eight percent of cases had some form of CFM prior to REDD+ implementation (44% formal arrangements, 29% informal, 20% unclear, 2% mixed), with 15% of the 59 cases seeing the creation of new CFM institutions with REDD+ (17% of cases were unclear as to whether CFM existed previously). Almost half of the cases (42% of 59 cases) came from studies published before 2017, with the last year of data collection for 45% of 47 reporting cases occurring in 2013 or earlier (figure S2), indicating that much of the reported cases stemmed from early REDD+ projects. Overall, 11 of the 59 cases had been certified (1 Plan Vivo certification and 10 VCS/CCB certified), and 3 were in the process of getting certified at the time of research. Twelve projects had been described in the studies as intending to seek certification, but as several years had passed since the project had been implemented and they had yet to appear in any carbon registries as certified or seeking certification, these were considered as non-certified. Thirty-three additional cases did not mention certification in the study and were not located in the carbon registries we searched.

The following results are a summary of the reported changes in resilience indicators. Notably, there were no statistically significant relationships between certification status and the resilience-related outcomes we assessed (see supplementary information)—the positive and negative changes we report on occurred independently of certification status. While certified and non-certified cases showed mostly similar patterns in outcomes, we highlight some differences here and show descriptive results differentiated by certification status in the supplementary information (figures S3–S5).

3.1. Governance

The majority of cases reported increased local participation in decision making, management, and monitoring (figure 2), although some still excluded those traditionally marginalized (Nathan and Pasgaard 2017). Twenty cases reported that new decision-making bodies had been created at the local level and 15 stated that multiple decision-making bodies had been created at various levels. The vast majority of cases reporting on procedural requirements described increased procedural requirements (32 of 34 reporting cases), especially restrictions on forest uses such as harvesting and grazing (Poudel et al 2014, Peras et al 2016, Isyaku et al 2017) or closures in restoration areas for extended periods (Poffenberger 2015). A number of cases also saw decreased flexibility to change local forest use and management rules (16 of 25 cases), such as those regulating local benefit-sharing mechanisms (Nantongo 2017) or those that 'locked in' forest resources for 30 years through REDD+ arrangements (Khatun et al 2017). The increase in procedural requirements was consistent across both certified and non-certified cases, but increases in governance transparency were proportionally more often reported in certified cases (figure S3), likely reflecting consultation requirements of the certification process.

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3.2. Social and natural capital

Increases in social and natural capital indicators were recorded in most studies reporting on these indicators (figure 3). Increases in natural capital (71% of 38 reporting cases) were mostly due to reforestation and afforestation efforts brought by REDD+ interventions (Shrestha et al 2014, Saito-Jensen et al 2015, Khatri et al 2018), increased efforts to reduce illegal logging (Patel et al 2013, Larson et al 2018), or reduced forest losses to fire (Khatun et al 2017). However, in many cases, the increases in forest resources were accompanied by restrictions on their use, putting in question community members' abilities to use this 'capital' for productive purposes (Bayrak and Marafa 2017, Scheba and Scheba 2017). In 'mixed' cases, communities lost agricultural lands or grazing rights (and thus livestock) to the creation of a community forest or REDD+ area (Poudela 2014, Poudel et al 2015, Scheba and Scheba 2017), trading increases in forest resources for decreases in food production resources. Awareness raising and training activities contributed to knowledge sharing and increased human capital in some cases (Atela et al 2015, Bayrak and Marafa 2017, Nantongo 2017). However, changes to social capital and network connections were less consistently positive (50% and 36% of reporting cases described decreases or mixed results in these categories, respectively). In these cases, conflicts arose as REDD+ interventions exacerbated inequalities in power and economic status within communities (Poudela 2014, Scheba and Rakotonarivo 2016, Vatn et al 2017). Certified cases in particular showed proportionally more decreases in community social connections than non-certified cases (figure S4): cases in Tanzania, Cambodia, and Papua New Guinea highlighted land disputes and conflicts over required rules related to maximizing carbon benefits to different community groups, as well as reports of favouritism among management committees leading to decreases in trust (Leggett and Lovell 2012, Scheba and Rakotonarivo 2016, Nathan and Pasgaard 2017). Several non-certified cases reported that REDD+ development projects united neighbouring communities and increased social cohesion (multiple cases in Corbera et al 2020). Finally, while 13 of 17 reporting cases saw increased connections to outside bodies and resources, 6 of these cases reported increases in dependency on these outside institutions (exemplified in Blomley et al 2017).

