The UN’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forest and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries (UNFCCC 2009, Decision 4/CP.15), more usually referred to by its acronym REDD+, is becoming the prevailing framework for financing forest conservation (Fletcher et al. 2017; McAfee 2015). The initiative proposes incentives for developing countries to reduce tropical deforestation (Angelsen et al. 2012). The principle is to value forests in situ for their capacity to store carbon, rendering conservation more profitable than destruction while mitigating climate change. The REDD+ worldview considers that placing a value on ecological forest services would enable policy-makers to consider the ecological benefits of forests when making land-use decisions (Pagiola 2011). Valuing the carbon sequestration functions of ecosystems enables REDD+ credits to be bought and sold across borders (McAfee 2015). In this regard, REDD+ has been described as a panacea of nature marketisation, defined as the process of rendering alienable and exchangeable natural things that might not previously have been subject to a market logic (Castree 2010). This conceptualisation of nature conservation is supported by a global discourse that portrays international carbon trading as an efficient, logical and science-based strategy, reconciling the struggle against global warming with the need for economic growth and development (McAfee 2014).
When I carried out ethnographic inquiries in REDD+ projects and institutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), I noticed that REDD+ activities were designed using the market logic described above. The first large-scale REDD+ programme, Mai Dombe Emission Reductions Program (ERP Mai Ndombe), was based on carbon accounting, which would enable the country to trade its emission reductions on voluntary carbon markets. However, findings from my field research indicated that REDD+ credits offered on the voluntary market encountered problems in finding buyers. My observations of the implementation of the REDD+ market-based conservation model in the DRC points to ‘impurities’ or ‘hybrid arrangements’ rather than to a strict market approach. This is consistent with the findings of several market-based conservation case studies conducted around the world (Shapiro-Garza 2013; Dempsey and Robertson 2012; Fletcher and Breitling 2012; Milne and Adams 2012) and reinforces the point that the market has failed to provide funds for forest conservation (Fletcher et al. 2016).
What is less known is how this new model of forest conservation works in the case of limited statehood in central Africa. Marketisation of nature is intrinsically linked to both privatisation and financialisation of nature, defined respectively as the turning over of natural resources from state authorities to firms and individuals (Heynen and Robbins 2005) and giving financial value to a common good and service (Sullivan 2013, 2012). The conjunction of marketisation and privatisation defines the process of nature commodification: the reshaping of natural goods and services into commodities (exchangeable and tradable, into dedicated markets). These interlinked processes are part of what has been described as the neoliberalisation of nature (Castree 2010). As a political programme, neoliberalisation of nature also includes a reconfiguration of the role of the state (Peluso 2007), notably through a withdrawing of state intervention in environmental areas and the integration of market logic in (environmental) state sectors (Castree 2010).
While there is agreement that increasing privatisation of nature conservation reshapes the power relations in environmental governance (Adams 2017; Heynen et al. 2007, Peluso 2007), the role of the state in market-based conservation is rather controversial. Some studies indicate that such governance marginalises state roles and hinges on private companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Igoe and Brockington 2007), while others analyse the reinforcement of the state power by delegation of state authorities to third parties (Corson 2011). Studies in central Africa underline the necessity to observe informal strategies through which states with limited statehood impose their private agendas in the case of growing influence of external actors (Diallo 2015; Ongolo 2015). However, the role of multilateral agencies in such new political configurations of forest management and conservation remains understudied.
In this Congolese case, multilateral agencies, such as the UN-REDD programme and the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), play a central role in promoting a market logic. Building on this, the paper explores the triangular relationship, in which multilateral agencies support the emergence of the private sector, in Congolese conservation and reforestation projects. For this, it combines political ecology and African political anthropology with insights from Franz Neumann’s (1944) political economy analyses. It is particularly inspired by its historical understanding of how a state could have adopted both political authoritarianism and economic liberalism. Neumann has demonstrated how a specific regime has offered a great freedom of action to certain groups such as trade unions and industrialists, while giving the appearance of a strong central power, embodied in fact by strong men representing a divided state. This representation of state power allows for the specificity of the Congolese governance, where power is under constant negotiation (Englebert and Tull 2013) and the state is both weak and omnipresent. On the other hand, it provides a space to investigate informal strategies and the behaviours of actors employed by REDD+ stakeholders in the DRC.
