Legitimacy

In the Puerto Ocopa community in Peru, there are clear communication patterns around monitoring activities across different levels. The monitoring subcommittee is expected to maintain frequent communication with the monitoring committee, the community president and the local monitoring entities, with information also shared to the community at large in communal assemblies. For example, in the case of environmental threats, the monitoring subcommittee reports the threats to the community head and then, if necessary, to the indigenous organization or the relevant government forest institution. This established information channel allows for fluid communication across actors and facilitates information sharing, even in the face of local leadership challenges or changes in leadership (Kowler et al. 2020^[1]).

In Brazil, the political commitment to women’s representation in REDD+ is strong, with many female representatives in the national REDD+ committee. Brazil’s Ministry of Environment has also established a Gender Committee to discuss actions for gender equality in REDD+ projects, while Brazil’s National REDD+ Committee ensures gender balance among representatives within all REDD+ Thematic Advisory Boards (Pham et al. 2021^[2]). While political representation alone is not enough to guarantee true gender equity, the establishment of various committees dedicated to gender equality and balance can help promote an environment where women have many opportunities to express their opinions.

Bee and Sijapati Basnett’s (2016^[3]) review of REDD+ programme design in various countries showed gender being understood as ‘equal participation’ of women and men in REDD+ design as part of the monitoring, reporting and verification requirement; yet without a clear understanding of what that meant or how to achieve meaningful participation for a range of women. There was also an assumption that women’s participation would automatically lead to benefit sharing arrangements that would promote gender equality. As part of the monitoring, reporting and verification process for REDD+, each country involved is required to collect and provide information as to how safeguards, including gender, are being addressed and respected. However, a lack of clear guidance on how to go about doing this has meant that gender is addressed in reductionist ways, with gender running the risk of being rendered a technical or political item to check off in the checkbox (Bee and Basnett 2016^[4]).

The Acre State System of Incentives for Environmental Services (SISA), which the state of Acre passed into law in 2010, recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples, establishes social and environmental safeguards and commits to equitable benefit sharing. Prior to being signed into law, Acre’s SISA underwent an extensive research and consultation process, involving Indigenous Peoples and other potential beneficiaries, as well as state and federal authorities and civil society. In 2015, following a five-year planning, consultation and verification process, Acre became the first jurisdiction globally to develop and apply REDD+ Social and Environmental Standards as part of the SISA programme. SISA also established important mechanisms for governance, transparency, accountability and oversight, including the State Commission for Validation and Monitoring (CEVA), a multistakeholder commission made up of both public authorities and civil society, as well as the Indigenous Peoples Working Group (GTI), which includes representatives of SISA, the National Indian Foundation, State Secretary of the Environment , Acre’s Climate Change Institute, Acre’s Secretary of Indigenous Affairs, and 19 indigenous associations (DiGiano et al. 2018, 7^[5]).

In the Peruvian Alto Mayo REDD+ project, an NGO partnered with the government to make conservation agreements with local settlers who were occupying a protected area and would otherwise be threatened with expulsion. Local communities initially resisted the deal because they believed their land was being bought up by the NGO and its corporate partner. In response, the NGO carried out a much more far-reaching participatory information sharing process than it had originally planned to ensure that local people understood the project. The efforts of the NGO won over many local people living in the area, who began viewing the process as legitimate and the project as their best option. While some people did not wish to participate in the programme, thereby demonstrating how distribution options have been rejected by those who still believe their land rights should be recognized, for households that have signed on, the project signs conservation contracts that are renewed annually and grants technical support to households to improve coffee production in return for zero deforestation (Myers et al. 2018^[6]). Going the extra mile to ensure that local people understand the project and feel they can sufficiently participate can contribute to the success of a project.

A study examining the indigenous communities of Loma Linda Laguna and San Pedro de Pichanaz that were involved in Peru’s Conditional Direct Transfer Programme found a lack of information dissemination between the monitoring subcommittee and those not directly involved with monitoring activities. Monitoring subcommittee members revealed that they withheld information from the community at large to avoid confusion. Additionally, the National Forest Conservation Programme only provided learning and training opportunities to members of the monitoring subcommittee. Consequently, at communal assemblies, monitoring subcommittee non-members were unfamiliar with the environmental terms and concepts used by monitoring subcommittee members. The limited information sharing with the community at large and the closed-off capacity building opportunities could undermine engagement and trust between the indigenous communities at large and the transfer programme (Kowler et al. 2020^[7]).

