Without Resolving Inequity Perpetuation Issues, the REDD Concept is a Nightmare to Indigenous Communities of the Emerging Markets
REDD+ at a Glance
REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is a post-modern approach to conservation, sustainable forest management, and forest carbon stocks enhancement. Typically, this mechanism is anchored on capitalizing the tropical forests carbon storage capacity (about 100–300 tons of CO? per hectare) to reduce emissions. Under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, the mechanism encapsulates allowing developed countries (and companies) pay developing countries to keep their forests standing to sustain carbon sequestration as opposed to clearing them for timber, ranching, growing soy, palm oil, or smallholder agriculture. This contributes to saving the world from emissions through more sequestration and less carbon emission.
REDD+ as a Carbon Credit Support Mechanism
The core idea behind REDD+ is preventing forests from being cut down so the amount that is being emitted can be reabsorbed to nature. In this sense, a unit of forests that is saved translates to emissions saving. The “saved” emissions are calculated by those who offer to limit deforestation. Thereafter, they convert these savings into carbon credits and commoditize them in carbon markets (both compliance and voluntary). The main clients for these credits are airlines, oil companies, and governments. Average credit price for high-quality REDD+ was $8–25 per ton of CO? as of 2024–2025. These prices may go up with co-benefits.
As of 2025, about 250–300 million hectares of tropical forest are now under some form of REDD+ or jurisdictional program. Approximately 40–50 million new REDD+ credits come to market every year. A majority of these credits are sold by Indonesia, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, DRC, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia. Verra issues Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) following registration of projects under the Verified Carbon Standard. The projected ad]re then subjected to third-party verification, to demonstrate GHG reductions or removals. Currently, one VCU = 1 ton of CO2 emission (denoted as tCO?e). REDD+ project developers are then permitted to sell VCUs on voluntary (primarily) or compliance markets via direct negotiations, brokers, or exchanges. Verra has issued >1.3 billion REDD+ credits since 2008.
The Condition of Additionally in REDD+
Additionality in REDD+ implies that verified emission reductions or carbon stock enhancements must be additional to what would have occurred without the REDD+ intervention. Precisely, facts must be presented that that forest protection or restoration couldn’t be achieved under business-as-usual scenarios. This serves as the best approach to ensuring that the REDD+ program climate benefits are genuinely new and not already expected. To prove additionally, the offeror must [resent facts that the forest was sincerely at risk of being cleared, and converting it to a REDD+ zone stopped it by imposing strict rules on what people can do inside the project area. It should also be evident that no new agricultural clearing for subsistence farming, timber or firewood harvesting, hunting and grazing in core zones took during the period when REDD+ was in force. Sometimes it is crucial to present proof that relocation occurred.
REDD+ Implementation Gaps
The conditions for effective REDD+ execution include Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) with the local communities that are stakeholders, clear and transparent benefit-sharing plans, and independent grievance mechanisms. There are genuine cases showing that well implemented REDD+ projects may share benefits fairly. These include Acre Jurisdictional REDD+ in Brazil where benefits were shared partially and Mozambique’s Sofala Community Carbon. However, several other cases depict massive violation of REDD+ guidelines, generating finance, governance, safeguards, and integrity gaps have been experienced, leading to suboptimal outcomes that worsen the conditions of the communities where REDD+ is being implemented in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Table 1 below summarizes this information.
