Downscaling REDD Policies in Developing Countries: Assessing the Impact of Carbon Payments on Household Decision Making and Vulnerability to Climate Change in Vietnam

该研究项目将利用越南这个早期森林碳政策制定网站，测试有关联合国减少发展中国家森林砍伐和退化所致排放合作计划（REDD）的几个问题。该项目将分析为碳固存等环境服务支付的费用如何改变小农家庭的土地使用决策;评估这些土地使用变化是否有助于增加或减少未来气候变化对整体社会和生物物理的脆弱性;并评估当地对家庭决策和土地使用的理解如何影响国家以下各级和国家政策，以实现REDD等全球目标。将采用多尺度、多方法的研究设计，包括观测数据、调查、家庭会计日记、关键信息提供者访谈、政策分析、森林监测和土地使用变化的空间分析。这些方法的目的是捕捉当地家庭的决策以及多尺度的相互作用，从获得和权利的变化，根据支付计划的森林服务。预测的未来气候变化有可能加剧现有的社会脆弱性，特别是在较贫穷的发展中国家。社区和个人科普这些挑战的能力很可能取决于他们获取和调动自然资源的能力。与此同时，正在制定新的全球政策，通过减少毁林和森林退化，向“避免毁林”的国家支付费用，以固碳和促进减缓气候变化。 然而，如果在实施降排方案的过程中，森林的获取和使用权发生变化，如果这些政策限制了对自然资源的获取，从而降低了一些家庭和社区的适应能力，那么从长远来看，这可能会使他们更容易受到气候变化的影响。因此，了解碳信用政策对土地使用决策的潜在影响是很重要的，特别是在这种大规模的全球计划得到更充分的实施之前。 这一研究项目将提供一个早期和独特的实验机会，以评估新的全球政策的相对影响，并通过细致的地方分析帮助解释成功和失败。该项目将提供一个基线，以解释不同的可能的REDD方法随着时间的推移在绩效方面的差异。该项目通过研究全球降排政策如何影响地方社会脆弱性和动态，进一步解决当前对脆弱性驱动力以及全球和地方两级耦合社会生态系统之间相互作用的关切。这项研究的成果将包括对一个可能是世界上受未来降雨、风暴和海平面上升影响最严重的国家的社会对气候变化的脆弱性的政策相关知识的贡献。最后，该项目将促进美国和越南的研究人员和学生在气候变化这一至关重要的问题上的合作。

This research project will use the country of Vietnam, an early forest carbon policy development site, to test several questions regarding the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD). This project will analyze the ways in which payments for environmental services like carbon sequestration alter land-use decision making by smallholder households; evaluate if these changes in land use serve to increase or reduce overall social and biophysical vulnerability to future climate changes; and assess how local understandings of household decision making and land use influence subnational and national policy to implement global goals like REDD. A multi-scale, multi-method research design will be used, including observational data, surveys, household accounting diaries, key informant interviews, policy analysis, forest monitoring, and spatial analysis of land-use change. These methods are designed to capture local household decision making as well as multi-scale interactions that come about from changes in access and rights under payment plans for forest services. Forecasted future climate changes have the potential to exacerbate existing social vulnerabilities, especially in poorer developing countries. The ability of communities and individuals to cope with these challenges is likely to depend on their ability to access and mobilize natural resources. At the same time, new global policies are in development that would pay countries for "avoided deforestation" through REDD in order to sequester carbon and contribute to climate change mitigation. If access and use rights to forests change under REDD implementation, however, this may render some households and communities more vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the long term if these policies reduce their adaptive capacity by restricting access to natural resources. An understanding of the potential outcomes of carbon-credit policies on land-use decision making therefore is important, particularly before such large- scale global programs get more fully underway. This research project will provide an early and unique experimental opportunity to assess the relative impacts of a new global policy and help explain successes and failures through a fine-grained local analysis. This project will provide a baseline to explain the variation in performance of different possible REDD approaches over time. The project further addresses current concerns with driving forces of vulnerability and interactions between global and local scales in coupled socioecological systems through research on how global REDD policy affects local social vulnerabilities and dynamics. Outcomes from this study will include contributions to policy-relevant knowledge on social vulnerability to climate change in a country that is likely to be one of the most affected in the world to future changes in rainfall, storms, and sea-level rise. Finally, this project will foster collaboration among researchers and students in the US and Vietnam on the crucially important issue of climate change.