ABSTRACT

Political ecologists have suggested that carbon forestry, as a payment for environmental services (PES) approach to environmental governance, deepens socioeconomic inequalities in rural communities rather than reducing vulnerability, and that the burden of implementation falls disproportionately on local actors. In some instances it restricts access to communal resources, thereby limiting livelihoods, and in others leads to outright dispossession of land and forest resources through state privatization, or involves coercive reforestation schemes (BeymerFarris 2013; Lansing 2012; Shapiro-Garza 2013). Institutional scholars have expressed concern about recentralization of forest governance through REDD+ and have framed decentralization, often associated with structural adjustment policies in developing countries, in a positive light as a desirable increase in rights and responsibilities for local communities (Phelps, Webb, and Agrawal 2010).