The contested role of financial instruments in Brazilian forest governance

• Ano de defesa: 2019
• Autor(a) principal: Richard Jan Arie van der Hoff
• Orientador(a): Raoni Guerra Lucas Rajão , Pieter Leroy
• Banca de defesa: Raoni Guerra Lucas Rajão, Pieter Leroy, Esteve Corbera, Bas Arts, Maria Blockhaus
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Produção
• Departamento: ENG - DEPARTAMENTO DE ENGENHARIA PRODUÇÃO
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: Engenharia de produção; Estudos sociais da tecnologia e expertise; Política ambiental; Política florestal; Instrumentos financeiros; Mercado ambiental; Código florestal; Fundo Amazônia; Mudança do clima; Desmatamento; REDD+; Emissões de carbono; Governança ambiental; Governança florestal
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/30352; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0708-0264

Forests have become increasingly important geopolitical entities in the past two decades, especially in light of their function as carbon sink in the context of climate change. This function has inspired an increasingly relevant policy regime known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), which entails the financial support of successful efforts to reduce emissions. Political debates in general, and particularly in Brazil, have been very controversial on ideas about the adequate modality of this financial support, in which an initial emphasis on using market instruments has been resisted in favor of a results-based payment approach. At the same time, market instruments have not been excluded from forest governance debates altogether. In order to understand the factors and mechanisms that govern the construction of financial instruments for deforestation reduction in Brazil, this thesis adopts a discursive approach that emphasizes the power of discourses and ideas in these construction processes. Through analyses of the National REDD+ Strategy, the Amazon Fund and the Brazilian market for forest certificates, this thesis identifies four conclusions on the use of financial instruments in Brazil. The first conclusion is that REDD+ articulates the common objective of emissions reductions that mobilizes financial resources and other forms of support through various public and private channels. Rather than characterizing REDD+ as a singular financial mechanism, viewing REDD+ as a common objective is that it opens up possibilities for considering a wide variety of financial instruments, including results-based funding and offset-based markets. The second conclusion is that REDD+, understood as the common objective of emissions reductions, , transforms through its operationalization from international via national to subnational levels and dissolves into a forest policy nexus. The concern with emissions reductions is almost exclusively found within national and international governance institutions, while the redistribution of these financial resources across individual projects often does not directly refer to emissions reductions. This understanding allows for a broader diversity of forest conservation approaches and financial instruments. The third conclusion is that formal rules of national institutions govern political debates on and conflicts over financial instruments for forest governance. As such, argumentations change into references to such rules, as the case of REDD+ suggests. In addition, these formal rules both support and obstruct the operationalization of financial instruments, as the case of forest certificate trading testifies. The fourth and final conclusion is that the politics of financial instruments are grounded within an episteme of ‘ruptured dependence’ that emphasizes processes of singularization, valuation and appropriation. The analysis shows that the singularization and monetary valuation components have been constant governing factors for both fund-based and market-based instruments, while appropriation elements have been highly susceptible to politics of discourse. Based on these conclusions, this thesis emphasizes the strengthening of singularization processes to avoid political conflict in existing instruments, or a diversification of results that mobilize financial resources for reducing deforestation. In the short term, one may also consider circumventing the formal rules of national institutions altogether and instead direct financial support to lower governance levels.