In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Emmanuel O. Nuesiri critically examines the United Nations’ REDD and REDD+ programmes (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus the sustainable management of forest and enhancement of carbon stocks) in Nigeria and finds them to exclude politically weak rural people.
In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Manali Baruah scrutinizes elite formation and elite capture through the case of a Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) in western Ghana.
In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Susan Chomba focuses on the local institutions chosen as partners by a prominent United Nations’ Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation programme (REDD+) project in Kenya and the implications of this choice for local democracy.
In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Melis Ece, James Murombedzi and Jesse Ribot show how, though all major agencies intervening in community-based and carbon forestry – such as international development agencies, conservation institutions, and national governments – state that their interventions must engage local participation in decision making, forestry interventions conversely weaken local democracy.
In this special issue on Disempowering Democracies, Dan Brockington reviews the book Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico (Studies in Comparative Energy and Environmental Politics) by Prakash Kashwan.
Kamaljit Kaur Sangha and Jeremy Russell-Smith propose an integrated ecosystem services (ES) valuation framework for an indigenous savanna estate in northern Australia, describing how capabilities along with biophysical and socio-cultural ES benefits play a vital role for peoples’ well-being.
Allison L. Mayberry, Alice J. Hovorka and Kate E. Evans use qualitative methods to explore human experiences with elephants and perceived impacts of elephants on human well-being in northern Botswana. They emphasize the importance of investigating both visible and hidden impacts of elephants on human well-being to foster holistic understanding of human-elephant conflict scenarios and to inform future mitigation strategies.
In this Special Section on the Green Economy in the South, Peter Howson reflects on the Sungai Lamandau REDD+ demonstration activity in Indonesia. He focuses on “intimate exclusions” – everyday processes of accumulation and dispossession among villagers and small-holders – to highlight the hazards of developing REDD+ projects structured with limited sympathy for marginalized actors.
Kimberly R. Marion Suiseeya draws attention to the persistent justice debates in Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation plus the enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+) and the role of norms in constraining and shaping policy designs and outcomes.
Across eleven chapters, the contributors to this edited volume survey the histories of state forestry policy in Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, and Great Britain from the early modern period to the present.