| REDD+ Gap | Illustration |
|---|---|
| Coercion and deliberate violation of informed consent principle when setting up REDD+ zones |
The global south governments are the main signatories of REDD+ deals. They formulate relevant rules under national forest laws. Cases of local governments in the global south forcing indigenous communities to sign REDD+ agreements under pressure or with unequal bargaining power have been reported in various regions including but not limited to: i. Papua New Guinea’s East Pangia Region (affecting 45000 people) ii-Matses Territory in Peru iii- Alto Rio Guamá and Kayapó in Brazil iv. Chiapas Space of Mexico Once REDD+ zones are established, residents are often forcibly displaced by private security to "protect" the area. In Mexico, a REDD+ project tied to California's carbon market was condemned as a land grab, with refusing communities facing coercive measures including the withdrawal of government medical services—resulting in preventable deaths—as punishment to compel land and local livelihood surrender. Comparable violence occurred in affiliated carbon plantation projects like New Forests Company in Mubende-Kiboga in Uganda, where soldiers allegedly burned homes, causing deaths. These examples highlight a fundamental flaw in the REDD+ mechanism: the substantial financial incentives from carbon credit sales to the global north motivate authorities to impose projects on local communities in exchange for payments. This is quick money for government officials, as all they need is to alter their civilians’ land use to make money. The issue is exacerbated by the common uneven REDD+ proceed distribution pattern in which governments fail to channel the payments from carbon credit sales back to the affected communities whose lands and rights have been appropriated, thereby deepening inequities and undermining the intended equitable distribution of benefits. Government official greed for carbon credits renders genuine informed consent illusory during REDD+ program implementation in the global south. |
| Fraudulent REDD+ zone acquisition technique by outsiders that seem protected by the global south authorities |
The designers of REDD+ mechanism expected transparency during its implementation. Verra should serve as a tracker via its registry rather than a direct seller of credits. Local governments in the global south should be the primary actors of REDD+ execution in their territories. However, several documented cases show local and Indigenous communities being coerced or deceived into signing unfavorable REDD+ agreements by non-local or recognized parties who should not be directly involved, signaling loopholes for fraud. Here are the examples of potential fraudulent activities in REDD+ execution. In Papua New Guinea "carbon cowboys", who are unscrupulous traders, pressured indigenous people into contracts that surrendered land rights and control over REDD+ projects. In Peru, an Australian trader tricked Matsés communities into signing a perpetual contract in English, a language they did not understand, obtaining sweeping authority over their land, forests, carbon rights, intellectual property, and traditional lifestyles. Between 2021 and 2023, Carbonext, a Shell-affiliate allegedly employed manipulative tactics to secure carbon credit deals with Indigenous groups in Brazil, including having people sign blank pages or incomprehensible documents, offering large advance payments to create divisions, providing insufficient consultation time, bypassing the national Indigenous agency (Funai), and violating free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) requirements. |
| REDD+ land seizures seem to disenfranchise indigenous communities deliberately when top government officials sign REDD+ deals |
REDD+ initiatives inspired the reclassification of customary lands as state forest land. This rips off the Indigenous and local communities' tenure rights, which in turn erodes their livelihoods. In Laos, REDD+ projects in Houaphan, Luang Prabang, and Sayabouri provinces targeted areas of ethnic minorities practicing shifting cultivation. Through land-use re-planning, zoning, and mapping under REDD+, traditional village forests were redesignated as state-managed protection or production forests, restricting customary practices essential to community livelihoods. In Indonesia, approximately 70% of the land remains classified as state forest zone (Kawasan Hutan) to permit REDD+ initiatives. Many unrecognized adat forests have been recategorised, despite a 2013 Constitutional Court ruling mandating their exclusion. In Cambodia's Keo Seima REDD+ project, Bunong Indigenous territories were subsumed into state wildlife sanctuaries and community protected areas, converting customary lands into state-controlled zones with ranger-enforced bans on agriculture. This drastically reduced land ownership, shrinking one village's approved area from over 14,000 hectares to 262. Certain REDD+ schemes involve long-term (30–60-year) leases to private companies, as seen in Northern Kenya's conservancies, Mai Ndombe in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Brazil's Suruí project. As land is the fundamental factor of production, severing Indigenous communities in the Global South from it without adequate compensation or alternatives inevitably worsens their economic and social conditions. |
The REDD+ benefit sharing plans are more hypothetical than realistic
During REDD+ zone establishments, indigenous communities are often compelled to surrender their land. For equity principle to be realized, it is vital for these communities to receive a significant portion of the carbon credit payments. However, documented evidence shows that these communities hardly get compensated for losing their land and livelihoods during REDD+ implementation.
