Forest conservation through voluntary carbon offsetting interventions
type: CreativeWork
description: Ongoing deforestation in the tropics is destabilising planetary carbon cycles, impacting biodiversity and affecting societies the world over. Multiple strategies have been put in place to reduce threats to tropical forests through integrated conservation and sustainable development projects. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) refers to a diversity of mechanisms to help conserve and restore tropical forests, involving local, subnational or national initiatives to support on-the-ground sustainable management and conservation. REDD+ represents a move to support conservation by rewarding forest owners and users to reduce emissions and enhance forest-based carbon stocks, through bundles of interventions including conditional and non-conditional livelihood enhancement activities together with enabling measures and policies. REDD+ has generated debate among policy and academic circles around its lack of (or negative) impacts on social and environmental outcomes. A decade of research on REDD+ has yielded insights about its performance on multiple fronts, particularly on the social impacts, yet little is still known about its effectiveness on preventing land-cover changes and associated carbon emissions. This thesis addresses the question of whether REDD+ projects have helped to prevent deforestation. I approached the problem by producing three pieces of research that range from the applied evaluation of REDD+ to interrogating methodological approaches used to evaluate the impact of conservation interventions, using a representative sample of REDD+ projects across multiple countries operating within the voluntary carbon market. The research provides evidence of the impact of local-based REDD+ interventions in reducing deforestation while examining some of the challenges involved in using quasi- experimental methods to evaluate forest-based interventions. Chapter 2 presents one of the first global assessments of the impact of REDD+ in reducin…
abstract: Ongoing deforestation in the tropics is destabilising planetary carbon cycles, impacting biodiversity and affecting societies the world over. Multiple strategies have been put in place to reduce threats to tropical forests through integrated conservation and sustainable development projects. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) refers to a diversity of mechanisms to help conserve and restore tropical forests, involving local, subnational or national initiatives to support on-the-ground sustainable management and conservation. REDD+ represents a move to support conservation by rewarding forest owners and users to reduce emissions and enhance forest-based carbon stocks, through bundles of interventions including conditional and non-conditional livelihood enhancement activities together with enabling measures and policies. REDD+ has generated debate among policy and academic circles around its lack of (or negative) impacts on social and environmental outcomes. A decade of research on REDD+ has yielded insights about its performance on multiple fronts, particularly on the social impacts, yet little is still known about its effectiveness on preventing land-cover changes and associated carbon emissions. This thesis addresses the question of whether REDD+ projects have helped to prevent deforestation. I approached the problem by producing three pieces of research that range from the applied evaluation of REDD+ to interrogating methodological approaches used to evaluate the impact of conservation interventions, using a representative sample of REDD+ projects across multiple countries operating within the voluntary carbon market. The research provides evidence of the impact of local-based REDD+ interventions in reducing deforestation while examining some of the challenges involved in using quasi- experimental methods to evaluate forest-based interventions. Chapter 2 presents one of the first global assessments of the impact of REDD+ in reducin…
author: Guizar Coutiño, Alejandro
language: eng
keywords: Carbon, Forest conservation, Impact evaluation, REDD+
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/f59162f6-6276-414c-9e95-920eb5aad0a6/download
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date published: 2022-12-29
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:27Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.99064