Let’s not Miss the Forest for the Trees: A reply to Pinto et al. Forests 2017, 8(7), 230

We welcome the comments of Pinto et al. [1] to our article [2]. These comments provide an opportunity to further discuss the general objective of our paper, and also to respond to the specific concerns they raise about the outcomes of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) Sustainable Settlements’ project. Our response underscores three points. Firstly, it is important to restate that the main objective of our analysis is not to evaluate the performance of payments for environmental services (PES) of any specific project in the Amazon. Instead, our contribution aims to present a discursive analysis of REDD+ in the Brazilian Amazon (and possibly elsewhere, to the extent that there are common elements in how REDD+ is presented and talked about elsewhere). We used six examples to illustrate our general argument, of which IPAM’s project is one. Thus, the analysis in our paper is a conceptual and critical theory-building effort, not a theory-testing attempt. Pinto et al.’s comment seems to elide the main thrust of our contribution, and instead focuses on a specific empirical aspect of one of the examples regarding which we in fact provide relatively little discussion or detail (more on this below). Little if any of the work on REDD+ or on PES is attentive to insights from Foucault’s oeuvre, or to the kinds of analytical directions that work on governmentality opens and makes available. We must therefore clarify that their summary statement about our paper, being an interesting analysis to evaluate the performance of payment for environmental services (PES) initiatives in the region (Amazon) is a basic misrepresentation of what the paper does. Secondly, the information we provide in Table 2/on which the larger part of their comment focuses/is not about the performance of REDD+ or PES in the initiatives. Rather, we focus on the needs (i.e., definition of local wellbeing; what is needed to reduce deforestation), hopes and worries of smallholders in relation to REDD+ linked interventions. Smallholders were directly asked about what is wellbeing to them, and about their hopes, as well as their fears, in relation to REDD+ and the initiatives being implemented in the different cases used as examples [3]. In this sense, Table 2 data are not related to the implementation of PES specifically. We indeed state clearly on p.13 of our paper that adequate evidence of PES outcomes in increasing the wellbeing of smallholders in IPAM’s initiative is not yet available. Additionally, the fact that just a small proportion of respondents are now participating in the project does not change how they perceive REDD+ interventions or what they require in order to reduce deforestation or increase their wellbeing. It even raises the question of why they have decided to not be part of the project anymore. Moreover, in this specific case, smallholders had previously participated in the first federal PES program in Brazil/the so called Proambiente. In fact, their participation creates the grounds to try to understand their perceptions and experiences. Investigating their understandings is likely to be useful in thinking about the heterogeneous constructions of subjects, as well as their motivations, interests, and responses to