Fighting Tropical Deforestation

The ebook by Benjamin Stephan focuses on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation and the conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+), a new policy mechanism currently negotiated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Through this mechanism tropical developing countries are supposed to be compensated for reducing deforestation. REDD+ was proposed in 2005 and has since achieved broad support among governmental and non-governmental actors from both industrialised and developing countries. REDD+ itself and the large scale support it receives raises a number of questions that this thesis addresses: (1) The broad support REDD+ receives is rather surprising considering that an attempt to include avoided deforestation as an eligible project category in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was abandoned in 2001 due to major reservations and fierce opposition by a number of actors. How can the broad support for REDD+ be understood in light of this controversial history of avoided deforestation in international climate politics?