Institutional Mechanisms for REDD+ - Case Studies Working Paper

In interviews, FBD officials said that they expected that aggregate institutions would be intermediates
between central government and villages, and that villagers would decide how to manage and invest their
REDD+ money. 86
Many people interviewed in Tanzania do not believe that REDD+ benefits will be significant. Most of
Tanzania‘s high-carbon forests are in the protected estate while Tanzania‘s miomba woodland is low-carbon
forest. As an example, CARE in Zanzibar anticipates that carbon benefits will be $5–$10 per ha. Many
NGOs, however, advocate that forests provide communities with a wide range of benefits and that the
REDD+ money will not make much of a difference for villagers regarding their decision to protect or cutdown
their forests.
Many NGOs expect that the transaction costs for measuring and monitoring carbon sequestration (either by
government or communities) and for sharing REDD+ benefits will be high. Interviewees had mixed thoughts
about opportunity costs for villages depending on where villages were located and the productivity of their
land.
3.2.2 WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF REDD+ BENEFICIARIES IDENTIFIED IN THE
NATIONAL STRATEGY?
The REDD+ national strategy identifies a wide range of beneficiaries for REDD+ funds to be distributed by
NRTF, including ―government ministries, communities, researchers, students, NGOs and CSOs [civil society
organizations] implementing REDD+ related activities,‖ based on submission of proposals by ―registered
organizations or individuals‖ (Republic of Tanzania, p. 16, 2010).
How local communities will benefit from REDD+ is further addressed in a study prepared by Mwakaje et al.
(2010) as a contribution to the national strategy on the theme ―role of REDD+ for rural development.‖ This
study recommends that REDD+ funds be used for a wide range of forest- and conservation-related activities
(e.g., beekeeping, ecotourism, intensive farming, intensive charcoal use and production training, etc.) to
address all underlying drivers of deforestation.
The VPO 87 supports this idea, and believes that all villagers should benefit from REDD+–including those
with standing forests as well as those planting new forests–to avoid creating incentives for cutting trees and to
prevent leakage issues. Along this line, the VPO also mentioned that protected areas should benefit from
REDD+ to strengthen their management capacity and to reduce illegal logging in these areas.
The FBD said that because most land in the country is Village Land, 88 communities must be involved. There
is a need to develop a performance-based mechanism to determine who benefits from REDD+ and how
much they should benefit from the process. It was not clear, however, that there was agreement on the type
of performance that should be rewarded through the national scheme (e.g., rate reduction, new growth, etc.).
There is broad recognition that measuring reductions in the rate of deforestation is difficult and measuring
reductions in the rate of degradation is even harder. Many people interviewed expect that the performance
measure will be ―increased carbon sequestration,‖ although this leaves open the debate on whom to reward:
those who provide efforts to sequester carbon, or those who produce results (measured decrease in carbon
86 Interview with Dr Zahabu, lecturer at Sokoine University of Agriculture, May 16, 2011.
87 Fred Manyika, interviewed on May 18, 2011.
88 Different Ministries seem to have different assumptions on the amount of Land that is Village Land: according to TNRF and Tanzanian
Community Forest Conservation Network (MJUMITA), the Ministry of Lands considers that 70 percent of land is Village Land, 28 percent
Reserved Land and 2 percent General Land; according to TNRF, FBD considers 43 percent of land is General Land. Moreover, many
government officials do not recognize Village Land that does not have a land use plan or that is not surveyed. George Jambiya says that less than
10 percent of villages have their land registered as Village Land (although registration is not required for the government to recognize customary
land/Village Land). For more information on this debate, refer to Landesa‘s Carbon Rights case study on Tanzania.
PRRGP INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISMS FOR REDD: CASE STUDIES – WORKING PAPER 47