REDD+ is one of the leading near-term options for global climate change mitigation. More than 300 subnational REDD+ initiatives have been launched across the tropics, responding to both the call for demonstration activities in the Bali Action Plan and the market for voluntary carbon offset credits.

REDD+ must be transformational. REDD+ requires broad institutional and governance reforms, such as tenure, decentralisation, and corruption control. These reforms will enable departures from business as usual, and involve communities and forest users in making and implementing policies that a ect them. Policies must go beyond forestry. REDD+ strategies must include policies outside the forestry sector narrowly de ned, such as agriculture and energy, and better coordinate across sectors to deal with non-forest drivers of deforestation and degradation. Performance-based payments are key, yet limited. Payments based on performance directly incentivise and compensate forest owners and users. But schemes such as payments for environmental services (PES) depend on conditions, such as secure tenure, solid carbon data and transparent governance, that are often lacking and take time to change. This constraint reinforces the need for broad institutional and policy reforms. We must learn from the past. Many approaches to REDD+ now being considered are similar to previous e orts to conserve and better manage forests, often with limited success. Taking on board lessons learned from past experience will improve the prospects of REDD+ e ectiveness. National circumstances and uncertainty must be factored in. Di erent country contexts will create a variety of REDD+ models with di erent institutional and policy mixes. Uncertainties about the shape of the future global REDD+ system, national readiness and political consensus require  exibility and a phased approach to REDD+ implementation.

Constructive critique. This book provides a critical, evidence-based analysis of REDD+ implementation so far, without losing sight of the urgent need to reduce forest-based emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change. REDD+ as envisioned

REDD+ is based on the premise that actors with an interest in reducing emissions will pay for the costs of reducing deforestation. However, concerns have been raised about whether stakeholders in REDD+ host countries will end up bearing at least some of the costs. Drawing on a pan-tropical dataset covering 22 subnational REDD+ initiatives in five countries, we examine the degree to which these concerns about REDD+ are played out. We find that many institutions in REDD+ host countries, particularly subnational governments, are bearing implementation costs not covered by the budgets of subnational REDD+ initiatives. Opportunity costs are typically evaluated in terms of the value of production foregone, but can also be assessed in terms of the number of people affected. We show that expectations about which stakeholder groups will bear the greatest opportunity costs depend on whether the metric is total value or total number of people. The stakeholder groups with the greatest number of people affected are likely to be small-scale actors engaged in legally ambiguous land uses, which is a potential barrier to recognition and compensation of their costs. Our study clarifies the distribution of implementation and opportunity costs by characterizing the institutions and stakeholders that bear the costs of different types of subnational REDD+ initiatives. Thus, it complements common discourses in the benefit-sharing literature about which stakeholder groups have legitimate claims on revenues from REDD+ and should therefore be considered in the design of benefit-sharing systems.

Design Implementation at the National Level.