The article is based on REDD+ activities in Mai Ndombe province that have evolved from projects implemented in the early 2010s, through to the design of the large Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program, a programme at provincial level. Data were collected in national and international institutions and in the province’s REDD+ projects. Observational field research was carried out in REDD+ projects and institutions between 2012 and 2018, totalling two years in the country. In 2015, I was hosted by CN-REDD, the REDD+ national coordination body, for a six-month period as an external observer. This allowed me to participate in several meetings between the national body and the different stakeholders in the process and to conduct interviews with key actors.
The article is divided into five sections. The first of these analyses the worldview of REDD+ as a market-based conservation model. The second section, ‘Maintaining a market model in Congolese forests’, addresses the paradox of retaining a REDD+ market rhetoric in the Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program, despite contested evidence from previously developed REDD+ projects in the area. The third section, ‘Practices of REDD+ governance in Mai Ndombe province’, investigates the practices of REDD+ in Mai Ndombe province, showing new governance and resulting power relationships between the state, multilateral institutions and private actors. The ensuing section is a discussion revolving around three related points: how does this new model of public aid assistance for forest policy reforms work? Does it sustain processes of marketisation, privatisation and commodification of nature? And what does it imply in terms of the roles of public funding and the state in forest conservation in countries with weak bureaucratic autonomy? The conclusion focuses on the need for a transversal approach in planning of land use, including in forest conservation.
Market-based conservation of forest: from market logic to hybrid practices
In development policy discourse, REDD+ promised the ecological modernisation of forest landscapes and the conservation of ecosystems and climate while promoting green development that could lead tropical countries out of poverty. Advocates of REDD+ have praised the initiative, endorsing it as a ‘win–win’ solution for both nature conservation and development (Igoe and Brockington 2007), or a ‘win–win–win’ solution for nature, business and development (McAfee 2012). The discourse promises benefits for developing countries which are rendered attractive by their low costs and revenues that permit offsetting of emissions ‘at the most efficient price’. Experts in the environment sector emphasised both new avenues in carbon markets and performance in the results-based payment approach, which was new in international forest policy (Angelsen and McNeill 2012).
By promoting market-based mechanisms to address environmental concerns, neoliberal conservation actors expand the requirement of neoliberal governance (for example, private property) (Roth and Dressler 2012). This worldview of forest conservation favours the market as an institution for delivering public goods and services (McCarthy and Prudham 2004). As Büscher and Dressler (2007) have argued, the business of conservation has an ability to entice a large variety of actors to adopt markets as a panacea to solving the current environmental crisis. In the DRC, the pledging of REDD+ funds for forest conservation was warmly welcomed. With the second-largest forest cover in the world, Congolese officials expected significant financial returns in exchange for the protection of their forests.
Nevertheless, growing evidence suggests that the solution of ‘saving nature by appealing to the logic of capitalist market’ (Arsel and Büscher 2012) does not work. Nor does it provide opportunities for improved land management or development in the tropics. Literature in the anthropology of development has for decades underlined a gap between theory and practice (Mosse 2006; Ferguson 1990). Critical scholars have explored this process within neoliberal environmental governance (Carrier and West 2009; Büscher and Dressler 2007), revealing deviations from a strict implementation of market logic. Case studies in different parts of the world suggest that environmental market-based programmes have ‘failed to perform as envisioned’ (Fletcher 2014, 89). Much of the literature at this time1 acknowledged that REDD+ and other ‘payments for environmental services’ would now be more ‘market-like’ or ‘a light form of result-based aid’. Case studies of market-based conservation projects reveal hybrid arrangements rather than strict application of market logic.
Even in a hybrid form, the logic of the markets has been documented in the African field for its transformative role (Leach and Scoones 2015). Scholars refer frequently to the Marxist concept of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey 2005) to describe the continuation and proliferation of accumulation practices in the environmental field. These include commodification and privatisation of land, conversion of common and state property rights into exclusive private property rights, and processes of appropriation of natural resources (Harvey 2005, 43).
Maintaining a market model in Congolese forests
While the failure of the market is clear, REDD+ actors work actively to sustain this dominant model of interpretations (Mosse 2006) in the DRC. The contested outcomes have not led policy-makers to question the incorporation of forest conservation into the market logic.
