Importance of Becoming a Global Citizen

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Carbon and Cash in Climate Assemblages: The Making of a New

Global Citizenship

Seema Arora-Jonsson, Lisa Westholm and Andrea Petitt Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences,

Uppsala, Sweden; [email protected]

Beatus John Temu Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania

Abstract: Climate instruments such as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions by Deforestation and Degradation) promise a win–win proposition as villagers in Africa are paid for their efforts to conserve forests and sequester carbon. REDD+ assembles divergent interests at different scales—from bureaucrats to individual villagers. We argue that climate assem- blages are shifting the space of the political by regulating practices that previously had lo- cal and national provenance. They are producing “state-like” effects that touch deeply on citizenship. Villagers are drawn into a shifting REDD+ assemblage and subject to new identifications as entrepreneurs and responsible environmental citizens, meant to look af- ter a new global commons. We shift the discussion to deal seriously with questions of a “global” citizenship, not in its utopian sense, but by bringing into light the dark side of global citizenship already in practice in environmental governance. Forests and peoples are in practice made global—we must conceptualize the rights of this “global” citizenship Résumé: Les dispositifs climatiques tels le REDD+ présentent une solution de «gagnant-gagnant», car les villageois africains seront payés pour leurs efforts de conser- vation ainsi que pour leur contribution à séquestrer le carbone. REDD promet donc de contribuer à la fois au développement local et à la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique. REDD+ est rendu possible par la facon dont il promet de rassembler des intérêts divergents et multiéchelles, qui regroupent bureaucrates et villageois. Nous soutenons que les assemblages climatiques déplacent l’espace politique, en se substituant à des pratiques qui avaient auparavant une provenance locale et nationale. La réglementation de ces pratiques pour des raisons climatiques produisent un effet «Étatique» qui interviennent profondément dans l’exercise de la citoyenneté. Les villageois sont embarqués dans un assemblage REDD+ en mouvement, et soumis à des nouvelles identifications en tant qu’entrepreneurs et citoyens environnementaux responsables, chargés de s’occuper d’un nouveau bien commun mondiale. Nous proposons de traiter sérieusement la question d’une citoyenneté «mondiale», non pas dans un sens utopique, mais dans un perspectif qui puisse jeter de la lumière sur la façon dont la gouvernance environnementale imposent des nouveaux devoirs des citoyens africains. Les forêts et les peuples sont déjà dans la pratique devenues mondiale—nous proposons de conceptualiser les droits d’une nouvelle citoyenneté «mondiale».

Keywords: carbon, cash, citizenship, climate assemblage, REDD+

Antipode Vol. 48 No. 1 2016 ISSN 0066-4812, pp. 74–96 doi: 10.1111/anti.12170 © 2015 The Authors Antipode published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Editorial Board This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

I wish we had more carbon and more money—we would get more cash into the villages and they could do what they wanted (NGO officer, Tanzania).

This quote reflects desires and resources that are brought into play by current climate politics: the desire for cash through the sale of carbon credits—and the hope that ac- cess to both enables agency on the ground, in villages. Climate instruments such as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions by Deforestation and Degradation) are upheld by propo- nents as a multiple-win solution for both the global North and South. In REDD+, paying villagers in the South not to log their forests is expected simultaneously to mitigate climate change and reduce poverty. For the North, it provides a cost-effective solution for its responsibility to cut down on carbon buildup caused by years of indus- trial development. What at first glance is a simple transaction has far reaching implica- tions. Still under construction and fraught with disagreements, REDD+ is made possible by assembling divergent interests at different scales—bureaucrats and experts within policy arenas, private interests, individual farmers in the global South and consumers or buyers of credits in the North. The assemblage is held together by plans, documents and promises of cash, carbon credits and new technologies. While national governments remain the guarantor of citizenship rights and responsibilities, climate assemblages such as REDD+ are shifting the space of the political by regulating practices that previously had local and national provenance. The REDD+ assemblage is producing “state-like effects” (Trouillot 2001) that touch deeply on citizenship. The seemingly simple “cash for carbon” transaction entails a redefinition of forest spaces and a new “politics of belonging” (Yuval-Davis 2011). Through a carbon market bolstered by transnational governance, climate programs such as REDD+ hope to bring into being relations that presage new parameters for people’s citizenship. We use citizenship as a heuristic category to understand the question of rights and

