Climate Change, Forests and REDD ─ Lessons for Institutional Design

A search for new methods for dealing with climate change led to the identification of forest maintenance as a potential policy option that could cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the development of measures for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). This book explores how an analysis of past forest governance patterns from the global through to the local level, can help us to build institutions which more effectively deal with forests within the climate change regime. The book assesses the options for reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries under the international climate regime, as well as the incentives flowing from them at the national and sub national level and examines how these policy levers change human behaviour and interface with the drivers and pressures of land use change in tropical forests. The book considers the trade-offs between certain forestry related policies within the current climate regime and the larger goal of sustainable forestry.

Based on an assessment of existing multi-level institutional forestry arrangements, the book questions how policy frameworks can be better designed in order to effectively and equitably govern the challenges of deforestation and land degradation under the global climate change regime. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Law and Environmental Studies.

Joyeeta Gupta is professor of climate change policy and law at the VU University Amsterdam and of water and environmental law and policy at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft. She is editor-in-chief of International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics. She was and continues to be lead author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment which won the Zaved Second Prize. She has published extensively and is on the scientific steering committees of many different international programmes including the Global Water Systems Project and Earth System Governance.

Nicolien van der Grijp is a senior researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the VU University Amsterdam. Her research interests are related to environmental law and policy at the international, EU and national level. She specialises in applying social scientific research methods to investigate how legal instruments are implemented in practice. She has extensive experience in doing contract research for international organisations, the European Commission, and the Dutch government. She is currently working on an ESPON project about governance arrangements for regional seas (ESaTDOR) and an EU project on marine litter (CLEANSEA).

Onno Kuik is senior researcher in environmental economics at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at VU University Amsterdam. His research interests are in climate change, energy, agriculture and CGE modeling. He has extensive experience as project leader of smaller and larger research projects for a wide variety of clients, including the European Commission, FAO, OECD, Dutch Government, European Parliament, and the European Environment Agency. He has written more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and produced over 100 research reports.