REDD’ing Forest Conservation: The Philippine Predicament

Background

Deforestation in developing countries generates roughly 20 percent of global greenhouse gases. Consequently, climate change decision makers established the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) in 2008. REDD intends to assign financial value to standing forests, creating incentives for forest users to prevent exploitation. The program aims to generate economic value for forests as carbon sinks and incentivize carbon storage through funding. In the Philippines, commercial logging, agricultural expansion, and mining development primarily cause deforestation. Philippine forestry legislation has promoted outdated policy supporting deforestation. This changing policy undermines subsistence interests, leading to tenure insecurity and local conflicts. The Philippine Climate Change Act of 2009 supports UNFCCC objectives but vaguely addresses implementation, often overlooking indigenous subsistence practices and focusing on state-led mitigation through REDD in the forestry sector.

Goals and Methods

This paper clarifies concerns about the REDD program by connecting a structural analysis of REDD with a place-based analysis of Philippine forest politics. It investigates the political ecology of Philippine forestlands, examining the complexity of land classification, definition, and tenure politics. The paper critically examines the nature and politics of carbon commodification mechanisms like REDD, including MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification), forest management approaches, ownership, the state, and the situation of Philippine IPs (indigenous peoples).

Conclusions and Takeaways

REDD programs, intended as climate change mitigation tools, often benefit corporate entities disproportionately while marginalizing other groups. The situation in the Philippines illustrates the intricate nature of forest politics and its history with private, financially driven interests. Actors frequently manipulate policies aimed at ensuring livelihoods and social justice to serve elite interests, thereby negatively impacting local communities. The structure of REDD tends to perpetuate socioeconomic inequality on a global scale and centralizes operations, hindering the implementation of decentralized forest management in the Philippines. Considering the local variations and contested nature of forestlands, standardized REDD approaches are generally ineffective. These approaches may prioritize financial profits, lead to forest privatization, and disregard local autonomy, potentially granting control to the very actors responsible for environmental destruction. Concerns exist that actors will implement REDD in an exclusionary manner, mirroring previous experiences with programs like NIPAS and potentially overriding the claims of indigenous populations.