Comparative analysis of FLEGT and REDD+ safeguards in Indonesia (2015)

FLEGT and REDD+ are international forest frameworks that attempt to improve, through norms, principles and rules, the forest governance in developing countries. Because FLEGT and REDD+ go beyond one-shot agreements, but are instead international frameworks, which govern their particular areas of interest, they are considered as regimes. In order to ensure that local stakeholders do not suffer from adverse impact of these two forest regimes, safeguards were implemented into both regimes. Safeguards need to be understood as human-centered policies and strategies that aim to prevent and mitigate adverse impacts, as well as to adapt and improve the livelihoods of people who are likely to be affected by a policy or initiative. The implementation of working safeguards is urgently needed, as research shows that both regimes lead already to unintended, negative side effects. One option to speed up the implementation of safeguards is, according to various scholars, a stronger cooperation between these two regimes, which would, according to these scholars, safe resources and time. This is the point of entrance of this thesis. In fact, the aim of this thesis is to identify areas where a stronger cooperation, of these two regimes, concerning safeguards would be feasible. The geographical focus is restricted to Indonesia. Restricting the study to Indonesia is justified for a variety of reasons, among others because it is one of the very few countries that is active in both regimes. \nTo be able to reach the research aim, safeguards are further split up into three, more measurable, concepts; (1) stakeholder participation in national decision-making processes related to either FLEGT, or REDD+, (2) transparency and (3) anti-corruption measures. Seeing that a variety of scholars have identified considerable discrepancies between what is written down on policy paper and the reality on the ground, the outputs and the (anticipated) outcomes of these two forest regimes are assessed. In order to give valid outlooks how FLEGT/ REDD safeguards are anticipated to work in the future, a historical research analysis of processes related to FLEGT and REDD+ was used to identify barriers and drivers that hinder (enable) a successful implementation of safeguards. The results show that due to both regimes, the forest governance in Indonesia became more participatory and transparent. However, the results suggest also that this was not the result because of the specific design of the regime safeguards, but rather the result of the fact that these two regimes gain legitimacy only when they increase participation and transparency. Concerning anti-corruption measures (except participation and transparency), both regimes have not yet addressed them. In this thesis, various areas where these two regimes could cooperate in the future, including similar reporting, similar distributing channels for information and similar criteria for participation, are identified. However, doubts are justified whether this will actually happen. Not only because both regimes have an uncertain future ahead, but also because the willingness of actors, who are needed for a cooperation, seems not to be there currently.