responsibilities in climate programs. Citizenship has an empirical and normative dimension. Ours is an empirical investigation of citizenship, as we examine rights and responsibilities being assigned to villagers responsible for conserving carbon by a global REDD+ assemblage. Conceptually, it is an analysis of how we may think about emerging forms of citizenship in the context of global assemblages such as REDD+. The literature on REDD+ has emphasized people’s rights1 but has been relatively silent on their responsibilities in REDD+ projects, although citizen responsibility is the pivot on which REDD+ is being built. We analyze the REDD+ “machinery of intentions” (Mitchell 1991:82) in what can be seen as a “citizenship project” (Rose and Novas 2005) that has initiated changes in the location, substance and responsibility of everyday citizenship. We think further on the normative dimension central to citizenship—that is, the “right to have rights” (Arendt 1968) in this making of responsibility. Citizenship is typically imagined as a two-party relationship between individual and

state. Scholars have shown how the implications of economic globalization as well as that of global movements, such as transnational civil society, diasporas and immigrant networks, have created new sites of citizenship practices and new identi- ties across political borders. Mobile populations and actors navigating multiple systems and organizing logics disrupt simple understandings of citizenship (Isin and Turner 2007; Sassen 2006; Staeheli 2013). This article turns that argument inside out. We analyze the influence on rural citizenship (that is, on the rights and

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responsibilities of local village actors) of a mobile assemblage of bureaucrats, develop- ment agents, carbon traders, experts and villagers that come together in different conglomerations on the question of climate change and development. Rural inhabi- tants, especially in the South, are not normally regarded as global. They are relatively immobile especially in international terms. And they are not in geographical locations —cities—that are regarded as the hub of global and “citizen transformations” (Sassen 2006). They are in rural spaces considered to be the old world and commonly not cosmopolitan. We contend, instead, that rural spaces are at the heart of the global world with the resources they have and the labour they provide. Villagers are increas- ingly responsible for new global spaces and symbolize a new kind of global citizen. Critical scholarship on climate programs has brought attention to how complex

relations in climate interventions are reconfiguring political space (Baldwin and Meltzer 2012; Boyd 2010; Latta 2014). Standardizing and calculative tools separate carbon from its ecological contexts (Lansing 2011), making it “objective” and “legible” for global cross-jurisdictional regulatory structures with serious ramifica- tions for traditional understandings of national territory and sovereign control of forest resources (Boyd 2010). We focus on the significance for citizenship of this reconfiguration of political space. The implications of our approach go beyond climate programs, providing grounds to rethink rural citizenship and environmental governance. New forms of environmental relations envisaged for global (rural) peripheries are opening up new and contingent citizenship practices on the ground. An analysis of grey literature on REDD+ (international/country/NGO/news re-

ports, websites), exploratory studies of the REDD+ preparatory process in Burkina Faso, of a REDD+ pilot project in two villages in Tanzania’s Lindi district and partic- ipant observation at climate negotiations in Warsaw, 2013 form the basis of our em- pirical research. The field studies were carried out as part of SAJ’s project on Gender and REDD+. SAJ has written this paper with research assistance from LW. The study in Burkina Faso (October 2011/February 2012) included attendance at REDD+ meetings in the capital and interviews (15) with government, World Bank, donor, and NGO officials. In Tanzania (October 2012), we interviewed researchers as well as government, NGO and donor officials involved in REDD+ negotiations (7). Fieldwork in Lindi by BT/AP (November 2011) included participant observation, attendance at village assemblies, group discussions with men and women, and interviews with five men and five women in each village, two NGO workers and three district/forest officials.2 All quotes are from the studies. Our argument is not a critique arising out of the specific circumstances in Tanzania and Burkina. Drawing on past experience of participatory forestry projects and the extensive literature on carbon forestry, the studies illustrate processes and general tendencies inherent in forest interventions and yet idiosyncratic to climate politics. We begin by drawing on theories of citizenship from several disciplines. Building

on the critical literature concerning carbon offsets, we argue that the “state effects” of the REDD+ assemblage are leading to a disaggregation of citizenship. Next, we outline the “global commons” being conceived in Burkina Faso and Tanzania as forest spaces are reordered and made legible for outsiders. Turning the spotlight on everyday citizenship in Lindi, we discuss how carbon and cash become media- tors of citizenship rights and responsibilities. We analyze new relationships and

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identifications being brought about by a REDD+ “citizenship project” and discuss its implications for future conceptions of citizenship. Although REDD+ builds on past processes, our analysis is not a teleology that sees the current context as a result of the past. Instead we ask: What, despite empirical evidence that appears to contradict the benefits of the cash for carbon premise of REDD+, is holding this assemblage together? What other realities might there be? We conclude by looking to the possibilities of a truly global citizenship in the future.