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3.3. Livelihood indicators

Fifty-seven percent of the 23 reporting cases showed increases in community physical capital and development projects (figure 4), such as investing in fish ponds (Khatri et al 2018), seed grants for pro-poor activities (Maraseni et al 2014), or purchasing cookstoves (Poffenberger 2015). Thirty-five percent (of 43 reporting cases) described increases in monetary benefits following REDD+ implementation ² , while 51% of the 43 reporting cases saw decreases or mixed results. In most of the mixed cases, some community members saw payments or increased incomes from carbon payments or other project activities, but others (often the more marginalized) saw decreased incomes because of the opportunity costs associated with lost revenues from forest uses that were outlawed with REDD+; this exacerbated existing community inequities (74% of 27 cases saw increases in opportunity costs because of REDD+ related conservation; e.g. Maraseni et al 2014, Nantongo 2017, Nathan and Pasgaard 2017, Khatri et al 2018). Seven of 10 certified cases reported 'mixed' results for monetary benefits, with 2 cases reporting increases, while 13 of 33 non-certified cases reported 'mixed' results and 13 reported increases (figure S5). Relative to non-certified cases, certified cases also reported a disproportionate number of cases with mixed impacts on community equity in adaptation and resilience (figure S5).

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3.4. Implications for forest community resilience

We explore how REDD+ may be contributing to, or detracting from, the resilience of community forestry. While we note that CFM interventions alone have resulted in many of the positive and negative effects on community social-ecological resilience that we report here, we found that REDD+ is bolstering some aspects of adaptive capacity while further limiting others. Local adaptability may be enhanced by increasing network ties and connectivity across scales that allow for new resources and information to reach communities, as well as by increasing participatory decision making. However, we also see that REDD+ has further limited communities' ability to manage for uncertainty through restrictions on local forest practices, rigidity in rules, and 'locking-in' of communities' natural capital through carbon contracts. These findings seem to cut across both certified and non-certified REDD+ projects, although the effect of carbon credit certification merits further investigation given the small number of certified cases in our sample.

As with any meta-analysis, we acknowledge limitations and biases associated with the use of secondary data that in many cases is subject to individual authors' interpretations and our own interpretation of how the data related to resilience theory, as well as the necessary simplification of information presented in articles to be able to standardize data collection across papers. We further acknowledge that the geographical spread of the cases reviewed in this systematic review of the academic literature is not representative of the country distribution of REDD+ projects globally. This skewed geographical focus of REDD+ in the academic literature is reported elsewhere (Duchelle et al 2018), so we suggest that future research additionally examine the grey literature on REDD+ and CFM for information on social-ecological resilience. Many of the cases in this review were reporting results from early REDD+ projects and preparation phases, so they may not be representative of ongoing and evolving initiatives. Yet these exploratory results bring out important implications for REDD+ policymakers and forest-reliant communities engaging in REDD+, particularly during those preparatory, planning, and demonstration phases.

Reconciling REDD+ goals and policies with the need for forest communities to retain adaptive capacity will be a challenge moving forward. REDD+ is likely just one of many changes to come in these social-ecological systems—the climate will continue to change, as will social, economic and policy landscapes. Forest communities cannot afford to lose their ability to respond to what will come next. As such, interventions such as REDD+ should consider unintended consequences that can limit long-term resilience. While safeguards such as biodiversity conservation and free, prior and informed consent are already part of many REDD+ strategies (UNFCCC 2011), efforts need to be made to include additional adaptability safeguards. Here we point to key indicators, such as building or retaining local decision making, rule-making flexibility, systems reserves, and livelihood diversity, that are potentially being undermined by REDD+.

A resilience perspective recommends a variety of approaches regarding how a top-down mechanism such as REDD+ can be implemented in a decentralized CFM context so as not to further limit a community's ability to respond effectively to change. A shift towards adaptive governance of REDD+ projects is needed, where representative stakeholder groups are involved in community resource management embedded in strong social networks, and where space is created for opportunities to self-organize while nurturing reserves (Folke et al 2005). Data beyond carbon monitoring (the focus of current monitoring efforts) can be used to determine thresholds in social-ecological systems (Walker and Salt 2006). Adaptive management of REDD+ requires enabling legislation, funds for responding to change, and information sharing that allows for collaborative learning among actors at different scales (Kinzig et al 2006). Many of these, and other, aspects of resilience thinking can be taken into account in new and existing REDD+ projects, and would allow for forest communities to retain their adaptive capacity in the face of change. We advocate the use of assessments similar to the one conducted here to examine unintended consequences of other climate-related or conservation interventions on community resilience.

The authors would like to thank A Faria for his early contributions to this study, and M Jacobson, S Mawutor, and J Pelletier for their insightful comments and suggestions to improve this paper.

The data that support the findings of this study are available upon request from the authors.