Evaluating the impacts of REDD plus at subnational scales: are our frameworks and models good enough?

Robin Matthews(+1) & George Dyer(1) Globally, deforestation and forest and peatland degradation account for approximately 15% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation Plus (REDD+) has been proposed as a cost-effective way of reducing this figure. However, while there has been much discussion on global institutional architectures required to channel international finance streams to individual countries, what has been largely missing from the debate so far has been how these benefits reaching the national level will be used to encourage change in behaviors at the local level. To devise appropriate policies to achieve this, it is necessary to understand the many factors that influence land use decisions, and also how they interact with each other and other sectors of the economy. In this paper, we discuss some of the frameworks and modeling approaches potentially suitable for analyzing the impacts of REDD+ benefits on reducing GHG emissions at subnational scales.