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

这个研究项目将利用越南这个早期的森林碳政策制定地点来测试关于联合国减少发展中国家毁林和森林退化造成的排放合作计划（REDD）的几个问题。该项目将分析为碳封存等环境服务支付费用如何改变小农家庭的土地使用决策；评估这些土地利用的变化是否有助于增加或减少对未来气候变化的整体社会和生物物理脆弱性；并评估当地对家庭决策和土地使用的理解如何影响地方和国家政策，以实施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、森林监测和土地利用变化的空间分析。这些方法旨在捕捉当地家庭的决策，以及森林服务支付计划下的获取和权利变化所带来的多尺度互动。对未来气候变化的预测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。社区和个人应对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，新的全球政策正在制定中，这些政策将向通过REDD“避免砍伐森林”的国家提供资金，以封存碳并为减缓气候变化做出贡献。然而，如果在实施REDD的过程中，森林的获取和使用权发生变化，如果这些政策通过限制对自然资源的获取而降低了一些家庭和社区的适应能力，从长远来看，这可能会使它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，尤其是在这种大规模的全球项目全面开展之前。这个研究项目将提供一个早期和独特的实验机会，以评估一项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。这个项目将提供一个基线来解释不同可能的REDD方法在性能上随时间的变化。该项目通过研究全球REDD政策如何影响地方社会脆弱性和动态，进一步解决了当前人们对脆弱性驱动力以及耦合社会生态系统中全球和地方尺度之间相互作用的关注。这项研究的成果将包括对一个可能是世界上受未来降雨、风暴和海平面上升变化影响最严重的国家的气候变化社会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.