Designing and Implementing Effective REDD + Policies: A Forest Transition Approach

Arild Angelsen () and Thomas K. Rudel

Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 2013, vol. 7, issue 1, 91-113

Abstract: Effective policies to halt deforestation depend critically on the forest context. This article uses a forest transition framework to discuss three forest contexts: remote (core) forest areas, frontier forests, and forest-agriculture mosaics. Just as the drivers and capabilities differ across these three contexts or stages, so too do the appropriate government policies. The first stage represents forests that are protected passively by their remote location, where the challenge is to maintain low deforestation rates. Thus high priority should be given to avoiding or redesigning infrastructure developments, resettlements, and other large-scale projects that can accelerate deforestation. Clarifying tenure and local forest rights and creating protected areas can also be helpful. In frontier forests, well-defined property rights, if present, provide a basis for using direct incentive and compensation schemes such as payments for environmental services. Avoiding perverse government policies, such as subsidized credit for deforesting activities, would also reduce the high deforestation rates that characterize this second stage. In largely settled forest-agriculture mosaics, government policies can augment emerging market-based incentives to plant trees. Improved agricultural technologies, which at early stages tend to stimulate agricultural land expansion, can also be important at later stages by increasing food production on existing agricultural land. (JEL: O13, Q28, Q54) Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/reep/res022 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:renvpo:v:7:y:2013:i:1:p:91-113

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Environmental Economics and Policy is currently edited by Robert Stavins

More articles in Review of Environmental Economics and Policy from Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().