The governance model of REDD+ in the DRC has been described as a ‘hybrid national system, allowing for direct implementation of national programmes and projects funded by international non-market-linked funds and for independent projects implemented by private actors and the civil society targeting markets’ (Aquino and Guay 2013, 75). This means that multilateral institutions provide funds for policy reforms, encouraging the financial sphere’s investment in emission reduction activities, and that multilateral agencies support the Congolese state’s development of a political framework for REDD+ implementation. This has led to the establishment of new institutions, mechanisms for the supervision of REDD+ activities, and to the development of legislation and technical tools for forest monitoring and carbon accounting.
In parallel with this, private REDD+ activities tend to be inscribed into market logic by generating REDD+ credits for trading into voluntary carbon markets. While access to institutional funds is very clear, the presence of independent projects supported by carbon markets remains scarce and controversial. The emphasis on market-based schemes may be surprising, as carbon quantification and results-based payments have been described as being more complicated to set up within the Congo Basin than anywhere else. Scholars in natural sciences have investigated methodological issues concerning deforestation and carbon quantification for the country and the subregion (for example, Shapiro et al. 2016; Kearsley et al. 2013; Maniatis et al. 2013).
Moreover, as Karsenty and Ongolo (2012) highlighted, defining deforestation trends and related scenarios may be difficult in ‘fragile states’ because of the complexity and unpredictability of deforestation drivers. The lack of national expertise and leadership, including the debates on the Emissions Reference Level (see section below, ‘Carbon accounting: the battle for the Emissions Reference Level’) reinforces threats to the real accountability of REDD+ activities (Leach and Scoones 2015). Indeed, a few of the available case studies from Mai Ndombe province underline several challenges for REDD+ implementation, such as uncertainty regarding carbon accounting, insecurity of land tenure and rights, and difficulty in finding purchasers for REDD+ credits in voluntary carbon markets (Seyller et al. 2016; Reyniers, Karsenty and C. Vermeulen 2015).
More generally, REDD+ activities are being developed in an environment of corruption and mismanagement. African political anthropology has long described reappropriation strategies of development projects and public policies in general, as well as the omnipresence of clientelism in African bureaucracy (Olivier de Sardan 2016; Blundo 2011; Blundo and Olivier de Sardan 2007; Mbembe 2000; Bayart 1989). The DRC is well known for its discrepancy between public norms and effective practices (De Herdt and Titeca 2016; Trefon 2011). The country has been described as ‘a huge state where a multiplicity of actors is in competition with weak national institutions’ (Englebert and Tull 2013, 5).2 It can be described as a state of limited statehood in the sense of a lack of ability to implement and enforce rules and decisions (Risse 2012). These features reinforce the donors’ emphasis on the neoliberal market approach, associated with deregulation, and the scaling back of the state’s capacity to regulate (Igoe and Brockington 2007).
How does this new model of forest conservation actually transform the power relations between the state, multilateral agencies and the private sector? What room for manoeuvre exists for national institutions to maintain their position and prerogative in the context of both limited statehood and market-based conservation? The next section looks at the role of actors through behaviours and through informal strategies developed by the various protagonists to strengthen their position in the political arena of REDD+ in Mai Ndombe province.
Practices of REDD+ governance in the Mai Ndombe province
Political configuration of REDD+ in Mai Ndombe province
The new Mai Ndombe province received attention from REDD+ donors and operators and in 2018 was described as a ‘laboratory for REDD+’ (Gauthier 2018).3 With the support of the international community, the province has developed its Emission Reductions Program (ERP) estimated at 29 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents over five years, which was approved by the FCPF in 2016 (FCPF 2016) through an Emission Reduction Payment Agreement (ERPA): this would ensure the purchase of 15 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. The Forest Investment Program (FIP) of the World Bank also leads two PIREDDs (integrated REDD projects), one in each of the province’s two districts, Plateaux and Mai Ndombe. Other programmes are planned through the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), a UN multilateral fund dedicated to Central African forest low emission development pathways. In total, REDD+ investments since the launch of REDD+ activities in 2012 in DRC up to the end of 2018 exceed US$90 million for a province of 12.3 million hectares, with a population estimated at between 1.5 and 1.8 million (Gauthier 2018).
The Emission Reductions Program document presents the programme as a framework for a green economy in the Congo forest, implying a large number of operators leading activities to reduce deforestation. In practice, activities to reduce deforestation are aimed at rural households (including the Baka Pygmies), the private sector, the decentralised services of the state and the national state (interview with PIREDD Plateau project manager, Kinshasa, May 2017). Activities for rural populations are designed to promote sustainable land use and alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture and charcoal production, which are identified as the two main drivers of deforestation in the province (Defourny, Delhage and Kibambe Lubamba 2011).