Citizenship’s Global Challenges Citizenship is about membership of a group or community that confers rights and responsibilities as a result of membership. The model of modern citizenship as universal citizenship, that is, with equal civil, political and social rights of all members, is closely associated with the legacy of the English sociologist Thomas Marshall. The basis of liberal democratic citizenship, Marshallanian citizenship, has been built upon but also subjected to extensive criticism. Scholars questioned particular concerns “masquerading as universal” (Phillips 1993) and show that inequalities of class, gender or “race” lead to exclusions from the actual practice of citizenship (Balibar 1990; Turner 1986). Feminists demonstrated how male participation in politics was enabled by women’s labour in the private, domestic sphere (Pateman 1988). In an effort to recognize structural inequalities, Young (2000) conceptualizes cit-

izenship based on a “differentiated solidarity”. Individuals are incorporated in the political community not only as individuals but also through their collective social positions that need to be seen as relational rather than reified as separate entities. Lister (1997) calls for a “differentiated universalism”. While these conceptualiza- tions are largely within the bounds of the nation-state, we emphasize the need to think about differentiated citizenship/universalism in relation to a moving climate assemblage where notions of responsibilities for a common environmental future are being mapped on to unequal relations on a global scale. Of especial concern to us are conceptualizations of citizenship as part of world

belonging, of recognizing international and global obligations and roles, echoes of which suffuse REDD+ discourses. Moral calls for a world citizen draw upon the sense of global or cosmopolitan citizenship—a higher-order unity of human experi- ence and dignity—giving rise to a politics of desire that positions the planet as one whole with visions for discursive democracy and for conditions of peace, justice, sustainability and humane governance (Falk 2014; Habermas 2001; Nussbaum 1996). Rights guaranteed by regimes at the international level and regulated by multi- lateral agreements such as human rights agreements or by the EU are seen to represent citizenship beyond the state (Benhabib 2006; Soysal 1994). Terms such as global, transnational, postnational or cosmopolitan citizenship have been used to signal alternative forms of citizenship that exceed the bounds of the nation-state, “an acknowledgement of the increasingly transterritorial quality of political and social life, and the need for such politics where they do not exist” (Bosniak 2000:166).

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Shifting the Ground for Citizenship Scholars have debated whether it is possible to reconcile national belonging with transnational rights or to transfer rights and responsibility to the global level. Critics of postnational citizenship maintain that citizenship is socially situated, it cannot be universal, and it needs a formal governing polity.3 Taking stock of citizenship stud- ies, Isin and Turner (2007) distinguish between a “global” and a “cosmopolitan” citizenship and cast doubt on the notion of a “global” citizenship. Global citizen- ship presupposes a global state and a reciprocal relationship between rights and territory, the hallmark of a national state. They advocate instead a cosmopolitan cit- izenship where the “rights to mobility” and “rights to transaction” in a cosmopolis are the hallmark of new kinds of citizenship. The obvious objection to characterizing climate processes as promoting new

forms of citizenship is that there is no distinct democratic and institutional polity organizing the field, as the next section on the REDD+ assemblage shows. The source of carbon rights,4 intangible assets created by legislative and contractual agreements mainly between national and international bodies, remains uncertain. REDD+ arguments for securing rights to territory are within the national frame (Sunderlin et al. 2013). The nation-state remains the container of territory and the REDD+ assemblage

has little authority to grant rights. Villagers in our study sites had limited mobility. And yet REDD+ projects demonstrate three important aspects that reflect larger changes in citizenship—in the location, substance and responsibilities of citizenship. We argue that climate programs such as REDD+ are a “citizenship project”—the way in which authorities think about (some) individuals as potential citizens and the ways in which they act upon them. While such citizenship was always imagined as national, many events and forces are placing such a national form of citizenship in question (Rose and Novas 2005). In the following, we go through the three central dimensions in which we believe a global citizenship is being imagined for villagers involved in the REDD+ projects—in location, substance and responsibility.

