CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Collins, Yolanda Ariadne |
|---|---|
| Title | REDD+ Unravelled: A discursive analysis of neoliberal forest conservation efforts in Guyana and Suriname |
| Summary | Recently, the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative has been stalling in its progress. Touted as key to halting one-fifth of the world’s carbon emissions, REDD+ quickly rose to become the most accepted effort to integrate the carbon sequestration potential of tropical forests in the developing world into the global effort to govern climatic change. The mechanism seeks to incentivize conservation of tropical forests by providing payments for their conservation and sustainable use. In this dissertation, I put forward reasons for this recent slowdown, asserting that as the policy engages with the social use of the forests, it encounters a politics of intractability not evident in its mostly technical conception. Commencing with a post-structural genealogy of extractivist ethic in the postcolonial states of Guyana and Suriname, I outline the social context of natural resource use with which REDD+ engages. Given the peculiar circumstances of these two countries including densely populated coasts and sparsely populated, extensive forest areas, REDD+ would be expected to encounter a relatively unhindered path. However, its preparation and implementation has been fraught with challenges. Reflecting on the global development narrative, the dominant neoliberal frame and the effort to govern climate change, I question the ability of REDD+ to meet its stated aims, while bringing into focus its associated instrument effects, that which it also does but does not explicitly claim. Drawing on the theoretical framework of political ecology, a discursive analytical approach, and a multi-sited ethnography of REDD+ implementation, I show how this intervention represents different technologies of government that contribute to shaping societies, especially forest dependent groups, into actors amenable to neoliberal governance. Further, the lens of governmentality and a focus on the subject being governed, allows us to move past understanding REDD+ as just an expression of neoliberal governmentality, but as supported by various governmentalities in implementation. In Guyana, REDD+ provides an economic incentive for forest conservation but has failed to challenge the dominance of resource extractive industries. However, it has succeeded at making activities taking place in the forests more legible to governments and other actors geographically situated outside of the forests. Within Suriname, REDD+ is seen by policy makers as an avenue through which age old land rights issues could be pacified, while forested communities demand their explicit remedy and improved development outcomes. In both countries, REDD+ continues in the tradition of extracting actual or ‘fictitious’ value from the forests to support ever elusive development objectives while reigniting historical conflicts on land use. REDD+ contributes to this neoliberalization of development interventions and shifts in human interactions with nature in these localities, even in the communities of those groups frequently lauded as protectors of or dependent on the natural environment. Through technological reliance, REDD+ has facilitated increasing legibility of the forests while crowding out opportunities for meaningful change in addressing the drivers of deforestation and the concomitant reduction in the forests’ capacity for carbon sequestration. |
| Supervisor | Aistara, Guntra |
| Department | Environment Sciences and Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/collins_yolanda.pdf |
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