Win–win REDD+ approaches belie carbon–biodiversity trade-offs

Recent practise has revealed that conservation interventions that seek to achieve multiple benefits generally face significant, if under-recognized trade-offs. REDD+ policies present prospective win–win solutions for climate change mitigation, rural development and biodiversity conservation. Notably, protecting, enhancing and restoring forests for their carbon sequestration services has the potential to additionally promote the conservation of imperiled tropical biodiversity. However, it has become increasingly apparent that efforts to design a REDD+ mechanism that optimizes emissions reductions and associated co-benefits face significant environmental and economic trade-offs. We provide a framework for conceptualizing the major related policy options, presenting the associated trade-offs as a continuum and as functions of two key factors: (1) geographic targeting, and (2) the selection of specific forest management activities. Our analysis highlights the challenges of assessing trade-offs using existing data and valuation schemes, and the difficulty of paying for and legislating biodiversity co-benefits and safeguards within a future REDD+ mechanism. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. REDD+ as a win–win solution enhancing forests. Although generally considered ancillary to Tropical forests face a new set of win–win expectations. REDD+ policies under development through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would financially reward countries that reduce their carbon emissions through interventions to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, and conserve, sustainably manage and enhance forest carbon stocks (UNFCCC, 2010). These policies could provide large-scale carbon emissions reductions at comparatively low abatement costs (Stern, 2006), while also promoting sustainable forest sector development, enhancing rural livelihoods and protecting biodiversity— multiple objectives reaffirmed during the UNFCCC 17th Conference of Parties (2011a). A future REDD+ mechanism could transfer billions of dollars from industrialized nations to tropical developing countries each year (e.g., Ballesteros et al., 2011). Funds would be used to protect threatened forests, restore degraded forests, improve forest sector planning and governance, and incentivize sustainable management in order to reduce forest-based carbon emissions. They may further generate social co-benefits through conservation payments to landholders and sustainable development initiatives that both improve rural livelihoods and reduce pressures on forests (e.g., Palmer, this issue). REDD+ policies may also deliver significant, additional biodiversity co-benefits by better protecting, managing and ll rights reserved. helps), ted.webb@nus.edu.sg al. Win–win REDD+ approache emissions reductions, biodiversity co-benefits have proved important to early REDD+ project developers (Cerbu et al., 2011; Dickson et al., 2009). Sites where conservation priorities geographically overlap with high carbon density forests are especially likely to deliver win–win outcomes (Busch et al., 2011; Kapos et al., 2008; Strassburg et al., 2010; Venter et al., 2009b). Similarly, REDD+ investments in carbon stock enhancement through reforestation can benefit biodiversity (Kettle, this issue), and REDD+ support for sustainable forest management strategies may provide economically competitive, more biodiversity-friendly alternatives to conventional logging (e.g., CBD and GIZ, 2011). A number of prospective REDD+ interventions may deliver win– win solutions, generating considerable optimism (e.g., Busch et al. 2011; Christophersen and Stahl, 2011; CI, 2010; Djoghlaf, 2010; UNFCCC, 2011a; Viana, 2009). However, there is growing evidence that even where multiple benefits are possible REDD+ policy decisions face significant carbon–biodiversity trade-offs (Hirsch et al., 2010). We provide a framework for conceptualizing the major policy options currently available for a REDD+ mechanism that seeks joint emissions reduction and biodiversity conservation outcomes, and for anticipating the associated trade-offs. The framework facilitates more realistic assessments of the win–win opportunities afforded by REDD+. 