REDD+ and Climate Smart Agriculture in Landscapes : From National Design to Local Implementation

• Main Author: Salvini, Giulia
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2016
• Subjects: Adaptation; Agribusiness; Agriculture; Carbon sequestration; Climate Change; Community supported agriculture; Deforestation; Developing countries; Economics; Emission standards; Emissions; Environmental economics; Environmental engineering; Farmers; Forest management; Forestry; Land degradation; Land use; Land Use Planning; Law enforcement; LDCs; Management; Monitoring systems; Performance evaluation; Population growth; Reforestation; Remote sensing
• ISBN: 9798380572460

Global challenges posed by increasing food demand and climate change (CC) call for innovative and integrated mechanisms that include both agriculture and forests. Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) are the main approaches dealing with these challenges and are currently high on the development agendas. CSA represents in principle a technical solution to food security and adaptation. REDD+ is a global mechanism that is particularly valuable in addressing CC mitigation. CSA and REDD+ are connected through the inherent relationship between forests and agriculture. Despite this, REDD+ and CSA are rather disconnected in reality and there is a growing call for REDD+ interventions to lower deforestation via improved agriculture. The merging of the two can be achieved via a Climate Smart Landscape (CSL) approach, an integrated landscape-level approach that allows to analyse the landscape dynamics leading to deforestation and to assess the trades-off between land uses. The CSL approach emphasizes stakeholder involvement and simultaneous achievement of multiple objectives including food security, rural livelihoods, CC mitigation and adaptation.The transition to CSL relies upon coherent policies that acknowledge the linkages between forests and agriculture. Moreover CSL requires active involvement of stakeholders in different layers of governance, including policy makers, NGOs, agribusiness companies, local farmers and researchers. Hence such a transition is based upon an understanding of local stakeholders’ decision-making, social learning and collective action. The main objective of this thesis was to assess REDD+ and CSA implementation in landscapes and to introduce a framework to enable CSL realization. We performed this assessment via different levels of analysis, from policy assessment to local implementation, structured in four chapters.Chapter 2 provides an assessment of national REDD+ policies aimed at addressing drivers of deforestation and forest degradation (DD). Via this assessment we show that drivers of DD originate not only from inside but also from outside the forest sector (i.e.: agriculture, infrastructure development, mining, etc.). Such results contributed to a deeper understanding of how national REDD+ policies can be (re)designed to better address such drivers. Additionally, we draw considerations about the implications on monitoring systems and on the importance to monitor not only forest cover but also activities outside the forest sector. Such monitoring would provide increasingly detailed information about drivers of DD, allowing the (re)design of more effective REDD+ policy interventionsChapter 3 introduces a framework for an ex-ante assessment of land management policies and interventions and for quantifying their impacts on land-based mitigation and adaptation goals. The framework is centred on local stakeholders involvement in a continuous process of policy (re)design, to make them more tailor made to the specific local context. It includes a companion modelling (ComMod) process informed by interviews with policymakers, local experts and local farmers. The ComMod process consists of a role-playing game with local farmers and an agent-based model. The game provided a participatory means to develop policy and climate change scenarios. These scenarios were then used as inputs to the agent-based model, a spatially explicit model to simulate landscape dynamics and the associated carbon emissions over decades. We applied the framework using as case study a community in central Vietnam, characterized by deforestation for subsistence agriculture and cultivation of Acacias as a cash crop.Chapter 4 provides a first review of projects initiated by agribusiness companies via a Landscape Approach (LA) and their contribution to achieve Climate Smart Landscapes (CSL). Agribusiness companies play an important role in shaping the implementation of the LA, as they often have resources such as physical, financial, human and social capital. Hence they may influence the sustainability of the landscape where they operate by linking with local stakeholders. Our research investigates what drives agribusiness in initiating landscape scale projects and it provides a review of their project activities and their contributions to achieve CSL goals.