Locating Citizenship Central to REDD+ governance, far more imagined than found in practice, is the idea of the abstract, decentred global marketplace within which villagers and consumers interact. The market is considered efficient not only for economic transactions but also in promoting the “triple wins” of carbon storage, biodiversity, and poverty al- leviation. In this “market citizenship” (Root 2007) or “contractualization of citizen- ship” is an effort to reorganize the relationship between the state and the citizenry, from non-contractual rights and obligations between the “state” and citizens to the principles and practices of quid pro quo market exchange (Somers 2008:2). Changing citizen relationships vis à vis markets are linked to a form of governance

characterized by a regulatory state—a technocratic approach to economic gover- nance with an emphasis on institutional self-regulation. Dubash and Morgan (2012) argue that an important distinction of the regulatory state in the South is the presence of powerful external pressures, especially from international financial

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institutions to adopt particular policy transplants. This is evident in REDD+ as the tri- adic assemblage of citizenship—of government, civil society and markets (Somers 2008—is complemented with a fourth: transnational bureaucracies populating in- ternational institutions. National resource governance is increasingly being framed by policies of international organizations and an “informal system of global regula- tion” that maintains a measure of order (Slaughter 2003), although with ambigu- ous accountability to citizens (Miller 2007). The aim to map village areas, delineate forest types and measure carbon stocks

continues to make forest areas “legible” (Scott 1998), this time not only for national governments but for a global public who would pay for its upkeep. The “location of citizenship” (Bosniak 2006), so inextricably bound up with the nation-state, is changing. Villagers enrolled into REDD+ projects are in a sense already global citi- zens, not with rights to mobility as conceived of by cosmopolitan theorists but with rights to transaction that we scrutinize further. We do not take global capitalism as an all-important entity that penetrates

all economic, social and political relations it comes into contact with. The problematic nature of community-led Payment for Environmental Services model (on which REDD+ is predicated) is not that it is a market per se, but that “it is a powerful intervention masquerading as a market” (Milne and Adams 2012). This “masquerade” establishes rights to transactions and expectations of returns from REDD+ projects and is accompanied by an important global responsibility. It is important to pay close attention to moments of local encounters with processes of globalized capital in the everyday and with people’s negotiations with environmental discourses.

Citizenship-in-Practice In citizenship-in-practice or process, the struggle to gain new rights and give sub- stance to existing ones is seen as being as important as the substance of those rights (Lister 1997). Feminists have brought attention to domains formerly excluded from conceptualizations of citizenship such as the family and the community (Lister 1997; Yuval-Davis 2011). They highlight substantive concerns of citizenship—the quality of polities, belonging, membership, marginalization or exclusion—to under- stand the spatiality and territoriality of citizenship as an “ordinary” part of daily life, as “something we enact, even as it is part of a broader system by which order is maintained” (Staeheli et al. 2012:631). Ordinary citizenship draws attention to the ways in which law and ordering are normalized through daily life but also how community action that transcends the boundaries of the private and the public can change the boundaries of citizenship (Arora-Jonsson 2013). An understanding of citizenship “in-practice” informs our analysis of people’s political being, subjec- tivity and action in relation to the state-effects of REDD+. It goes beyond the formal political domain and beyond the procedural and institutional. We build on theories rooted in the substantive concerns and experiences of citizenship, on citizenship as a process and not merely an outcome, and where responsibilities determine every- day rights and access to resources.

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Citizen Responsibility The focus on rights that has dominated discussions of citizenship has tended to overlook responsibilities being placed on groups and individuals. As Staeheli (2013) asserts, responsibilities associated with citizenship have so far been less frequently discussed than rights in the scholarly literature and are typically the preserve of political philosophers. She draws attention to the connotations of voluntarism and consent associated with responsibility. Voluntarism, she shows, can in fact be a camouflage for coercion that is enforced through governing strategies that reinforce certain behaviours associated with responsibility and responsible citizenship. Dobson (2003) emphasizes the injustices due to asymmetrical acts of globaliza-

