Presentation short abstract

This article examines how market-based logics and development cooperation logics shape REDD+ in Chile, arguing that their economisation affects its legitimacy and effectiveness. Based on documents analysis and interviews, it shows how these intertwined logics constrain transformative climate action.

Presentation long abstract

Debates on climate governance increasingly highlight a shift from command-and-control regulation toward neoliberal, market-based approaches (Bracking, et. al 2021). Critics argue that this marketisation and financialisation of climate policy redirects attention toward building a carbon economy rather than achieving effective emissions reductions or fostering transformative socio-ecological transitions. Within this context, REDD+ has become strategically significant as the primary supply-side mechanism for emerging offset markets. Yet efforts to consolidate offset carbon markets have faced persistent challenges, including price volatility, declining demand, legitimacy concerns, combined with a post-Kyoto climate architecture, where mitigation relies on voluntary NDCs, leaving no binding demand for carbon offsets.

In this institutional void, international development cooperation has assumed a central role in financing and operationalising REDD+ in the Global South. Despite being conceived as a market instrument, over 90% of REDD+ funding originates from public development aid, producing the “aidification” of the scheme (Angelsen 2017). This raises fundamental questions about the merging of development aid logics with climate finance. The article argues that both domains have undergone a broader process of economization (Çalişkan and Callon, 2010) which facilitates this entangled logics in the implementation of climate action.

The article asks how climate mitigation pursued through market-based logics and international development materialises in practice, and what the effects are of an economised and globally diffused model of climate action. Based on document analysis and 30 semi-structured interviews, the article examines how the intertwined logics of cost-efficiency, additionality, and results-based payments shape the possibilities—and limitations—of REDD+ implementation in Chile.