| dc.description.abstract | High global greenhouse gas emissions and the degradation of ecosystem services from
unsustainable land use and land-use change highlight the importance of climate change
mitigation activities in the forestry and agricultural sectors. Globally important examples for
respective policies are Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Activities (NAMAs), which allow
developing countries to reduce sectoral emissions with international funding while
considering the national context, and REDD+, a mechanism with a similar approach for the
forestry sector. Different land-use related policies interact on various levels, causing synergies,
trade-offs and adverse effects. Knowledge about their interactions is therefore indispensable
in developing effective land-use policies. However, silo thinking largely confines policy
analyses to individual policies. The few existing studies that analyse policy interaction, and the
corresponding analytical frameworks, tend to focus on social systems, thereby omitting
possible interactions between policy impacts on natural systems, including ecosystem services
they provide. There is a lack of frameworks providing a holistic analysis of land-use related
policies. To promote more comprehensive policy coherence analyses, I developed a
methodological framework that considers interactions of all policy components from the
processes to outputs and ecosystem service impacts. This proposed framework includes a
content analysis of relevant policy documents, the identification and combination of
components that may interact and finally interviews with officials and scientific experts. At
the forefront of mitigation and conservation, Costa Rica provides a particularly interesting
example for a case study of this policy coherence analysis. The country is currently
implementing multiple land-use based mitigation policies, i.e. two agricultural NAMAs and a
REDD+ Strategy, which were analysed regarding potential interactions. Applying the
methodology revealed a large number of potential synergies, various trade-offs and few
adverse effects. Despite increased collaboration between involved organisations, this study
found the challenge of coordinating the policy processes of all three initiatives to mostly cause
trade-offs and adverse effects, such as the risk of inconsistent carbon accounting. Policy
outputs, in contrast, show a high level of coherence with many synergies between the stated
policy objectives and instruments. Synergistic objectives are results of the clear prioritisation
and consistent targeting of specific ecosystem services in the initiatives’ and broader policy
framework. Synergies between the policies’ instruments often emerge from the joint
extension of agroforestry systems and the national payment for ecosystem services scheme.
Findings indicate that the clear prioritisation of targeted ES improves their enhancement. At
the earliest policy stage, a strategic and integrated policy framework and coordination of the
policy processes can facilitate coherent outputs. | |
