Experiences from incentive-based forest management are examined for their effects on the livelihoods of local communities. In the second section, country case studies provide a snapshot of REDD developments to date and identify design features for REDD that would support benefits for forest communities.

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.

As new mechanisms for "reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation" (REDD) are being negotiated in international climate change talks, resource tenure must be given greater attention. Tenure over land and trees--the systems of rights, rules, institutions and processes regulating their access and use--will affect the extent to which REDD and related strategies will benefit, or marginalise, forest communities. This report aims to promote debate on the issue. Drawing on experience from seven rainforest countries (Brazil, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guyana, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea), the report develops a typology of tenure regimes across countries, explores tenure issues in each country, and identifies key challenges to be addressed if REDD is to have equitable and sustainable impact.

Participatory Research in Conservation and RuralLivelihoods: Doing Science Together starts from theunderstanding that all people create knowledge and that thecreation of sustainable livelihoods and of conditions that protectand sustain rural ecosystems are interrelated. Here local experts and professional researchers writeindependently about the participatory research processes throughwhich they created new knowledge together. They demonstrate thatinterdependent science can produce more accurate and locallyappropriate data, while frankly addressing persisting issues suchas unequal power, whose knowledge and what ways of knowing count,whose voice can be heard or appear in print, and other dilemmas ofthis practice. Conservation scientists and practitioners will bothbenefit from reading this book. First book to examine community participatory researchtechniques that focuses on conservation aims Unique book in that it is written from the perspective ofparticipating community volunteers and researching scientists Part of the prestigious Conservation Science and Practiceseries published in association with the Zoological Society ofLondon "Participatory Research in Conservation and RuralLivelihoods is brilliant, passionate, and inspiring..." Richa Nagar, University of Minnesota, co-author ofPlaying with Fire

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

To date, REDD+ projects in Laos have made relatively conservative choices on driver engagement, focusing on smallholder-related drivers like shifting cultivation and small-scale agricultural expansion, to the exclusion of drivers like agro-industrial concessions, mining concessions and energy and transportation infrastructure. While these choices have been based on calculated decisions made in the context of project areas, they have created a pair of challenges that REDD+ practitioners must currently confront. The first is lost opportunity. By not engaging industrial drivers of forest loss, REDD+ misses an important chance to engage with high level economic decision making. This has implications not only for climate change mitigation, but more importantly for efforts to make Laos’s current trajectory of natural resource-intensive development more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. The second challenge is more immediate. Due to the political-economic circumstances under which forest loss occurs, there is a significant gap between loss that is planned and loss that can be accounted for under REDD’s “national circumstance” allowances for planned deforestation. This means that REDD’s positive impacts on mitigating forest loss, to the extent that they occur, may be swamped by planned but unaccountable forest loss, and thus difficult or impossible to verify. Thinking bigger on issues from driver engagement to spatial planning and concession regulation to land tenure and rural livelihood possibilities thus presents not only a series of opportunities, but a series of imperatives.