The Role of Sustainable Land Management for Climate ... - CAADP

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REDD payments also could have negative impacts on poor people in developing
countries. The prospects of receiving large payments may encourage governments or powerful
private interests to forcibly evict land users from forests and forest margin areas, with severe
negative impacts on their well being. Such problems are particularly likely to arise where
communities and households do not have secure tenure to their land, and where corruption is a
serious problem, both of which are common in forest areas of many developing countries. Such
negative impacts could be offset or even outweighed by investments in improving the livelihoods
of poor rural people, especially those who depend on forests. Whether such investments will
actually take place and be effective in helping poor people depends greatly on the real (as
opposed to the stated) objectives of policy makers or other elite groups (that is, whether
benefiting the rural poor is a real objective supported by political will), on the extent of
corruption, on the capacity of governments to identify and implement policies and investments
that will benefit the affected rural poor, and on the costs of carrying out such policies and
investments. Unfortunately, the developing countries that have the most to gain from a REDD
payment scheme also tend to have greater problems of corruption and weak capacity (Figure 4-
3).
A final concern with REDD payments is that they may substantially increase the supply
of available offsets, flooding the market and crowding out other emissions reductions
(Ecosecurities and Global Mechanism 2008). This is not necessarily a problem if the emissions
reductions from REDD are real and additive, if the objective is to obtain the most emissions
reductions at the lowest cost (which is the main economic rationale for allowing emissions
trading). But, as noted above, assuring the additionality of emissions reductions purchased
through REDD payments will be difficult. This may undermine the effectiveness of emissions
reduction efforts globally (if the reductions are not additive) and hence may erode support for the
entire cap and trade system if the targeted global reductions in GHG emissions are not achieved
as a result.
Solutions to this problem could be to keep the REDD market separate from other carbon
markets (that is, not allow REDD payments to offset other emissions reductions), support REDD
payments through a separate fund rather than carbon markets, or discount the value of REDD
emissions reductions relative to other emissions reductions considered to be more certain and
verifiable (for example, one ton of CO 2 e reduction through REDD could be set to equal 0.5 ton
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