Discourses on REDD+, land and people in the Norwegian-Indonesian REDD+ partnership

In 2010, Norway and Indonesia signed a bilateral agreement on their partnership on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). REDD+ is a mechanism that aims to reduce forest-based emissions in developing countries, compensating them with international funding. Norway committed to provide funding for Indonesia’s efforts to implement REDD+ and, once implemented, provide result-based payments for reduced emissions. The concept of REDD+, which originated from a technocratic, market-based idea, changed to put more focus on social, ecological and economic co-benefits. On the local level in Indonesia, a strong discussion on customary land rights and people’s benefits evolved within the early implementation phase. Access to and control over land has historically been a contested issue for Indonesia’s people, with colonial control over land, transmigration programmes and legislations during New Order. Recent developments such as the global land rush and the introduction of REDD+ have produced new realities for Indonesia’s land situation. This study aims to investigate REDD+ and Indonesia’s land and people by applying discourse analysis. On the one hand, the study investigates how discourses in environmental governance, deforestation and REDD+ become apparent within the Indonesian-Norwegian REDD+ partnership. On the other hand, it aims to identify local discourses and representations of land and people in REDD+ in the Indonesian context. Indonesian land and people are approached through a political ecology, focusing on actors and scales. Land, as a natural, but social resource is theoretically explored through the concepts of access and exclusion and incorporated into meta-discourses in REDD+. The methodology of discourse analysis applied is based on Foucauldian Discourse Analysis combined with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on the text-level after Norman Fairclough. The study identified a positive, managerial discourse, a moderate, reform-oriented discourse and a critical counter discourse based on their attitude towards REDD+ and found all of them apparent within texts on the Norwegian-Indonesian REDD+ partnership. Through the application of a CDA, linguistic features of the discourses could be detected. The study further showed that, while on an international basis REDD+ is framed as a solution to climate change, the concept is rather used opportunistically and with a strong focus on rights on the local scale. There are two main representations of land in REDD+, the one framing the right to land as a precondition for REDD+ and the second one highlighting its technicalities

Relative genome size variation in the African agroforestry tree Parkia biglobosa (Fabaceae: Caesalpinioideae) and its relation to geography, population genetics and morphology

Variation in genome size and in chromosome number can be linked to genetic, morphological and ecological characteristics, and thus be taxonomically significant. We screened the relative genome size (RGS) and counted the number of mitotic chromosomes in the African agroforestry tree Parkia biglobosa, a widely distributed savannah species that shows conspicuous morphological clinal variation and strong genetic structure, and tested for linkage of RGS variation to geography, leaf morphology, and population genetic variation. An improved protocol for the preparation of chromosomes was developed. The study is based on 58 individuals from 15 populations covering most of the distribution range of the species. We observed differences in RGS among individuals of up to 10.2 %, with some of the individuals differing statistically in RGS from the bulk of screened individuals. Most of the RGS variation was within populations whereas variation was unrelated to any of the tested features of the species. Those chromosome numbers which could be exactly established were invariable 2n = 2x = 26. In conclusion, there was no evidence from the karyological data for structured intra-specific taxonomic heterogeneity.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author