The private sector is engaged in conservation concessions or sustainable practices with timber companies. As I will demonstrate, the ERA Mai Ndombe REDD+ Project4 is a key private actor and plays an important role in privatisation of forest conservation in the DRC. The private REDD+ project was jointly implemented by Ecosystem Restoration Associates (ERA) Inc. and Wildlife Works Carbon LLC (WWC), two private companies involved in carbon projects. In 2013, WWC bought a 300,000-hectare forest conservation concession from the Canadian company ERA, which had acquired it from the Congolese government in 2011.5 WWC, a Californian company involved in carbon projects in Africa, describes itself on its website as ‘the world’s leading REDD+ program development and management company with an effective approach to applying innovative market based solutions to the conservation of biodiversity’ (Wildlife Works n.d.). In 2013, the Mai Ndombe project succeeded in having its carbon results verified and validated under two internationally recognised carbon standards (Verified Carbon Standard/VCS, and Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance/CCBA). This allows them to state that their project contributed to the reduction of an estimated 2.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents.
Provincial and national governments are involved in deforestation reduction activities in different ways. The provincial services of the state received support from PIREDD and FIP projects in the form of equipment and salary bonuses. The ERP Mai Ndombe is designed so that – when emissions reduction is achieved and verified – the national state will receive 50% of the carbon credit revenues through the national REDD+ Fund. The REDD+ national coordination body, CN-REDD, has itself been supported by international stakeholders since 2009 for REDD+ implementation and the development of specific forest monitoring tools.
The political configuration of REDD+ in Mai Ndombe province (see Figure 1) indicates that the state delegates some of its prerogatives to the private sector, which is given the task of implementing strategies to combat deforestation not only in private forest concessions, but also in entire districts (through the PIREDDs), which are usually under state authority for land-use planning. However, the state remains present and central in the REDD+ policy: the central state remains the owner of carbon credits, the provinces are the signatories of emissions reduction programmes, and state services are involved at both central and provincial levels, participating in this way in a phenomenon of duplication of administrations between the services supported by international actors and those that are not, which has already described been by scholars as ‘two-tier administration’6 (Blundo 2011).
A market model operating with public funds
The Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program has been designed as a hybrid system, combining funding from environmental funds (FCPF, CAFI, FIP) and potential incomes from the voluntary markets (with ‘jurisdictional and nested REDD+’ certification). This includes a framework in which the Congolese state can sell emission reductions to different buyers, including the FCPF, which is committed to acquiring 15 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents.
To date, the model has largely deviated from the market-oriented one promoted at the international stage and the hybrid system defended by some scholars and policy-makers (Aquino and Guay 2013). The Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program is no more functioning as a real market than as a hybrid market, where funds from the private sphere would support REDD+ activities. It appears rather to be a fictitious market, in the sense of Polanyi’s fictitious commodity. Indeed, Polanyi (1945) describes the fictitious commodity as a public good or a social necessity treated as a commodity produced for sale on the market. Drawing on this, the Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program is supporting a fictitious market that can be understood as a pro-market model operating mainly with the support of public funds, without returns from the market sphere.
The FCPF played a central role in promoting the market logic in the programme. It played the role of implementer when it supported all the activities of the Congolese CN-REDD office between 2012 and 2016, including the drawing up and agreement of the Emission Reductions Program Idea Note (ERPIN), the ERP document and the Mai Ndombe Program’s ERPA agreement. It played the role of seller of emission reductions when it framed the elaboration of methodologies for carbon accounting, forest monitoring and emission reduction activities. It undertook also to be the buyer when it developed an agreement under which it made the commitment to purchase 15 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. Those practices are far from liberal market principles and reinforce the argument of a fictitious market. Moreover, opportunities for the financial sphere seem very meagre for Congolese REDD+ projects.
It is unlikely that emission reductions beyond those under the ERPA will find buyers in voluntary markets. Evidence from the ERA/WWC Mai Ndombe project shows that carbon markets did not offer real opportunities for the trading of forest carbon credits. In 2013, ERA sold a part of its REDD+ credits to the Forest Carbon Group, acting as an intermediary between purchasers and producers of carbon credits. In 2016, the ERA/WWC project was still on the Forest Carbon Group’s website, suggesting that all the credits purchased in 2013 had not yet found a buyer (World Rainforest Movement 2016). During my visit to the conservation concession in June 2018, the manager was still looking for potential purchasers of carbon credits generated in their project, which confirms the difficulties faced by the private sector in selling their carbon credits. So, it is not surprising that the company has been actively engaged in the Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program, which offers a real opportunity to trade the credits generated in their conservation concession.
