ABSTRACT
The‘common sense’that the essential indicator of well-being is a growing economy has led to a dangerously unbalanced view of progress and is at the root of growing ecological degradation. It dominates sustainable development initiatives, conservation programmes, and climate change policy, from carbon markets, carbon sinks, and carbon offsets, to payment for ecosystem services. REDD+ is based on the same logic, combining patriarchal, outdated, and colonial notions of conservation and progress with neoliberal doctrines of economic growth, low regulation, and‘free markets’, which seek to bring nature and societies to market. Chapter 3 describes the logic behind REDD+ and shows how such conservation-development projects in Indonesia, including the Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve, are really channels for prioritising financial profit, market-access, and economic growth, with lip-service to climate and ecology. It asks who wanted REDD+, in what form, and why and shows how REDD+ reinforces and extends the hegemony of unequal relations, increased commoditisation, and the money economy.