tion that have benefited wealthy nations in the North. He argues for an ecological/ environmental citizenship that recognizes Northern environmental obligations, where the relationship is between citizens, not with a state body. The environmental responsibility that we address here is one that is handed down to villagers in the South not those taken on by wealthy citizens in the North. For villagers in REDD+ projects, the distinction between voluntarism and coercion is of little consequence as they work to make the most of scarce resources and take on responsibilities of managing their environments in new contexts. Decision-making moves to many different places and rights change materially on the ground. Sassen’s (2006) distinction between denationalized and postnational citizen-

ship, a difference in the scope and institutional embeddedness of citizenship is important to keep in mind. Denationalized citizenship concerns the changes that lead to the transformation of the national, including the national in its condition as foundational for citizenship. Postnational citizenship has to do with new forms that we have not even considered and might emerge out of the changed condi- tions in the world located outside the institutional framework of the national, such as human rights regimes. A denationalization of citizenship is evident in REDD+ that still uses the national frame but is changing the meaning of that frame as environmental rights and responsibilities are shifting from the nation-state to a larger and diffuse assemblage. In its current form with a covert focus on responsibilities, such climate instruments are already bringing into being the dark side of a global citizenship. The scholars above argue convincingly that we have moved beyond the question

of whether global citizenship is desirable. Our contention is that these processes and apparatuses of global governance already in place can also be used to open up the space to imagine new conceptualizations of postnational or “global” citizen- ship. In order to move beyond those, we first analyze the disaggregation of current conceptions of citizenship in REDD+ and the processes and relations driving new forms of citizenship.

Disaggregating Citizenship: The State-Effects of REDD+ According to Benhabib (2006), we are facing today, the “disaggregation of citizen- ship”. These, she argues, are institutional developments that unbundle the three constitutive dimensions of citizenship, namely collective identity, the privileges of

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political membership, and the entitlements of social rights and benefits. We pro- pose that a disaggregation of citizenship is being brought about by the “state- effects”—spatialization, legibility, isolation and identification (Trouillot 2001)5—of climate governance that go beyond government. Historically, territorial sovereignty has defined people’s political identities as citi-

zens and formed the basis on which states claim authority over people and allocate resource access rights and responsibilities within those boundaries. Claims to land are partly defined by social identity and social identity partly by property. As Lund (2011) writes for Africa, there are few issues more intimately connected. A “spatialization effect” can be seen in the reordering of land and ownership in

REDD+ projects. REDD+ programs are dependent on the construction of carbon offsets6 as a tradable commodity (Bumpus 2011). This necessitates mapping, mea- suring and categorizing village and forestland, in other words, making “abstract space” (Vandergeest and Peluso 1995), “legible” to the REDD+ assemblage, for it to be able to “see” it (Scott 1998) and integrate into markets. The making of abstract space frequently comes up against how people perceive space—as local, relative, complex and produced in relations (Lefebvre 1991). Arguments that REDD+ could strengthen the process of securing local tenure for villagers (Naughton-Treves and Wendland 2013) must contend with REDD+ spatialization that like most carbon forestry is underscored by universal conceptions about forest spaces and their benefits (Lansing 2011). In examples ahead, we discuss what securing tenure might mean in practice in such a context. A global “legibility effect” is created in the production of REDD+ knowledge for

climate governance and in the theoretical and empirical tools that classify and reg- ulate land and collectivities as well as account for stocks and flows of carbon (Boyd 2010). Scholars using a frame of governmentality show how governments and their associates establish “carbon territories” through the active creation and quan- tification of bounded and ordered spaces of carbon producing activities. Through the territorialization of carbon and simultaneous ordering of jurisdictional capaci- ties, they regulate, administer and monitor policies on climate change and exercise authority over activities that may lie outside their physical boundaries and direct jurisdiction (Rice 2010; Rutland and Aylett 2008). Experts—academics, consultants and others mostly from Northern institutions who measure, train and are meant to build “capacity in the South” play an important part in legitimizing the spatialization and governance of REDD+. Climate change discourses on the “global” problem and allusions to one planet

contribute to an “identification effect”. Although the question of rights (eg indige- nous rights) has found place in international climate negotiations, the focus has tended to crisis scenarios and appeals to collective and individual environmental responsibility. Win–win discourses of climate mitigation and poverty alleviation play into development imaginaries and the moral–ethical dimension of a common future. Climate governmentality thus may be seen to work through “practices that totalize (aggregating social practices, overall greenhouse gas emissions) and individualize (producing reflexive subjects actively managing their greenhouse gas practices)” (Paterson and Stripple 2010:341)—in other words, an “isolation effect” through efforts in shaping human behaviour.

