Identifying and overcoming constraints on establishing feasible National REDD+ Measurement, Reporting and Verification Systems

To participate in the REDD+ mechanism of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developing countries must upgrade their national forest monitoring systems to become Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) systems that can monitor changes in forest carbon stocks. However, despite support from international REDD+ Readiness programmes, most developing countries still have limited forest monitoring capacity.

The sociology of remote sensing systems has been little studied until now, especially in developing countries. To evaluate the adoption of technologies proposed in these schemes, this research has devised and tested an Information Production (IP) Framework and a Technology Adoption System (TAS) Framework that enable the evaluation of more complex instances of technology adoption than current frameworks.

This research found that although REDD+ Readiness schemes have been implemented in Cambodia and Indonesia, the capacity to supply forest carbon information is still limited because upgrading forest monitoring systems has been limited by self-constrained optimisation that has led to only incremental evolution. Cambodia and Indonesia have shown relatively high improvements in forest area monitoring capacity, compared to growing stock monitoring capacity, but the quality of forest area and carbon information produced by the two countries is still insufficient to meet international demand. Technology adoption has involved self-constrained optimisation because adopting new technologies was constrained by human capital, institutions and perceptions, existing technologies, financial resources, and communication between organisations. Technology adoption and information production are also influenced by other factors, such as the relationship between national and international demand for forest information, organisational substitution, and difficulties in improving the organisation of forest monitoring. Since in both countries the improvement of forest monitoring has reached a plateau due to self-constrained optimisation and path dependency, escaping from the plateau may require increasing human capital and stronger financial incentives.