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The Role of NGOs in Forest Governance: Unintended Consequences of REDD+
The proliferation of non-governmental organizations in environmental governance is well known. NGOs took a more active role during the early 2000s supported by the substantial flow of climate change financial aid in the design and implementation of mitigation programs to reduce deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). These programs were conceived under the premise of international flow of resources to finance market-oriented programs to incentivize conservation. However, global carbon markets failed to materialize in a sustainable way, so many REDD+ programs took a results-based approach where the program design included a bundle of interventions aimed at enabling measures or the provision of incentives to protect forests, not always including payments for environmental services (PES).
Traditionally, these REDD+ programs coexist with government regulatory practices establishing restrictions on land use change. However, recognizing the limitations of governments to guarantee compliance, NGOs have different options to participate in land use governance. Incentive-based instruments (like REDD+ programs), are one of the potential tools, but they may also engage in coercive influence through consumer awareness campaigns or by establishing sustainability market standards. In this sense, the participation of NGOs supporting governments’ regulatory efforts is puzzling. Despite having the option to work independently, NGOs collaborate with governments to support regulatory compliance by serving as alternative monitoring agents and by helping small farmers with technical assistance and financial support promoting alignment with mandates. The influence that NGOs may have on the effectiveness of government regulation is not yet well understood. I theorize that this hybrid governance dynamic influences how individuals react to regulation because the proximity to the NGOs as providers of public services such as technical assistance influences how citizens perceive the government too. Additionally, the dual role of NGOs helping regulatory compliance, but also providing incentive-based interventions to deter deforestation is expected to increase the impact on forest conservation. I focus on the cases of Brazil and Peru to test these propositions using household surveys collected in control and treated communities where NGOs implemented a REDD+ program, as well as a framed field experiment where some of these individuals were invited to participate in a forest game. This allowed me to assess individual reactions to government regulation and the influence of REDD+ program participation on their reactions to the game.
Altogether, the analyses indicate that NGOs working on REDD+ implementation in Peru and Brazil had an impact on regulatory efforts through three main mechanisms: a) they supported the alignment of smallholders with regulatory mandates, helping them to comply with regulations, b) they served as alternative monitoring agents, which effectively reduced deforestation when government agents were not present, and c) they incentivized a perceived higher frequency of regulation in areas where they have active involvement. However, I also found evidence of second order effects caused by NGO influence. First, the perception of increased regulation in treated communities also showed an increased likelihood of seeing government regulations as unfair, which ultimately also incentivized a higher individual’s propensity to convert land. Second, I found evidence of increased inequality among smallholders who complied with land use policy mandates in Brazil. The findings have important policy implications for the design of collaborative systems of governance, making sure that the most vulnerable farmers have mechanisms to comply with the regulations but also have the tools for sustainable economic gains. Additionally, the NGOs may also have a more consistent role promoting transparency in the monitoring dynamics between big and small farmers, to make sure the perceived fairness of regulations does not affect their effectiveness.</p
Place-based solutions for global social-ecological dilemmas: An analysis of locally grounded, diversified, and cross-scalar initiatives in the Amazon
The Amazon has a diverse array of social and environmental initiatives that adopt forest-based land-use practices to promote rural development and support local livelihoods. However, they are often insufficiently recognized as transformative pathways to sustainability and the factors that explain their success remain understudied. To address this gap, this paper proposes that local initiatives that pursue three particular pathways are more likely to generate improvements in social-ecological outcomes: (1) maintaining close connections with local grassroots, (2) pursuing diversity in productive activities performed and partnership choices, and (3) developing cross-scale collaborations. To test these ideas we collected and analyzed observations of 157 initiatives in Brazil and Peru, applying a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Our results show that initiatives maintaining groundedness in representing the interests and concerns of local actors while partnering with other organizations at multiple scales are more likely to develop joint solutions to social-ecological problems. Partnerships and support from external organizations may strengthen and enhance local capabilities, providing a platform for negotiating interests and finding common ground. Such diversified pathways demonstrate the power of local actors to transcend their own territories and have broader impacts in sustainability objectives. Our findings highlight the need to make governmental and non-governmental support (e.g., financial, technical, political) available according to local needs to enable local initiatives' own ways of addressing global environmental change