The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is exploring a mechanism to reduce emissions
from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) to address global warming. This represents a major expansion of earlier
forest-oriented initiatives under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that focused on afforestation and reforestation
activities. While the scope of REDD projects is still being defined, potential categories include conservation, stock
enhancement, and sustainable management, creating a range of new opportunities for forest-related climate projects. The core
concept behind REDD is that deforestation trends can be slowed, halted, or even reversed conserving billions of tons of
carbon that would otherwise be emitted. To succeed, REDD projects will need to control powerful drivers of deforestation and
forest degradation operating at multiple levels and carried-out by a variety of actors, from rural people to political and
economic elites. This case study of a REDD pilot project in northwest Cambodia explores how drivers might be contained
under a project scenario and how the future international articulation of project design parameters could enable or constrain
a global REDD strategy. The paper concludes that to be successful REDD projects will require a hybrid approach in which
local drivers are controlled by communities and national drivers are mitigated through policy actions necessitating strong
partnerships between diverse institutions.narf_1