Governing deforestation : a governmentality analysis of tropical forests in climate negotiations

• Main Author: Hjort, Mattias
• Published: University of Birmingham 2016
• Subjects: 333.75; JC Political theory
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.681152

This thesis conducts an empirical analysis of how ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’ (REDD+) is rendered governable through negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. REDD+ is a proposed emissions trading scheme where deforestation in ‘developing’ countries is reduced through monetary incentives, and where this counts and ‘reduced greenhouse gas emissions’ that can be used by ‘developed’ countries to comply with their commitments to reduce emissions. A Foucauldian governmentality perspective is applied to conceptualise the negotiations as a process of contestation where the outcomes validate and target certain governance arrangements, actors and ideas, while subjugating others, with concrete effects for how forest users, forests and the climate will be governed. This process is analysed by drawing on discourse analysis and actor-network theory to consider both social and material contestation throughout the negotiations, which serves to elucidate the contested foundation REDD+ is built on. The process of validation and subjugation analysed throughout the negotiations is argued to manifest a governing strategy that subjugates deviations from how REDD+ was originally conceived, and that polices its borders so as not to jeopardise growth-oriented patterns of production and consumption outside of the scheme.