In Indonesia, a common element of jurisdictional approach initiatives has been the establishment of supportive multistakeholder bodies. While these forums are becoming more common, an obstacle to the effective functioning of several such groups has been the lack of trust between various stakeholders. Often, this is due to the historical legacy of past conflicts over natural resources.

For example, in Riau province, many civil society organizations, academics and even government officials bear an animus against the large pulp and paper sector companies that were responsible for large-scale forest and peatland destruction and associated social conflicts until relatively recently. Despite their stated desire to contribute to jurisdictional approach initiatives in the province, those companies were not initially welcomed into the multistakeholder processes now underway. Similarly, in West Papua and Papua provinces, cooperation among civil society groups has been hindered by differences in strategic approaches. Although the Manokwari Declaration commits to protecting both forests and indigenous rights, conservation groups have tended to prioritize seeking official protection for remaining forest areas to safeguard them from conversion to commercial-scale plantations.

Rights-oriented groups have viewed those efforts with suspicion, insisting that recognition of indigenous rights to those areas must be secured first. More broadly, this lack of trust among different elements of civil society may have contributed to the limited integration of the indigenous rights agenda into the practice of jurisdictional approaches in Indonesia (Seymour et al. 2020^[8]). Building groups and forums for stakeholders to interact is only the first step. Building and fostering trust among the different stakeholder groups is crucial to seeing real progress.

Information sharing and transparency were not issues with the REDD+ project in Nomedjoh village in Cameroon, in large part due to the efforts of local authority figures, who helped with the disclosure of information about project activities during the FPIC process. Interviewees praise the local pastor for helping in bridging information gaps and enhancing local residents’ rights and the goals of the project. This seems to be especially the case given that a large proportion of villagers are illiterate. This case study highlights the important role that local authority figures can play in helping disseminate information about REDD+ projects to the broader community (Tegegne et al. 2021).

A study examining the indigenous communities of Loma Linda Laguna and San Pedro de Pichanaz that were involved in Peru’s Conditional Direct Transfer Programme found a lack of information dissemination between the monitoring subcommittee and those not directly involved with monitoring activities. Monitoring subcommittee members revealed that they withheld information from the community at large to avoid confusion. Additionally, the National Forest Conservation Programme only provided learning and training opportunities to members of the monitoring subcommittee. Consequently, at communal assemblies, monitoring subcommittee non-members were unfamiliar with the environmental terms and concepts used by monitoring subcommittee members. The limited information sharing with the community at large and the closed-off capacity building opportunities could undermine engagement and trust between the indigenous communities at large and the transfer programme (Kowler et al. 2020^[9]).

In Indonesia, a common element of jurisdictional approach initiatives has been the establishment of supportive multistakeholder bodies. While these forums are becoming more common, an obstacle to the effective functioning of several such groups has been the lack of trust between various stakeholders. Often, this is due to the historical legacy of past conflicts over natural resources. For example, in Riau province, many civil society organizations, academics and even government officials bear animus against the large pulp and paper sector companies that were responsible for large-scale forest and peatland destruction and associated social conflicts until relatively recently. Despite their stated desire to contribute to jurisdictional approach initiatives in the province, those companies were not initially welcomed into the multistakeholder processes now underway.

Similarly, in West Papua and Papua provinces, cooperation among civil society groups has been hindered by differences in strategic approaches. Although the Manokwari Declaration commits to protecting both forests and indigenous rights, conservation groups have tended to prioritize seeking official protection for remaining forest areas to safeguard them from conversion to commercial-scale plantations. Rights-oriented groups have viewed those efforts with suspicion, insisting that recognition of indigenous rights to those areas must be secured first. More broadly, this lack of trust among different elements of civil society may have contributed to the limited integration of the indigenous rights agenda into the practice of jurisdictional approaches in Indonesia (Seymour et al. 2020). Building groups and forums for stakeholders to interact is the first step; building and fostering trust among the different stakeholder groups is crucial to seeing real progress.

Citizen participation in local government decision making in Tanzania has been enhanced by amendments to the Local Government (District Authorities) Act of 1982. The Act provides for councils to organize public hearings for people to question political leaders. The Act also empowers Councils to establish special kinds of service boards open to all citizens in the area, providing an opportunity to influence service provision. Participatory budget making has been enabled by bottom-up budgeting through ward development committees, and has become a means to increase resident participation, with greater village governance through enhanced local participation, accountability and transparency (Kesale 2017). While provisions like these are not uncommon in REDD+ countries, REDD+ initiatives vary widely in their engagement with local governments.