The incapacity of environmental markets to provide funds for emissions reduction activities in Mai Ndombe calls into question the business model of such arrangements, which expects monetary payback from the financial sphere. Nevertheless, a market design is largely maintained in the programme, including the use of results-based payments and the carbon accounting. These tend to be presented by their advocates as ‘natural’, ‘neutral’, ‘scientific’, ‘rational’ schemes of governance and always as the most efficient, invariably following the logical evolution of environmental practices and policies.
Insights from the Mai Ndombe programme clearly demonstrate the opposite. These governance schemes have transformative capacity and political implications for the different REDD+ stakeholders. This becomes very clear in the next point, which analyses informal strategies and the behaviour of stakeholders in the definition of the baseline for carbon accounting.
Carbon accounting: the battle for the Emissions Reference Level definition
Carbon accounting is one of the new environmental governance schemes introduced by REDD+. The emission reductions are valued through a specific carbon accounting exercise representing the ‘avoided deforestation’. This means a decrease in the deforestation rate compared to a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario. The decrease of deforestation is evaluated in terms of carbon that has not been emitted. The results of the programme are compared to the business-as-usual scenario, based on the historical national level of carbon emissions from deforestation. The definition of the historical level of carbon emission of the province, the Emission Reference Level (ERL), was one of the important tools that had to be developed in order for the ERP document to be approved by FCPF. Between 2014 and November 2016, during the drawing up of the programme document, this manifestly technical issue became a theatre of conflict and power struggles between the two main operators of the programme, the ERA/WWC project and CN-REDD, the national coordination body represented by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-DRC). WWF-DRC was hired as a consultant by the Congolese REDD+ office to advise it in the definition of the Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program. In 2016, it also took charge of the operation of deforestation reduction activities for communities in the Plateaux district (Reyniers 2019; Reyniers, Karsenty and C. Vermeulen 2015).
The ERA/WWC project was the only Congolese initiative able to certify REDD+ credits through two recognised standards. This capacity to generate and certify carbon credits conferred a powerful legitimacy on the WWC company in the REDD+ political arena of the DRC. As one of the key actors in the Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program and in view of the expertise acquired through the ERA/WWC project, the company was very much involved in the conceptualisation of the programme, especially in technical issues such as the carbon accounting. The company achieved the status of a privileged partner among donors wishing to invest in the Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program, principally the FCPF. Being the only operator that certified a REDD+ project, they had the advantage of proposing a concrete solution.
The definition of the province’s ERL was greatly influenced by the position of WWC, which defended the same methodology it had used for the certification of the ERA/WWC project. According to WWC’s methodology, the deforestation that would have occurred in their concession, without any intervention, was estimated at between 5000 and 6000 hectares per year. In 2015, the proposal to translate their methodology of carbon accounting to the entire province led to disagreements with other actors invested in the programme. Some voices were raised by Congolese civil society, and spread by international NGOs, which tried to defend the interests of local populations in the programme (Lang 2016, 2011). They opposed the methodology from the beginning of the project and strongly criticised the possibility of applying this scenario of deforestation to the entire province.
WWC, during meetings to prepare the ERP Mai Ndombe, was accused of inflating the deforestation trend in Mai Ndombe province by overestimating future deforestation hypotheses. Even though the province provides charcoal to as far away as Kinshasa, the translation of the ERA/WWC scenario means that almost all the trees would have disappeared by 2020, and this appears unlikely given the low population density, high forest cover (87%), remoteness of the northern part of the province and the lack of infrastructure. By inflating the deforestation trends, the private companies were trying to capture a considerable share of the World Bank’s pledges to purchase emission reductions. Indeed, the higher the estimates of the future rate of deforestation, the more ‘avoided deforestation’ credits can be generated in the conservation concession. In this way, the company ensures the sale of its carbon credits through the ERPA while avoiding the vagaries of the voluntary carbon market.
