REDD at the Community Level: Community Engagement and Carbon Conservation in Indonesia's Forests

Abstract

Cutting back greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation will be a vital step in solving the global climate crisis. Monetizing the value of standing forests through Reduced Emissions from avoided Deforestation and forest Degradation, or REDD, could be crucial to forest conservation, befitting both the climate, communities, and biodiversity. These projects, currently being developed for the voluntary carbon market, are impacting some of the last remaining forests around the world, which are used by over 1 billion forest-dependent people. In this thesis I identify 12 indicators from community forest management literature that tend to predict success in conservation goals,and use these factor to analyze 23 REDD projects developing in Indonesia. I finds that most REDD projects in Indonesia are likely to fail to conserve carbon, based on these indicators. Nonetheless, most projects do not ignore communities; this thesis also explores the mechanisms by which these projects attempt to provide alternative livelihoods and incentives for community members, and looks at the challenges created by that model. Finally, I explore four groupings of REDD projects in Indonesia, based on their community engagement mechanisms, and discuss the overall likelihood for conservation success in Indonesia.