Sébastien Jodoin

What Difference Does CBDR Make? A Socio-Legal Analysis of the Role of Differentiation in the Transnational Legal Process for REDD

This article offers a socio-legal analysis of the role played by the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) in the development, diffusion, and implementation of jurisdictional REDD+ activities throughout the developing world. It employs a qualitative research method known as process tracing to uncover whether and, if so, to what extent and how actors have used CBDR to support the emergence and effectiveness of the transnational legal process for REDD+. The article argues that the transnational legal process for REDD+ reflects a conception of CBDR in which developing country governments may take on voluntary commitments to reduce their carbon emissions, with the multilateral, bilateral, and private sources of financial support and technical assistance provided by developed countries, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and corporations. This creative conception and application of CBDR has fostered the construction and diffusion of legal norms for REDD+ because it has influenced the interests, ideas, and identities of public and private actors in the North and South. However, the early challenges associated with the implementation of REDD+ reveal a worrying gap between the financial pledges made by developed countries and the costs associated with the full implementation of REDD+, as well as contradictions in the very way in which the responsibilities of various countries have been defined in the context of REDD+. The analysis has important implications for the transnational governance of REDD+, as well as for scholarship on the role of differentiation in the pursuit of effective and equitable climate change solutions.

International Law and Alterity: The State and the Other

This article argues that orthodox international law is committed to the state at the expense of the Other, that which is not the state, and, at a more philosophical level, to ontology at the expense of ethics. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, it seeks a shift from ontology, focusing on Being, to ethics, constituted by our responsibility to the Other. Section 1 argues that international law assumes the natural existence of a Being of the State and that this ontology of statehood constitutes the ontology of international law. Section 2 explains how the ontology of statehood having been transformed into an epistemology ultimately leads to the violent suppression of alterity. Section 3 proposes a number of projects and strategies through which we may pursue the ethics of alterity in international law. The article concludes with a discussion of three tensions within international law: statehood-alterity, ontology-ethics, and law-politics.

Forest Preservation in a Changing Climate by Sébastien Jodoin

This book provides a comprehensive socio-legal examination of how global efforts to fight climate change by reducing carbon emissions in the forestry sector (known as REDD+) have affected the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities in developing countries. Grounded in extensive qualitative empirical research conducted globally, the book shows that the transnational legal process for REDD+ has created both serious challenges and unexpected opportunities for the recognition and protection of indigenous and community rights. It reveals that the pursuit of REDD+ has resulted in important variations in how human rights standards are understood and applied across multiple sites of law in the field of REDD+, with mixed results for indigenous peoples and local communities in Indonesia and Tanzania. With its original findings, rigourous research design, and interdisciplinary analytical framework, this book will make a valuable contribution to the study of transnational legal processes in a globalizing world. This title is also available as Open Access.

The transnational policy process for REDD+ and domestic policy entrepreneurship in developing countries:

This article aims to understand the complex relationship between transnational pathways of policy influence and strategies of domestic policy entrepreneurship in the pursuit of REDD+ in developing countries. Since 2007, a complex governance arrangement exerting influence through the provision of international rules, norms, markets, knowledge, and material assistance has supported the diffusion of REDD+ policies around the world. These transnational pathways of influence have played an important role in the launch of REDD+ policy-making processes at the domestic level. Indeed, over 60 developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have initiated multi-year programmes of policy reform, research, and capacity-building that aim to lay the groundwork for the implementation of REDD+. However, there is emerging evidence that the nature of policy change associated with these REDD+ policy efforts ultimately depends on the mediating influence of domestic factors. This article offers an analytical framework that focuses on whether and how domestic policy actors can seize the opportunities provided by transnational policy pathways for REDD+ to challenge or reinforce the status quo in the governance of forests and related sectors.

The Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Forest-Dependent Communities in the Complex Legal Framework for REDD+

This chapter discusses how the human rights of both Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities have been addressed within the complex legal framework for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). Adopting a legal pluralist perspective that sees law existing in and through multiple sites and forms that extend beyond those associated with the authority of sovereign states, I conceive of REDD as being governed by a complex and heterogeneous array of sites of international and transnational law. I compare the manner in which two very different sites of law have addressed the human rights of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities in the legal norms that they have generated for REDD: the UNFCCC and the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA). I proceed as follows. I begin by providing a brief overview of the international legal principles, standards, and issues that relate to the recognition and protection of the human rights of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities in the context of environmental governance (section 2). I then provide an analysis of whether and how these human rights have been recognized in the context of the UNFCCC (section 3) and the CCBA (section 4). I open sections 2 and 3 with a discussion of the role of each site of law in the complex legal framework for REDD. I trace the development of the human rights of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities in these sites from 2005 to 2014. In my analysis, I draw on a range of primary and secondary sources as well as a set of semi-structured interviews that I completed from 2007 to 2014 with policy-makers, experts, and activists working on REDD around the world. I conclude by identifying they key research questions that my analysis raises about the relationship between human rights and REDD and more broadly about the development and implementation of various forms of law with respect to REDD.

Protecting the Majority of Humanity

Until recently, human rights theory and action has focused primarily on the so-called public sphere from which the majority of humanity – women and children – were traditionally barred. If, however, we are serious about building a more just, peaceful, and sustainable future, we have to recognize that our first, and most lasting, lessons about human relations are learned not in the public but in the private sphere. This is where people learn to respect the rights of others – or where they learn to view human rights violations as normal.

Terrorism as a War Crime

International humanitarian law (IHL) defines terrorism in a prima facie apolitical manner as acts or threats of violence committed by either States or non-States against certain non-combatants with the primary purpose of terrorizing them. It thus leaves some space for the use of violence by parties to a conflict, all the while holding them to respect certain fundamental principles. This distinctive brand of moral pragmatism is ideally suited to meeting the normative and moral challenge of terrorism and could prove useful to international efforts geared toward the suppression of terrorism through its influence over discourse and through direct prosecutions of the war crime of terrorism. To be effective though, certain limitations tied to the use of IHL must be overcome, relating notably to its scope of application. As the primary purpose of IHL is the limitation of chaos and human suffering, it has the potential to address the anarchy and anguish caused by terrorism.

Comparing Rights and REDD+ in Indonesia and Tanzania

In Chapters 3, 4, and 5, I traced the conveyance and construction of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities through both jurisdictional and project-based REDD+ activities in Indonesia and Tanzania. Although I did not select these two countries on the basis of variations in initial conditions or eventual outcomes relevant to the implementation of REDD+ or the recognition and protection of rights, a number of lessons can nonetheless be drawn from a comparison of experiences across sites and levels of law in these two countries. In what follows, I discuss findings that relate to rights in the context of the pursuit of jurisdictional REDD+ activities at the national level, before turning to the development and implementation of project-based REDD+ activities at the local level. I conclude with a global comparison of the intersections between rights and various REDD+ activities in these two countries.