The lesson of REDD+: Why throwing money at climate change is doomed to fail
By Havana Frakes and Yasemin Cag
What is REDD+?
The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation Initiative (REDD+), an international environmental policy introduced and spearheaded by the UN and the World Bank since 2005, was intended to be a simple and effective solution to deforestation in tropical countries. It should have helped to conserve the environment by, simply put, paying forest managers for not cutting down their forests.
Through its use of natural resources to address climate-related issues, the REDD+ program could be classified as a nature-based solution. Nature-based solutions (NBS) aim to customize sustainability efforts based on the topography of the local region. A successful nature-based solution takes into account regional, social, environmental, and governmental factors. However, while NBS have been demonstrated to have potential as a strategy for environmental protection and regulation, they are not foolproof. REDD+ demonstrates how nature-based solutions can fail to meet their aims when they do not account for the sociopolitical, racial, and colonial histories of the region in which they operate.
When REDD+ was first proposed in Guyana and Suriname, the program seemed like a no-brainer. Located within the Guiana Shield geological formation, around 90% of the territory of both countries is covered by the Amazon rainforest, an ecosystem crucial for climate change mitigation in the region. REDD+ seemed like an excellent way for Guyana and Suriname to keep their rainforests while still profiting from them. So how did this program, in a few short years, become just an amplifier of preexisting racial and economic divides? Maybe a better question would be: would it ever have been possible for REDD+ to satisfy the majority of the people involved within Guyana and Suriname?
The answer is a resounding no. Because of its overreliance on market-based conservation ideology, REDD+ was fundamentally likely to breed division and discontent. The contradictions between how the program would affect different social classes in Guyana and Suriname eventually became impossible to overlook, tarnishing the hopes for an effective nationally led REDD+ program. Now, the focus of these two countries is shifting to earning money by embracing extractive oil and gas industries. Examining where REDD+ went wrong can help us understand what policy solutions would best combat climate change and encourage sustainability rather than fossil fuel reliance.
Many in Guyana and Suriname saw REDD+ as an easy investment opportunity. REDD+ placed a monetary value on the forests of Guyana and Suriname; Guyana agreed to maintain its forests for the period of five years at a cost to Norway of around $250 million. For many, the clear path here was to comply with this financial incentive and get paid. The issue with this understanding of REDD+ is that the monetary greed, the underlying cause of the climate crisis in the first place, was now being presented by the proponents of REDD+ as a solution to the problem it has caused. Seeing nature as an object to be valued financially makes the money earned an incentive, or worse, a justification for protecting the forest. Additionally, this view of REDD+ completely discounts the complex colonial history of the region, which were crucial to shaping the two countries.
Colonial Histories
The British and Dutch colonization of Guyana and Suriname completely changed the racial demographics of the two countries by bringing in new ethnic groups, displacing others, and creating new, unique ethnicities.
Indigenous people of the region, referred to as Amerindians, were expelled from the coastline by European colonisers and forced to remain in the rainforests, which make up the vast majority of Guyanese and Surinamese territory. To this day, Amerindians overwhelmingly live in and maintain the rainforest. Displacement of indigenous people allowed white European settlers to establish colonies on the coast and bring in African slave laborers, adding another non-native ethnic population to the melting pot. Upon abolition, the colonizers flooded the region with indentured laborers from China, Portugal, and India. This forced migration caused many formerly enslaved Africans to search elsewhere for jobs, turning to gold mining within Amerindian-populated forested territories, creating further interracial conflict. In Suriname, enslaved Africans who escaped slavery before abolition set up communities deep within the forests, coming to be known as Maroons. Those who remained on the inhabited coastline came to be known as Creoles.
As a result, the many racial groups brought to the region Guyana and Suriname were incorporated into interconnected webs of power, demonstrating complicated, racialized relations to one another and the environment. These relationships, along with the unique geography of the two countries, makes it challenging to solve issues of racial inequality, and those who have been marginalized throughout colonial history feel the effects of climate change more than others.
Not-So-Simple Solutions
Understanding Guyana and Suriname’s colonial histories shows how REDD+ created further tensions between divided racial groups, relationships already strained by the effects of climate change. The coasts of both countries are prone to flooding, which will become a more significant issue due to climate change. Creoles, living on the shores in Suriname, are likely to be disproportionately affected by this flooding. On the other hand, Maroons and indigenous communities, who primarily populate the forests, may suffer from the influx of people moving into the forests once the coasts flood. Maroons and Amerindians have maintained the forests they live in for hundreds of years despite engaging in minimal deforestation to sustain their lifestyles, a practice which would be seen as a problem under REDD+. Additionally, the focus on deforestation means that REDD+ can actively harm Maroon people who mine gold in the forest, an industry they were driven into as a consequence of colonialism. REDD+ does not consider any of these racial and historical nuances. REDD+, understood as a rational, financially incentivizing policy, sees forest investment as a blanket source of income that will somehow benefit the entire country equally, without considering the stark historical or cultural differences between different groups of people in the two countries.
Ultimately, REDD+ is a policy created to justify the protection of nature through monetary incentives without considering the ethnic and racial groups that will be negatively impacted or forgotten about in the process of its implementation. Because REDD+ continues the systematic processes that have led to climate change, it does not confront the root issues of climate change and ends up harming people and livelihoods. It has also failed at its policy implementation goals, as deforestation continues almost unabated. To make matters worse, the monetary incentive received from Norway pales in comparison to profits currently being offered by large multinational corporations such as Exxon. Since 2015, Guyana and Suriname have discovered immense oil deposits in their offshore territories, which, if extracted, could put them among some of the wealthiest countries per capita in the world. Exxon, known for its harmful practices, such as flaring and human rights abuses, and its sidestepping of climate action, is now offering an almost irresistible amount of money to the Guyanese government in exchange for embracing extractivism. REDD+ and other market-based conservation efforts cannot compete with the amount of money that extractivism promises. The best hope is to move away from market-based solutions and instead focus on community building with one another as well as with nature while realizing the historical injustices that shape our world.
This post was written as a brief compilation and summary of the research of Dr Ariadne Collins, St Andrews School of International Relations.
Image courtesy of Cerros de Mavecure via Wikimedia, ©2011, some rights reserved.
