Introduction

Summary

This chapter introduces REDD+ as an ambitious project that is reorganising how forested land in the Global South becomes an object for international and transnational regulation. It argues that REDD+ operates to reorganise social relations and to establish new forms of global authority over forests in the Global South in ways that benefit the interests of some actors while further marginalising others. This chapter also sets out a unique conceptual apparatus to understand how REDD+ establishes and actualises new forms of authority over forested land and the peoples who live in and around forested areas. It adopts a configuration of four concepts – organised as two pairs – through which to understand REDD+. The first pair of concepts – climate justice and the green economy – provides a means of situating and conceptualising REDD+. The second pair – power and authority – speaks to the amalgamation and consolidation of global authority over forested areas, but also simultaneously the plural and diffuse means by which authority is exercised in REDD+.