Reducing Deforestation at the Regional Scale: the Jurisdictional REDD+ Game

To meet global climate objectives, it is essential to reduce emissions from deforestation. So-called "jurisdictional REDD+" aims to reduce deforestation by monitoring and rewarding deforestation at the regional scale. To help decision-makers and stakeholders better understand the potential advantages of jurisdictional approaches, Ecologic Institute is developing a paper-based game to illustrate the key concepts. The game will be supported by teaching materials and event organisation, in collaboration with the client Environmental Defense Fund.

Recent news coverage has focussed attention on the perceived failure of current voluntary carbon market-approaches to paying to avoid deforestation. Current project-based approaches have been accused of overinflating the impact on deforestation, leading to low quality offset credits that are not matched by real mitigation. Jurisdictional approaches to reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) promise to avoid some of the pitfalls befalling current project-based approaches. Instead of rewarding individual projects, jurisdictional approaches monitor and reward avoided deforestation at the regional scale. This higher scale can help ensure that avoided deforestation is additional to business-as-usual and avoid emissions "leakage" to neighbouring areas. It also allows coordinated, public responses to deforestation, and could support more equitable sharing of benefits and inclusive decision making – issues that are especially important in regions where forests are on indigenous lands, such as in the Amazon.

The project aims to increase stakeholder and decision maker understanding of jurisdictional approaches to REDD+. To this end, Ecologic Institute will develop a simple paper-based game to illustrate the jurisdictional approach. The game will use representative player types and stylised economic decision making data to explore the differences between jurisdictional and project-based approaches. Ecologic Institute will support Environmental Defense Fund to run game sessions. Training material will also be developed, so that Environmental Defense Fund colleagues and others will be able to run the game themselves.