Multilevel governance and carbon management at the landscape scale

Managing forest ecosystems requires an understanding of political, socioeconomic and ecological dynamics. From decision-making to benefit-sharing to MRV,  REDD+ is a multilevel process crosscut by issues of scale and multiple actors and institutions, and thus faces both the challenges and opportunities of cooperation and integration across government levels and among sectors such as agriculture, forestry, energy, finance and rural planning. Nevertheless, land use decisions are currently based on poor understanding of tradeoffs regarding carbon effects of different land uses. With effective governance institutions and better scientific information at the landscape scale, REDD+ can be used to align development and poverty reduction imperatives while sustaining landscapes and reducing carbon emissions.

This Module provides a prescriptive approach for designing effective multilevel institutions and processes that can overcome economic and policy barriers which hamper the implementation of REDD+ and other low-carbon land use policies. This Module’s research uses modeling techniques and scenario-creation to analyse alternative futures (or carbon outcomes) based on different land use policies, and presents a method for carbon monitoring at the landscape scale. Field research is also conducted to analyse economic and political incentives that influence how land use decisions are made at the landscape scale. The research will look at 3-5 countries, including Peru, Tanzania and Indonesia.

Activities that will be carried out under these research projects include screening and compilation of existing carbon data collection and new data collection where required; adapting and improving existing carbon simulation models, such as CO2FIX and Dinamica EGO, to allow easier simulation at the landscape scale under different land use change scenarios; and qualitative data collection and analysis to understand relations among governance actors at different levels and economic and political drivers of land use decisions at the landscape scale.

Ultimately, the research generated will form the basis for developing principles and options for REDD+ design and land use decisions that address multiple ecological values at varying spatial, cultural, temporal and economic scales.