Although payments are intended to benefit these communities, they typically get only 5–25% of funds, frequently in non-cash forms such as seeds or training, insufficient to offset restricted forest access. This includes the evidence collected by Verra which show that local communities primarily receive less than 5% of REDD+ carbon credit revenues.
In Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains project, communities reported no compensation, benefit-sharing, or proper Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), with revenues flowing mainly to the state and partners. In Laos, the authoritarian regime suppresses dissent, facilitates land dispossession, and diverts benefits from communities, increasing coerced compliance and tenure risks.
A 2025 UNDP review of national REDD+ approaches highlighted elevated corruption risks in centralized systems, where uniform benefit-sharing ignores local needs. Ultimately, communities often surrender land rights, while project developers, intermediaries, and governments retain the vast majority of credit revenues.
The main beneficiaries of REDD+ seem to be government officials and other major actors. Local communities surrender their land and gain nothing in return. Taking away land, which is the source of livelihoods, in exchange for seeds to plant in smaller land amounts to mockery of these indigenous communities, no matter how we look at it.
REDD+ contains elements of bullying, escapism and defeatism
As the debate on emission reduction heats up, attention should be paid on why and how these emissions have been rising. No matter how one looks at it, REDD+ contains elements of bullying the south, escapism and a defeatist attitude among the northern REDD+ proponents.
REDD+ frameworks often attribute the majority of global deforestation (70%) to smallholder farmers in the Global South, thereby implicating them in ongoing atmospheric carbon accumulation. Empirical evidence demonstrates that industrial-scale drivers, including agribusiness and commodity production, are responsible for approximately 80% of deforestation. The narrative of blaming the global south holds, not because it is factual but because it serves as a form of escapism for REDD+ proponents in the Global North.
Carbon accumulation misattribution under REDD+ justifies imposing stringent restrictions on vulnerable Southern communities while largely exempting powerful Northern corporate actors. This approach constitutes a form of bullying and evasion of responsibility in addressing global emissions. It implicitly conveys: "I bear primary historical responsibility for emissions, yet I shift the greater burden onto you due to your relative weakness and contribution to the current insufficient sequestration. Rather than curbing my emissions, I will compensate you to absorb them—regardless of the impacts on your livelihoods."
Defeatism in the REDD+ mechanism lies in the component of “The Global North totally incapable of reducing emissions to the required level. Let her consider paying someone else (the south) to absorb the emissions generated”
The boundary between REDD+ and carbon colonialism is hard to define
No country has ever achieved economic development through cash transfers/donations or aid alone. In fact, donations may perpetuate poverty by reducing incentives to engage in meaningful economic activities among beneficiaries. The current status of development of the Global North is linked to manufacturing. The north is responsible for the majority of cumulative carbon emissions that have accumulated in the atmosphere today. These are the same emissions that fueled their industrialization and prosperity. They are evidence that manufacturing and effective natural resource exploitation and utilization are central to transitioning from low- to high-income economies.
REDD+ is premised on the idea that developing nations should forgo exploiting their natural resources, like converting forests for agriculture to achieve food security—in exchange for financial payments that can ostensibly allow them to purchase food and essentials instead. This creates an asymmetry: wealthy nations and corporations are permitted to continue high-emission activities that are known to accelerate development, while impoverished communities in the Global South face restrictions on engaging in simple farming and land use essential for their survival and self-sufficiency. This is worsened by the fact that the stoppage of these simple activities is not beneficial at the local level, since its proceeds go to the national elites. In other words, REDD+ implementation promotes the development of the already developed north while the south stagnates or deteriorates economically.
The question remains: how can the Global North justify limiting the development of the Global South through REDD+ cash transfers, to continue with its activities that are responsible for the existing carbon stocks?
