governance, environmental policy, and international development. Her work examines processes of racialization and histories of colonialism and the ways in which they challenge the successful enactment of forest governance policies in the Global South.
Collins applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield (2024) and reported the following:
From page 99:Visit Yolanda Ariadne Collins's website.The firm is widely used in climate change and environmental matters to provide economic analyses and to attribute financial values to environmental services. This value estimation acted as the foundation of Guyana’s REDD+ effort, which builds on McKinsey’s estimates to estimate Guyana’s forests’ value to the world at US$40 billion per year.This page refers to several ideas that form the core of my book, although this core can only be accessed if the reader had already been exposed to the acronyms used. Page 99 highlights the economically rational method of valuing forests that dominates the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative. It points to some of the key international and national actors and ideas behind REDD+. It also highlights (albeit insufficiently compared to the rest of the book) the tension between the state claim on land and that of indigenous people. This page, naturally, also misses a lot. It misses the book’s connection of colonialism to the evolution across time of these ‘rational’ ways of relating to nature in the Amazonian Guiana Shield.The Guyana Government explained: Our work suggests that baseline assumptions should be driven by analysis that assumes rational behaviour by countries seeking to maximize economic opportunities for their citizens (an “economically rational” rate of deforestation). Such baselines can be developed using economic models of expected profits from activities that motivate deforestation (vs. in-country benefits of maintaining the standing forest), and timing and costs required to harvest and convert lands to alternative uses.The estimated value of those in-country benefits was estimated at a more conservative US$580 million per year. The economically rational path that Guyana should take was depicted by a wide array of statistical graphs based on economic valuations attached to activities that have traditionally taken place in the country, or that are likely to take place to generate income. For example, the estimation of the carbon abatement costs for predicted avoided deforestation in Guyana amounted to an annual payment of US$430 million to Guyana for the services of its forests. It is worth pointing out that these values are estimates based not on historical trends, but on possible future pressure on the forests. Development here is used to justify the need for these policy shifts, and for REDD+, since a “rational” development path is predicted as necessitating the destruction of forests. Therefore, the pursuance of REDD+ through the LCDS draws on these economic rationalities rooted in neoliberal logic and points out that a rational development path would result in the destruction of the forests, making room for REDD+ to alter that equation. Thus far, only forests conserved and managed by the state have been allocated for REDD+ activities. Indigenous groups who have some tenure over the forests within which they reside (in the case of Guyana but not in Suriname) should eventually have the option of opting into the REDD+ mechanism and being remunerated for the services of their forests.
In the rest of the book, I explore the contestation that emerges when REDD+ encounters the colonial histories of forest use at the local and regional levels. I move past questions of whether market-based, international environmental policies should be seen as successes or as failures, and towards an understanding of the associated effects of their pursuit. In essence, the book presents a regional, two-country case study of environmental governance in the largely neglected Guiana Shield eco-region that demonstrates how REDD+ builds upon existing, colonially-rooted land claims. Forests of Refuge, thus, offers a unique exploration of REDD+ through the lens of postcolonial and decolonial thinking, highlighting interrelationships between ethics of extraction, state formation, race, and conservation in the transition from formal colonialism to post-colonial status.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