Major conflicts appeared between the private company and WWF-DRC, which had been appointed by the Congolese government to support the national administration in implementing the REDD+ programme. WWF defended a methodological approach for the Emissions Reference Level in Mai Ndombe based on the historical deforestation rate observed in the area between 2000 and 2010 (with satellite images) and modified by a development adjustment factor.7 As early as 2013, WWF declared in an internal document that the ERA/WWC project overestimated the deforestation in its concession. They calculated the historical deforestation rate in their concession during the 2000–2010 period with their own methodology, estimating it at a total of 6600 hectares for the 10-year period. The result differed significantly from ERA’s scenarios, which predicted deforestation on almost all of the 740,000 hectares of the concession. In other words, they considered that ERA/WWC was inflating annual deforestation rates by a factor of 10.
These different points of views contributed to a highly conflictual climate that was still obvious when I arrived at CN-REDD in 2015. ERA/WWC threatened to submit its own Idea Notes to the FCPF, using its own proposed formulation for the ERL. But the FCPF refused this option and encouraged the stakeholders to submit a joint version. The ERL continued to be a highly political subject and several workshops were organised by international experts on the UN-REDD programme and other technical partners to reach a compromise. The private company was finally authorised to have a specific baseline, but financial compensation provided by the FCPF is linked to a minimum emissions reduction threshold, which means that in the case of low results in terms of deforestation, the programme will first reward activities by local communities that reduce deforestation. This would meet the expectations of WWF, which itself will operate such activities.
CN-REDD and other officials from the DRC’s ministry of the environment remained largely outside these debates. Although there was not official support for WWC, the lack of a national position allowed ERA/WWC to maintain a strong position in the debates. It must be said that the FCPF financed all the salaries and the functioning of CN-REDD at the same time, leaving the representatives of the Congolese administration relatively autonomous. My interviews revealed that the experts were aware that WWC’s proposal was untenable for the entire province. However, since the programme was built on results-based payments, the need to generate credits to access FCPF funds opened the door to negotiation. WWF’s involvement as a consultant allowed another partner to have a critical voice. Congolese partners probably prefer to remain silent until they are able speak out on issues that have a direct impact on the power of the Congolese administrations in the REDD+ architecture under construction, such as ownership of carbon credits, benefits sharing and institutional set-up.
All of this indicates that carbon accounting is not a neutral instrument of measure but a battlefield between the different stakeholders to influence the methodology. The battle above occurred in a specific political context, where state officials were largely absent from the debate, which left an important place for the opinions of a host of experts. While the scenario proposed by WWC overestimated the deforestation trend in the province, the unavoidable position of the company in the Mai Ndombe Emission Reductions Program nonetheless found the World Bank and the government willing to align the project carbon accounting methodology with the private company interests. A high deforestation scenario could favour projects with large surface areas (such as the concessions) at the expense of local community initiatives. The FCPF is also interested in having its programme generate a reduction in emissions, which is easier in a scenario of high future deforestation. The Congolese state itself has every interest in its programme generating credits. Therefore, it is preferable for it not to offend donors or the private sector and to leave this methodological debate to the WWF and the private company. Finally, through its withdrawal and push for a compromise between powerful stakeholders, the state emerges from the process stronger and more united than others.
The commodification of nature in the case of limited statehood
The failure of the market to provide significant funds for forest conservation (Angelsen et al. 2017; Fletcher et al. 2017, 2016; Sunderlin et al. 2015) is particularly true in the DRC, where the vast majority of the REDD+ financing comes from multilateral funds and programmes. This echoes similar analyses of REDD+ and payments for environmental services all over the world (Fletcher and Breitling 2012; Milne and Adams 2012), and is more generally in line with neoliberal conservation literature arguing for the – illusory – efficacy of market-based conservation mechanisms to address environmental problems (for example, McAfee 2015, 2014; Fletcher et al. 2014; Fletcher and Breitling 2012; Carrier and West 2009; Büscher and Dressler 2007).
A grounded political ecology understanding of the Mai Ndombe case indicates that evidence of the failure of the markets to provide funds for the Congolese forest did not lead national and international policy-makers to reconsider the incorporation of Congolese forest conservation into the market logic or the neoliberal ideologies which guide it. Mai Ndombe’s Emission Reductions Program resembles a fictitious market, meaning that a market rhetoric is maintained in the design of the programme even if the practices have largely evolved into marginal forms of environmental marketisation.