2. Acknowledging conservation trade-offs Environmental management often seeks multiple benefits, of which biodiversity conservation is often implicitly or explicitly a s belie carbon–biodiversity trade-offs. Biol. Conserv. (2012), doi:10.1016/ 2 J. Phelps et al. / Biological Conservation xxx (2012) xxx–xxx desired outcome (e.g., Kareiva et al., 2008). The tension between maximizing multiple benefits and accepting trade-offs in previous initiatives is instructive to the REDD+ debate. Integrated conservation and development projects, and community-based management initiatives have traditionally linked livelihood development and biodiversity conservation (e.g., Kremen et al., 1994). Agricultural intensification programmes have jointly promoted enhanced productivity and land sparing for conservation (e.g., Avery, 1997). Similarly, sustainable forest management and reduced impact logging initiatives have sought to maintain forest-based biodiversity alongside profitable extractive industries (e.g., Gascon et al., 1998). Perhaps most recently, the evolution of payment for ecosystem services schemes has presented opportunities to jointly address biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation (Wunder, 2008). Experience with these programmes has shown that while multiple benefits are possible in some contexts, win–win solutions remain the source of considerable debate (see McShane et al., 2011; Hirsch et al., 2010; for debates surrounding the win–win examples above, see Adams et al. 2006; Agrawal and Redford, 2006; Bowles et al., 1998; Garcia-Fernandez et al., 2008; Matson and Vitousek, 2006; Redford and Adams, 2009; Robinson and Redford, 2004). These examples offer ample precedents for REDD+ efforts that seek to both maximize carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. Accepting trade-offs explicitly requires a decision to forego the maximum return of one outcome in exchange for an increase in another outcome. Trade-offs present difficult decisions for policy makers, and often require a reassessment of priorities and expected outcomes (Minteer and Miller, 2011), or even a new definition of intervention success. There is increased recognition that conservation interventions suffer where trade-offs are overlooked (prompting unrealistic expectations), while honest assessments of trade-offs can facilitate problem-solving, improve planning (Hirsch et al., 2010; McShane et al., 2011) and increase conservation success. There have been recent calls to evaluate the trade-offs of REDD+ policy options (e.g., Ghazoul et al., 2010; Harvey et al., 2010; Hirsch et al., 2010), as it has become increasingly apparent that REDD+ interventions are more complex than depicted by win–win representations alone (e.g., Ebeling and Fehse, 2009; Paoli et al., 2010; Phelps et al., 2010b). For example, evidence suggests that a REDD+ mechanism will not automatically yield significant, geographically-distributed biodiversity co-benefits (Ebeling and Yasue, 2008; Paoli et al., 2010; Strassburg et al., 2010; Venter et al., 2009a). Moreover, in some circumstances REDD+ policies may lead to unintentional biodiversity loss, for example if REDD+ policies displace deforestation pressures into other forests (leakage), or if REDD+ redirects funds away from other conservation objectives (Grainger et al., 2009; Miles and Kapos, 2008; Putz and Redford, 2009). Thus, while most REDD+ policies have the potential to deliver multiple benefits (Fig. 1), a future mechanism (1) requires environmental regulations and safeguards in order to protect against unintended biodiversity loss, and (2) would have to be specially designed in order to maximize additional biodiversity co-benefits (Harvey et al., 2010; Pistorius et al., 2010). 3. Conceptualizing carbon–biodiversity trade-offs In general, sites where carbon and biodiversity priorities geographically overlap (e.g., Congo Basin), and where land management approaches favor both carbon and biodiversity conservation (e.g., protected areas), represent prospective win–win outcomes. However, once the obviously attractive investments are implemented, the selection of ‘second-tier’ investments will involve carPlease cite this article in press as: Phelps, J., et al. Win–win REDD+ approache j.biocon.2011.12.031 bon–biodiversity trade-offs (e.g., Miles and Kapos, 2008; Price et al., 2008). Importantly, interventions designed to maximize biodiversity co-benefits may yield less carbon benefits than interventions that prioritize maximum carbon outcomes (Fig. 1; Harvey et al., 2010; Paoli et al., 2010). The associated trade-offs are not binary (all biodiversity or all carbon benefits). Fig. 1 reveals that many of the strategies under consideration for REDD+ support have the potential to deliver win–win outcomes. However, there is a range of prospective safeguards and investment options that offer varying degrees of environmental protection, a continuum of prospective biodiversity co-benefits (Miles and Dickson, 2010) and a range of prospective carbon benefits. Fig. 1 depicts the trade-offs facing forest management interventions that seek to (1) maximize carbon emissions reductions, (2) avoid unintended biodiversity loss through the adoption of safeguards, and (3) maximize additional biodiversity co-benefits. The trade-offs between these three conservation objectives are represented as the function of two key policy dimensions: (1) geographic targeting of where REDD+ interventions are located, and (2) the planning, selection and implementation of forest management interventions. The figure is explained using six scenarios (A–F), which represent specific examples of prospective investments intended to reduce forest-based carbon emissions, although not all are necessaril