The Global North might be losing money to Deceptive REDD+ Projects
Verra has issued over 1.3 billion credits overall, with REDD+ comprising a significant portion. Investigations and analyses have raised serious concerns about the integrity of many Verra-certified REDD+ credits. Over-crediting in REDD+ projects is common, during credit issuance, with exaggeration of baselines. Some projected deforestation rates in unprotected scenarios are blown out of proportion by actors, leading to credits that lack genuine additionality.
The Guardian’s 2023 review of scientific studies, concluded that more than 90% of Verra's rainforest offset credits were inclined to "phantom credits" with overstated threats and no real climate benefit. Science’s analysis of 52 REDD+ projects (66 units) across tropical countries in October 2025 revealed over-crediting and partial gains, with only about 13–19% of credits reflecting uninflated baselines.
Verra has disputed earlier findings, arguing methodological flaws in analyses, and introduced updated methodologies like VM0048 (2023) to address baseline issues. However, critics maintain that systemic over-crediting risks remain, underscoring the need for rigorous, conservative baselines to ensure credible climate impacts.
Considering the evidence of widespread over-crediting in REDD+ projects, the payments for these carbon credits amount to financial transfers from the Global North to the Global South without delivering verifiable climate benefits. If baselines are systematically inflated, the purported carbon offset goals remain unachieved in reality, despite the transactions proceeding as if they were legitimate. This mechanism can be likened to compensating entities or governments for conservation outcomes that are illusory. For the credit buyers like airlines, it amounts to a substantial expenditure with minimal or no genuine environmental impact. By this, REDD+ promotes inefficiencies through a significant misallocation of important resources by governments and companies .
The green grabbing" or militarized conservation attribute through violent REDD+ zone acquisition and enforcement by authoritative local regimes in the global south is overlooked
The initial REDD+ implementation plan required communities to be actively involved and benefit from the program. However, documented evidence shows that in reality, the implementation phase has frequently involved forced civilian relocations accompanied by violence and criminalization of ordinary activities in the global south. In protected zones, rangers, military personnel, and guards routinely evict or fine residents for accessing forests central to their livelihoods.
In Cambodia, under its one-party regime, Indigenous Chong ancestral lands were incorporated into a national park without proper consultation or communal titles. Government rangers, military police, and project staff reportedly carried out forcible evictions, destroying farms, huts, and crops, imposing arbitrary arrests and prolonged detentions, portraying violence and threats during REDD+ implementation.
Similarly, in Uganda, under a long-term authoritarian-leaning government of President Museveni, a REDD+-linked project (backed by the Dutch FACE Foundation, national authorities, and World Bank funding) redesignated areas as national park, leading to brutal displacements of Indigenous Benet people through home destructions and livelihood losses in Bugoma Forest. Parallel experiences affected communities in DRC's Messok Dja
REDD+ execution often intensifies marginalization of the already marginalized people in the global south
We always strive to achieve gender inclusion in all our endeavors, yet gender inclusion remains a pipe dream in REDD+, with only 20% of REDD+ projects incorporating gender-responsive plans. In initiatives across Brazil, Tanzania, Peru, Indonesia, and Vietnam, participants reported significant declines in subjective wellbeing among locals, with women experiencing more pronounced drops. Women faced exclusion from decision-making, heightened restrictions on forest access impacting income and food security, and disproportionate conservation burdens without equitable benefits, thereby reinforcing pre-existing gender inequalities in marginalized forest-dependent communities.
Specific cases illustrate intensified marginalization: violent evictions of Sengwer Indigenous people in Kenya's Embobut and Cherangany Hills (World Bank-linked REDD+ readiness); forcible displacements and crop destruction affecting Chong communities in Cambodia's Southern Cardamom project; limited governance inclusion and elite capture disadvantaging. Pygmy groups and women in DRC's Mai-Ndombe; and spatial displacement of ethnic minorities like Hmong in Vietnam through migrant-driven land changes. These patterns underscore the underrepresentation of women and Indigenous peoples in REDD+, risking a regression to centuries-old gendered and colonial exclusions.
