Brazil is developing a number of REDD+ schemes in Amazonia that offer economic
incentives to discourage deforestation and promote conservation. Building upon
longer traditions of forest preservation and sustainable development in the region,
REDD+ could be said to embody elements of a new ‘social contract’ that underpins
resource governance, based on mutual obligations, rights and responsibilities. This
will have to be founded on negotiated agreements among major stakeholders;
namely, central and state governments, the NGO sector, private business interests
and local beneficiary populations. Despite its embryonic nature and having to face
major challenges of implementation and scaling up, REDD+ could offer the
beginnings of a fresh paradigm in environmental policy based on a social contract
that could help sustain low rates of forest loss in future.
