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Williams, Aled and Dupuy, Kendra (2018) 'Will REDD+ safeguards mitigate corruption? Qualitative evidence from Southeast Asia.' Journal of Development Studies, 55 (10). pp. 2129-2144.

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Abstract

High levels of faith and finance are being invested in REDD+ as a promising global climate change mitigation policy. Since its inception in 2007, corruption has been viewed as a potential impediment to the achievement of REDD+ goals, partly motivating ‘safeguards’ rolled out as part of national REDD+ readiness activities. We compare corruption mitigation measures adopted as part of REDD+ safeguards, drawing on qualitative case evidence from three Southeast Asian countries that have recently piloted the scheme: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. We find that while REDD+ safeguards adopt a conventional principal-agent approach to tackling corruption in the schemes, our case evidence confirms our theoretical expectation that REDD+ corruption risks are perceived to arise not only from principal-agent type problems: they are also linked to embedded pro-corruption social norms. This implies that REDD+ safeguards are likely to be at best partially effective against corruption, and at worst will not mitigate corruption at all.

Item Type: Journal Article
Keywords: REDD+, corruption, principal-agent, social norms
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > Department of Development Studies
SOAS Doctoral School
Subjects: J Political Science > JQ Political institutions (Asia, Africa, Australia)
ISSN: 00220388
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2018.1510118
Date Deposited: 10 Oct 2018 11:19
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/26541
Funders: Other

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