UNFCCC and the REDD+ Partnership from a networked governance perspective Sabine Reinecke *, Till Pistorius, Michael Pregernig Institute of Forest and Environmental Policy, University of Freiburg, Tennenbacher Str. 4, 79102 Freiburg, Germany 1. Introduction Currently, unsustainable use of forests and land use change represents the largest sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in most developing countries (Pan et al., 2011). In Brazil, for instance, the land use sector accounts for more than 50% of the total domestic emissions, whereas in other cases, like Indonesia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, this rate may be as high as 80% (Dutschke and Pistorius, 2008). So far, these sources remain unaddressed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), but since 2005 it has been discussed how this regulatory gap could be filled in a future post-Kyoto agreement. As a result, the parties have shaped the idea of an international financing mechanism that provides positive incentives to developing countries which succeed in decreasing their national defores- tation and forest degradation rates – currently labelled REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degrada- tion in developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries). It is generally believed to be an effective and also efficient instrument to mitigate climate change (Eliasch, 2008). REDD+ raised high expectations and gained strong support early on from many public and private stakeholders in the e n v i r o n m e n t a l s c i e n c e & p o l i c y 3 5 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 3 0 – 3 9 a r t i c l e i n f o Available online 7 November 2012 Keywords: REDD+ UNFCCC International regimes Global governance Networked governance a b s t r a c t The idea of establishing a financial mechanism to mitigate emissions from the forest sector in developing countries (REDD+) has received strong support, but the unsatisfactory prog- ress of the post-Kyoto process jeopardizes its fate under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Despite the pending decision on an international regulatory framework for the mechanism, REDD+ projects and policies are already put in practice at all governance levels. In 2010, the interim REDD+ Partnership was established as a supplementary process to make further progress in this regard. With its focus on implementation it formally stands outside of the UNFCCC, but de facto it constitutes an alternative forum for relevant issues dealt with under the convention. The relationship between the convention and the partnership is far from linear and appears at odds with classical concepts of ‘regimes’ in international relations theory. Notable parallels between the two processes and the observation that the partnership influences the negotiations under the convention, and vice versa, illustrate the mutual interactions of different modes of governance. Drawing from theories of global and multi- level governance, this paper takes a perspective of ‘governance in networks’ and uses the REDD+ Partnership as a case to further the understanding of global environmental politics as dynamic phenomena that span various political levels and tie various actors together in partly competitive, partly cooperative ways. # 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 761 20337 17; fax: +49 761 20337 05. E-mail addresses: sabine.reinecke@ifp.uni-freiburg.de (S. Reinecke), till.pistorius@ifp.uni-freiburg.de (T. Pistorius), michael.pregernig@ifp.uni-freiburg.de (M. Pregernig). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci 1462-9011/$ – see front matter # 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2012.09.015