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These are political projects (Milne and Adams 2012) that “construct belonging in particular ways” (Yuval-Davis 2011) and appeal to the “enviropreneurial citizen” (Baldwin and Meltzer 2012). This global individual (isolation effect), also identified in a homogenous whole in invocations of a new world citizenry (identification ef- fect) is “molded and modeled for governance in a context within which individuals recognize themselves as the same” as “we are all in the same boat” (Trouillot 2001:126). While it is early to say much about the REDD+ projects from our field studies, we highlight the expectations raised among the people by the spectre of a new market that hold this together. New institutional contexts for citizenship are being produced by the state-effects of REDD+ and it is the stories around them that we examine further.

Locating Citizenship: The REDD+ Assemblage To describe the heterogeneity, contingency instability, partiality and situatedness of REDD+ processes, we use Ong and Collier’s (2005:338) description of an assem- blage: “the proliferation of technologies across the world produces systems that mix technology, politics and actors in diverse configurations that do not follow given scales or political mappings. It includes technoscience, circuits of exchange, systems of administration or governance, and regimes of values.” Seen in its sepa- rate parts, REDD+ is a conventional development project, an environmental initia- tive or an example of transnational governance/negotiations. Together in an assemblage, these give rise to new configurations and practices that give the impression of a structure but need to be examined “not as an actual structure but as the powerful, metaphysical effect of practices that make such structures appear to exist” (Mitchell 1991:94). An important feature that holds the REDD+ assemblage together, despite its

many fissures, is its “global” reach. REDD+ is global not only because its propo- nents are spread across the globe but also because it is thought to be equally appli- cable everywhere, even in Burkina Faso, a Sahel country considered to have little scope for mitigation. A range of actors and institutions are involved in REDD+. Forests on national territory provide the frame and the context for the REDD+ assemblage, but the public sphere of REDD+ is far from only national. While REDD+ has dimensions of “publicness” it has equal ambitions of becoming “private”. Policy documents refer to the private sector as a key stakeholder, investor and innovator (CIF 2014; Henderson et al. 2013; United Republic of Tanzania 2013). The Tanzanian and Burkina Faso governments are one among many institu- tions in a climate assemblage. This rule of experts (Mitchell 2002) and brokers and translators (Lewis and Mosse 2006)—transnational networks, NGOs, academics, for profit actors as well as state functionaries—is established in government corri- dors and international meetings and workshops, in the offices of development and international organizations such as the World Bank and in national capitals. The work of transnational alliances and NGOs has brought about change in modes of government. The outsourcing of the functions of the state to non-state agencies is a key feature, not only of the operation of national states, but an emerging system of transnational governmentality (Ferguson and Gupta 2002).

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Heterogeneous Interests in Burkina and Tanzania The heterogeneity of the REDD+ assemblage comes not only from being spread out across space and social hierarchies but also over time. A consensus within climate change negotiations is that REDD+ will pass through a series of phases that encour- age countries to progress from initial capacity-building activities toward achieving long-term emissions reductions in a measurable, reportable, and verifiable way (UNFCCC 2011). Activities depend on donor countries providing financial and tech- nical support throughout all phases. This phased approach has contributed to the de facto displacement of decision-making across numerous organizations involved in REDD+ readiness activities (McDermott 2014). In Burkina, REDD+ has been led by the World Bank since 2010 through its Forest

Investment Program together with the Ministry of Environment, aided by the African Development Bank and consultants. Funding comes from a group of donors. Burkina Faso has two REDD+ projects, though yet to be implemented. The REDD+ framework also has a “private sector set-aside” for “competitive funding” of pro- jects.7 REDD+ in Tanzania is funded mainly by Norway and UN-REDD.8 Concern over implementation capacity and fiduciary risk of the Tanzanian Government led Norway to channel most REDD+ funds to academic and civil society organizations (Dokken et al. 2014b). The Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs has been impor- tant in managing the REDD+ process. It signed a funding agreement in 2009 with the University of Dar Es Salaam that hosted the National REDD+ Secretariat and di- rectly with national and international NGOs to implement nine local pilot projects. As a step towards assuming ownership of REDD+, the government set up a National REDD+ Task Force with a representative from NGO/private sector and the university. They produced the National REDD+ Strategy, endorsed by the government in 2013. The Strategy (United Republic of Tanzania 2013:20) envisages a National REDD+ Fund that would distribute funds to REDD+ projects based on their implementation of the strategy. NGOs, on the other hand, tend to promote market-based funding or a nested (combined) approach. Tanzania already has carbon forestry projects run by private companies and certified through Plan Vivo and Verified Carbon Standards.9

