Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Global Environmental Change journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloenvcha The transboundary displacement of deforestation under REDD+: Problematic intersections between the trade of forest-risk commodities and land grabbing in the Mekong region Micah L. Ingalls a, ⁎ , Patrick Meyfroidt b,c , Phuc Xuan To d,e , Miles Kenney-Lazar f , Michael Epprecht a a Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland b Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium c F.R.S. - FNRS, 1000, Brussels, Belgium d Crawford School of Public Policy, Australia National University, Australia e Forest Trends, Washington D.C., United States f Hakubi Center for Advanced Research and Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan ARTICLE INFO Keywords: REDD+ Transboundary displacement Forest governance Land grabbing Lao PDR and Cambodia ABSTRACT A key lever to mitigate global climate change is the reversal of forest carbon emissions trends throughout the Global South. Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiatives seek to conserve forest carbon stocks primarily through national and sub-national policies and interventions. Dominant drivers of forest change are, however, increasingly international in scope, tied to global commodity markets and investment flows, and are not easily captured or effectively addressed through nation-based carbon accounting. The fragmentary adoption of REDD+ across forest nations leaves room for the displacement of deforestation from early-adopters and countries with more rigorous carbon-related regulatory regimes to late-adopters of REDD+. While this displacement is expected to be substantial, our empirical understanding of the causal pathways of transboundary displacement remains weak. Our research addresses this lacuna, focusing on Vietnam, an early adopter of REDD+ that has experienced significant reforestation despite exponential growth in exports of key forest-risk commodities, sourced in large part from Lao PDR and Cambodia. We show that over the last decade, the trade of forest-risk commodities was large and accelerating in the Mekong region, concurrent with the rapid expansion of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs), constituting important, inter-related causal pathways for the displacement of deforestation and forest degradation. LSLAs are, however, core of national economic development strategies in the Mekong region, indicating a problematic relationship between REDD+, trade flows and land and forest governance. We explore the problematic intersection between these dynamic processes, their impacts on forests in Lao PDR and Cambodia, and implications for global efforts to manage forest resources and reduce emissions. The inability of REDD+ to address transboundary impacts suggests the need for complementary interventions that address supply- and demand-side dynamics. 1. Introduction Due to the critical role of forest as potential sinks and sources of carbon, the finalization of the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) Framework was a key achievement of the Paris Agreement in December 2015. Results-based Payments (RBPs) are expected to increasingly constitute the core financing me- chanism of REDD+, incentivizing the achievement of Nationally- Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reducing forest carbon emissions and enhancing removals of atmospheric carbon (Wong et al., 2016). Whatever its aspirations, the significance of REDD+ rests on its effectiveness in practice—in particular, its ability to address forest carbon emissions not only at the local level, but also aggregate global emissions (Dwyer, 2015). While some countries have moved quickly toward the achievement of various REDD+ readiness benchmarks in the development of National REDD+ Programs, others have been slow, uncommitted or non-participating. This fragmentary rolling out has important implications across forest nations and intersects pro- blematically with drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, which are increasingly globalized in nature and dominated by forest-risk commodity sectors (those that commonly impact forest through, for example, forest conversion for agriculture or forest degradation through https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.04.003 Received 8 November 2017; Received in revised form 17 February 2018; Accepted 2 April 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: micah.ingalls@cde.unibe.ch (M.L. Ingalls). Global Environmental Change 50 (2018) 255–267 0959-3780/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T