However, hybrid forms of marketisation can contribute greatly to the commodification of nature. Indeed, the programme supports the creation of new commodities – the tonnes of CO2 not emitted – which are allocated a monetary value and can therefore lead to monetary exchanges between multilateral institutions, the Congolese state and the private sector. By valuing and exchanging these carbon credits, the programme participates in the construction of REDD+ as a win–win scenario, saving nature by appealing to the logic of the capitalist market (Arsel and Büscher 2012). It pursues the promotion of the idea that using market environmental governance will spur investments in conservation projects (McAfee 2015).
Market-based conservation of forests is still shaping the way that forest conservation is carried out in the country. New governance schemes such as carbon accounting or results-based payments are becoming commonplace in forest conservation programmes and have transformed the model of public aid assistance for forest policy reforms. The analysis of the definition of Mai Ndombe province’s Emission Reference Level is an example of the political dimension of these apparent technical issues, echoing Leach and Scoones’s (2015, 23) argument that ‘measurement and modelling of carbon is a social process that incorporates and affirms certain social, political and moral assumptions, while excluding others.’
Indeed, such new governance schemes give privileged access to REDD+ funds for private enterprises such as WWC. I have demonstrated that this new model of forest conservation operates on the basis of donor and state dependence on producing ‘results’ to justify financial transfers. This gives grounds for the unusual use of private companies to produce both these results and the method that will define their accounting. The position of the private sector is moreover strengthened by the support of the World Bank, a pro-market actor (Tsayem Demaze, Ngoufo and Tchawa 2015) holding a powerful position on the environmental Congolese scene (Karsenty 2016). Privatisation of forest conservation appears thus in a specific framework where the state remains absent from technical debate on deforestation.
Withdrawal of the state underlines the delegation of both technical issues and operationalisation of public policies to international stakeholders, and acknowledges the banality of the external dimension of public policies in sub-Saharan Africa (Diallo 2012). Multilateral donors finance a large share of Congolese environmental institutions, reducing their autonomy and policy space, constructing in this way a limited statehood. The common practice of international public aid in supporting Congolese developmental programmes whose results are minimal or non-existent (Trefon 2011) has also reinforced a growing strategy on the part of donors to bypass the state as an implementer of forest programmes and strategies. This joins the common political ecology argument of the rolling back of state within neoliberal conservation (Holmes and Cavanagh 2016; Brockington 2014; Büscher et al. 2012; Igoe, Neves and Brockington 2010; Brockington, Duffy and Igoe 2008; Igoe and Brockington 2007).
Moreover, a political economy approach inspired by Franz Neumann to the links between national sovereignty and freedom of action for economic actors of REDD+ in the DRC offers other avenues of understanding. Neumann has demonstrated how central states can be built on a power struggle between different powerful actors: the army, the bureaucracy, the party and industry. His observations came from an entirely different context – the pre-WWII German economy – and cannot be transposed as such. But when he investigated the structure and practices of the regime, he demonstrated how a state can reinforce its seemingly centralised character, whereas an in-depth study of its policies highlights an embodiment of power through powerful groups and individuals pursuing diverse and specific goals. The high degree of autonomy with which each of these entities operates engenders a difficult, even irrational decision-making process, masked behind an appearance of a strong regime. According to Neumann, it is through this friction that the state reveals its anarchic form, which he described through the image of Behemoth, the biblical monster that only God can tame.
Since development programmes resumed in 2002 after a decade of conflicts and instability, the Congolese state has been dependent on international funds for the reconstruction of the country and its institutions. The reform of its regulatory framework – which has opened the way for the liberalisation of the forestry, mining and investment sectors – is anchored in international agendas (Moshonas 2012). The environmental governance, for its part, is historically constructed through international partnerships (Trefon 2017). Despite a framework conducive to limited statehood, the Congolese state, which is highly centralised, remains the unavoidable partner of external actors and still manages to play an important role in the governance of public sectors. Existing leeway for international stakeholders remains very limited without the agreement of the politicised state apparatus. Neoliberal arrangements do not necessarily distort the state position in a political arena with multiple actors and interests.
On the contrary, the state, when considered as a complex entity allowing strong rivalries among ministers, between ministers and donors and among the donors themselves, also offers room for manoeuvre (Li 1999) for national actors wanting to defend their positions. Public officials have different ways of negotiating their expectations, thus reinforcing the position of the state. Informal strategies such as institutional blockages, contradictory policy practices or unofficial privileges remain a grey area but are nonetheless an important national leveraging point to defend the central position of the state in public policy. Moreover, concrete proposals are not commonplace in a country where contestation and negotiation have been described as the main political practices (Englebert and Tull 2013).
