My research sits at the intersection of environmental governance, land-use change, and poverty alleviation in forested landscapes of low- and middle-income countries. I study policies designed to protect forests (such as REDD+ programs) and interventions intended to improve rural livelihoods, often in contexts where extractive activities, including mining, exert intense pressure on land, institutions, and communities. Participating in the Navigating Complexity in the Clean Energy Era workshop provided a valuable opportunity to reflect on how these overlapping policy domains generate ethical tensions that are not easily resolved through technical design alone.
A central theme emerging from the workshop and from my own work is that clean energy transitions are rarely “clean” on the ground. The minerals required for renewable energy technologies are frequently located in biodiverse and carbon-rich landscapes, often inhabited by marginalized or Indigenous communities. This creates a fundamental ethical dilemma: global efforts to decarbonize energy systems may rely on extractive processes that undermine local environments, livelihoods, and governance structures. In this sense, climate mitigation policies can inadvertently reproduce the very inequalities and ecological harms they seek to address.
Complexity, Governance, and Ethical Tensions
In my workshop contribution, I focused on REDD+ as a governance intervention intended to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and asked whether it can meaningfully slow illegal mining. The answer, suggested by both the literature and emerging empirical evidence, is deeply contingent. REDD+ does not operate in a vacuum; it reshapes local governance dynamics in ways that can either strengthen or weaken the capacity to confront powerful extractive sectors.
A recurring finding across REDD+ contexts is the recentralization and fragmentation of authority. While REDD+ was often envisioned as reinforcing decentralized forest governance, in practice it has frequently shifted control upward, toward central governments, donors, and international NGOs. Carbon payments increase the economic value of forests, incentivizing central authorities to reclaim decision-making power. At the same time, new rules, reporting requirements, and funding streams introduce parallel institutions that fragment existing governance arrangements. These dynamics complicate accountability, often redirecting it away from local communities and toward external actors.
The technical architecture of REDD+ further contributes to this complexity. Measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems demand specialized expertise, privileging technically skilled actors and raising barriers to meaningful local participation. In some cases, NGOs involved in REDD+ implementation effectively become de facto regulators - simultaneously providing incentives and reinforcing enforcement. Evidence from Peru and Brazil suggests that this dual role can undermine perceptions of fairness, particularly among smallholders who feel disproportionately monitored relative to more powerful actors such as logging or mining interests.
These governance shifts matter ethically because they shape who bears the costs of conservation and who is able to evade its constraints. When REDD+ enforcement focuses on small-scale land users while large-scale or illegal mining continues largely unchecked, conservation policies risk reinforcing existing inequalities rather than mitigating them.
Mining, REDD+, and Uneven Influence
Mining illustrates the limits of sectorally fragmented governance. Despite being a major driver of deforestation in many REDD+ countries, mining is often treated as external to REDD+ strategies, which tend to focus on smallholders or land-use practices deemed more politically tractable. Environmental agencies tasked with implementing REDD+ typically wield less influence than ministries overseeing mining and economic development. As a result, REDD+ may coexist with (rather than constrain) extractive expansion.
Yet the workshop discussions also highlighted that REDD+ can, under certain conditions, create points of friction with extractive activities. Land titling, increased monitoring of protected areas, and greater transparency around land-use change can offer some protection against illegal mining, particularly in buffer zones or Indigenous territories. These gains, however, can emerge through conflict rather than coordination, underscoring the ethical challenge of relying on governance mechanisms that lack cross-sectoral authority.
Poverty, Livelihoods, and the Limits of “Win–Win” Narratives
These governance dilemmas resonate strongly with insights from my recent research synthesizing causal evidence on interventions aimed at both poverty alleviation and environmental conservation. This body of work highlights how difficult it is to design interventions that reliably achieve social and environmental goals at the same time. Rather than producing consistent “win–wins,” the evidence points to outcomes that are highly context-dependent, shaped by underlying mechanisms, institutional settings, and timing. This reinforces the need to think carefully about trade-offs, sequencing, and governance when pursuing integrated development and conservation objectives.
This evidence cautions against overly optimistic assumptions that providing alternative livelihoods - whether through cash transfers, training, or market integration - will automatically reduce environmentally harmful activities such as illegal mining. Monetary interventions can improve welfare in the short run, but may also relax constraints on land conversion or resource extraction. Non-monetary and mixed interventions show more promise for environmental outcomes, particularly when paired with clear governance and monitoring structures, but their poverty impacts are often slower and more heterogeneous.
The ethical implication is that sequencing and trade-offs matter. Expecting communities facing poverty and weak institutions to bear the burden of conservation, while extractive industries continue to operate with relative impunity, raises serious concerns about fairness and responsibility in the clean energy transition.
Reflections Moving Forward
Engaging with this workshop reinforced for me that navigating the clean energy transition requires moving beyond technical fixes toward a more explicit reckoning with power, governance, and distributional consequences. Complexity is not simply an analytical challenge; it is an ethical one. Policies like REDD+ illuminate the hidden costs of deforestation and extraction, but their effectiveness depends on whether political and economic elites are willing to confront entrenched interests and accept short-term trade-offs for longer-term collective benefits.
For researchers and policymakers alike, this suggests a need for humility and reflexivity: recognizing where interventions fall short, whose interests they privilege, and where ethical tensions cannot be resolved without broader institutional change. Clean energy transitions will remain ethically fraught unless they grapple directly with the governance structures that determine who gains, who loses, and who decides.
References
Andoh, J., Oduro, K. A., Park, J., & Lee, Y. (2022). Towards REDD+ implementation: Deforestation and forest degradation drivers, REDD+ financing, and readiness activities in participant countries. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 5, 957550. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2022.957550
Bradley, S. (2020). Mining’s Impacts on Forests: Aligning Policy and Finance for Climate and Biodiversity Goals. Chatham House: The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Enongene, K. E., & Fobissie, K. (2016). The potential of REDD+ in supporting the transition to a Green Economy in the Congo Basin. The International Forestry Review, 18(1), 29-43. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44132619
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Molina-Garzón, A., Iyer, L., Devarakonda, P., McEwen, V., Roosevelt, B., Tsypin, N., Worku, A., Ghosh, P., Adams, E. A., Andersson, K. P., & Miller, D. C. (2025). Can Interventions Reduce Rural Poverty While Conserving the Environment? A Systematic Review of Evidence from Randomized Controlled Trials. Working Paper.
Overman, H., Cummings, A. R., Luzar, J. B., & Fragoso, J. M. V. (2019). National REDD+ outcompetes gold and logging: The potential of cleaning profit chains. World Development, 118, 16–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.02.010
Pokorny, B., Scholz, I., & de Jong, W. (2013). REDD+ for the poor or the poor for REDD+? About the limitations of environmental policies in the Amazon and the potential of achieving environmental goals through pro-poor policies. Ecology and Society, 18(2), 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-05458-180203