Description:
Abstract: "Interventions to ?improve? the human condition through democratic and
capitalist ideals increasingly draw on capital and markets to influence governance in line
with Western mandates of state building. As a major recent example, Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Forest Degradation ?plus? (REDD+) develops new market regimes
to govern, finance, and trade carbon in line with donor discourses of civil liberties, market
expansion, and, more broadly, state building. Emerging REDD+ networks that aim to
finance and trade carbon now align with the conditionality and ideals of democratic
governance, transparency, and accountability through processes of institution building
(for state stability). This paper examines the connection between REDD+ projects and
state-making ideals in policy and practice as bilaterals and NGOs fuse the conditions
and governance of one with the other. In the Lao PDR we argue that the governance
machinery and interventions associated with REDD+ facilitate governance agendas to
manage people, goods, and carbon in line with Western narratives of robust governance,
free markets, and integrity. We contend that the adoption of REDD+ will nudge local
markets and governance in this postsocialist bureaucracy toward such principles, but in
ways that partly reinforce the state?s longer term political and economic objectives. We
conclude that, rather than conserve carbon per se, REDD+ governance reflects a tempered,
less absolute ?extraterritoriality?, where its transnational influence is differentiated
depending on how assumptions and ideals align with state motives in the context of forest
governance, democratic reform, and rural development."...
Keywords: climate governance, REDD+ policy, market-based mechanisms, agrarian
change, Laos PDR
Source/publisher:
Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 2014, volume 32,
Date of Publication:
2014-11-06
Date of entry:
2015-02-03
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Language:
English
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Format:
pdf
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188.37 KB