For the DRC, considering the lack of its own funds to carry out reforms, the support of multilateral organisations is unavoidable and their actions in the forest sector paradoxically strengthen the legitimacy of the state, which is portrayed as the holder of ultimate authority over forest policies. Clearly, privatisation of forest conservation tends to diminish the state’s leadership role in the definition and implementation of public policies. Market-based conservation of forest leads to a reconfiguration of the role of the state, reinforced in its legitimate role and diminished in its legitimacy to act in its field. However, as Neumann demonstrated, multiple influences in decision-making engender irrational outcomes. While multilateral actors concentrate their influence on economic neoliberalisation of forest conservation, other land-use policies are being pursued under the prerogative of the state in an entirely different direction, resulting in a confused and contradictory approach to land management, like the chaotic Behemoth, as Neumann might have put it.
Conclusion
The article has questioned the implications of market-based governance of forest for the national sovereignty of the Congolese state. Insights from a REDD+ programme in Mai Ndombe province underline a hybrid market approach and globally acknowledge ‘the failure of the market’ to provide significant funds to conserve forests. From this point on, it also challenges the toughness of market-based arrangements. The case of the DRC recognises the growing privatisation of land management under REDD+ and the influence of multilateral agencies in the adoption of neoliberal schemes of nature conservation. I have shown that carbon accounting favours the emergence of private actors as project operators of forest conservation and effectively opens up forest conservation to carbon markets, thereby contributing to the general process of nature commodification. This emerging trend in forest conservation represents a shift from older forest programmes, which tended to reinforce the capacity of the state to sustainably manage the forest and the country’s other natural resources.
The analysis of the debate surrounding the definition of the Emissions Reference Level made it possible to address the reconfiguration of power relations in this new paradigm of forest conservation. My observations illustrate how apparently neutral and apolitical technical issues were in fact highly politicised processes through which actors negotiated their positions. ‘Rendering public policies technical’ – framing problems and their solutions in a way that lends itself to technical fixes without addressing roots causes (Li 2007) – renders difficult the appropriation of the REDD+ initiative by the national public actors, which leaves growing prerogatives to the private sector, supported by the World Bank. Privatisation of REDD+ is therefore observed both at project and institutional levels. Bypass strategies to limit the intervention of the state in definition and implementation of deforestation strategies are commonplace among donors seeking for quick results.
Withdrawal of the state from these technical debates raises questions about the reconfiguration of its role in forest policy management. If the literature in political ecology agrees instead in a loss of state prerogatives, to the benefit of the private sector, a more nuanced analysis is proposed here. Based on insights from African political anthropology, I argue that the support of multilateral institutions in REDD+ maintains a limited statehood and imposes the private sector in areas that are the state’s prerogative, while paradoxically reinforcing the legitimacy of the state, which is presumed to retain ultimate authority over deforestation strategies and programmes. This is in line with Neumann’s analyses, which emphasised that centralised and authoritarian regimes were built on an alignment of the objectives of powerful groups of non-state economic actors. Economic trade liberalisation can paradoxically reinforce the centralised image of certain regimes.
While this triangular relationship seems to satisfy the interests of the different protagonists, it leads to a questioning of the capacity of this forest governance model to carry out a long-term reflection on the management of the Congolese territory and its natural resources. The market approach developed in REDD+ pleased donors and investors by promising to bypass predatory behaviour by the state services. But the privatisation of forest conservation through REDD+ activities has drawn attention to the barriers of the withdrawal of the state in the definition and implementation of public policies. Sustainable land management in DRC, including forest conservation, needs a transversal approach and major public reforms in land use. Land tenure and security of investments are largely recognised as the principal barrier for REDD+ implementation globally (Duchelle et al. 2014; Resosudarmo et al. 2014) and in Africa (Veronesi et al. 2015; Dokken et al. 2014). Larson et al. (2013) have already argued that opportunities to secure land through REDD+ activities are insufficient in the absence of a broader national programme for land tenure reform.
From this perspective, privatisation of forest conservation activities separates the environmental challenges for other public sectors while offering questionable methods and results. The need to involve the Congolese state fairly in the struggle against deforestation and degradation of its environment remains huge and urgent.