In a REDD+ case in Ucayali, Peru, project proponents created a “representative organization” made up of community indigenous authorities to avoid dealing directly with the broader community. The communities agreed because it would provide them a voice to which the project proponents would listen. The solution was efficient for the project proponents, but hardly effective for communities, as they viewed their input and perspectives filtered through a small group that had little decision-making power and struggled to communicate technical project information to the local farmers they represented (Myers et al. 2018). Representative organizations need to be provided with sufficient decision-making power and capacity training so that they are able to have the means to effect change within a group, especially if the representative organization is part of a marginalized group.

In Indonesia, a new platform for Green Districts emerged in 2017, when eight districts in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi came together to establish the Roundtable for Sustainable Districts or Lingkar Temu Kabupaten Lestari (LTKL). The purposes of LTKL are to provide a platform to support cross-learning among districts that share a vision for sustainability, and to build a support system to implement that vision. At general assembly events, member districts declare their commitments and share insights and lessons learned on how to further environmental sustainability goals (Boyd et al. 2018). Because the information sharing occurs among and between districts – the level of governance with the closest access to local communities – these platforms allow for the priorities of local governments and their constituencies to be kept in mind (Seymour and Aurora 2019^[10]), with constituents’ needs addressed more directly than at higher levels of governance (e.g., state, provincial, national).

In Vietnam, although many REDD+ projects and programmes aim to apply a gender-sensitive approach in allocating benefits from REDD+, little effort has been taken to ensure women have a voice in identifying the benefits they would prefer and how they wish to receive them. A significant number of women have participated in REDD+ processes in Vietnam, but their participation has been limited to consultation, and has failed to influence policy output. The involvement of women should be promoted thoughtfully, rather than being a matter of meeting quotas. As Vietnam already has a critical mass of women working on forest issues at the national level, there is now a need to support their empowerment and build their capacity, so that they might become office bearers and instigators of change (Pham et al. 2016^[11]). Participation should be seen as an ongoing and open-ended process of social change, rather than as a completable outcome.

Vietnam’s Forest Land Allocation (FLA) programme provides tenure security for land users and is aimed at devolving forest rights to local communities and individuals to encourage local forest protection and development in rural forested regions (Trung et al. 2015). How the programme is perceived depends on who you talk to. While local governments in Vietnam perceive FLA to be a success in restricting the land use practice of shifting cultivation, local people perceive the programme to be a heavy burden on their livelihoods, while providing insufficient compensation (Pham et al. 2013^[12]). A lack of local participation in decision making and consensus hampers the programme, and its benefit sharing distribution overlooks the needs of local people. A study found that although the approach of equal payments meets the local interpretation of “equity,” it overlooks other important aspects of what may be deemed fair. Future projects should promote greater involvement of the local population in decision making to include other local interpretations of equity within communities, as this could lead to greater support. Consensus and consultation might lead to project improvements in the form of adjusting payments based on effort, with those engaging in forest protection activities receiving higher payments as compensation; accounting for past achievements made by individual land and forest managers in providing ecosystem services; and respecting the preferences of local populations for equal payments to avoid the possibility of elite capture (Wong et al. 2017^[13]).

In Vietnam, when FPIC was applied to increase the participation of women in REDD+ policy processes, little consideration was given to the heterogeneity of communities. This became evident during consultations where discussions were dominated by outspoken, older men; participants were persuaded to consent without fully understanding REDD+; and meeting locations and timings were not suitable for many women. Although Vietnam’s benefit distribution system mandates non-discrimination towards women and other marginalized groups, including Indigenous Peoples, the system failed to ensure a critical mass of women to accurately represent their views and interests (Pham et al. 2016^[14]). Careful consideration must be taken to consider the heterogeneity among and within communities, as legislation alone proved to be insufficient.

In Mexico, a programme introduced in 2018 called Sembrando Vida (Planting Life) was highly welcomed by two communities studied. The Sembrando Vida programme supports the establishment of agroforestry systems combined with traditional milpa cultivation, lasts five years, and includes individual monetary support disbursed monthly (which is perceived as sufficient for covering transaction costs, and provides net benefits). In addition, the programme allows for the direct participation of non-rightsholders with usufruct contracts or, indirectly, as day labourers. However, the programme operates independently from the national REDD+ policy as it is run by the Ministry of Welfare and is aimed at achieving social well-being, not necessarily carbon objectives. Still, the positive reception towards this programme suggests that community buy-in is a crucial factor in community members’ support and participation in a programme. In comparison, REDD+ programmes that have taken place in the two Mexican communities are not as widely supported by members due to mismatches in timing of benefits and an overemphasis on carbon benefits to the detriment of non-carbon (e.g., income-generating) opportunities (Špirić et al. 2021^[15]).