Negotiating Hierarchies in the Assemblage Structural fissures lie at the heart of the REDD+ assemblage (of environment– development, North–South, governments–civil society), although there are over- laps and actors move across divides and relations. The environment–development divide is overlaid with North–South power politics. Preoccupation with carbon stor- age in international negotiations is most obvious among Northern countries. In the past, countries in the South insisted on bringing the notion of “development” onto the climate agenda (Agarwal and Narain 1991). More recently, poverty alleviation and governance, “typically Southern” interests, have made their way into REDD+ discussions. In the absence of credible climate agreements, REDD+ offers a compromise with

which many have been able to work. In Burkina Faso, Norway, keen to mitigate

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carbon, pushed for a stronger focus on climate than other donors.10 Burkina Faso’s acceptance as a REDD+ country was conditional on a revision of the investment plan. Donors anxious to be seen to be working on carbon storage needed the Burkina government to reframe its focus on community forestry projects and preoc- cupation with development and wanted details on the drivers of deforestation and the mitigation potential of the proposed projects (Forest Investment Program 2011). Sending the plan to be rewritten with appropriate references to deforesta- tion drivers and to conform to certain prescriptions (or politics) may be seen as a “ritual of control” in the negotiation of hierarchies (Ferguson and Gupta 2002:987) within the assemblage. A Burkina official remarked:

This is like an exam we have to pass, so to speak … If it’s good they say, yes, it’s good. If not, they say, you fail, you have to redo it … But Burkina was lucky and they said, “Your document is good. You just have to improve these parts.” And the parts they told us to improve were on how to combat the causes of deforestation.

Support for Burkina’s plans was contingent on working within the framework of the “deforestation discourse”, writing the right reports, detailing programs for monitoring and fulfilling development and bureaucratic prescriptions brought to bear by a mobile and shifting group of bureaucrats, NGOs and consultants. NGOs in Burkina complained in interviews that they got to know about important REDD+ meetings not from the government but through their contacts in international NGOs in other parts of Africa. They were, however, acutely aware of the increased expectations on non-state actors in the REDD+ as is clear in this comment by an NGO worker:

The FIP process on a national level is not very inclusive. This must be recognized … on the national level they ignore us. Anyway, in the implementation of the FIP, they have no choice … the moment will come. Without us they cannot put it into place.

While villagers were absent in these discussions about their lives, they are meant to hold this assemblage together on the ground. This awareness is not absent among governments, donors and NGOs working with these issues. Project docu- ments cast impoverished local communities as drivers of deforestation due to their dependence on the forests, but they are also assigned roles as forest guardians in co-management models with the government (African Development Bank 2013). REDD+ draws its legitimacy from the need to involve everyone in collaborative and participatory models. Reaching all the way to villagers as part of a larger assem- blage makes REDD+ truly “global”. Hierarchies within the REDD+ assemblage are subject to a constant mainte-

nance of balance among different actors. According to a Norwegian official in Tanzania, NGOs do not trust that the government will not embezzle or hold on to REDD+ funds. A researcher feared that the lack of trust between NGOs and government functionaries would put local people in a precarious situation as ac- countability of program implementers becomes difficult to nail down. Positions and categories are mobile and produced through ongoing engagement and con- test among actors at various scales. Some actors are more visible, persuasive or powerful than others but that does not imply ultimate authority. Organizations

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are constrained by charter to limited domains of responsibilities. Collectively, they create a complicated architecture of institutions, laws and instruments that make up the contours of REDD+ projects. This can lead to cooperation among them but also unresolved coordination issues, overlapping responsibilities and jostling for terrain. While there are North–South or donor–recipient or government–NGO differences in priorities, REDD+ negotiations maintain a precarious balance of diverging interests.

Technical Systems: Credits, Funds, MRVs, Documents and Projects Integral to the REDD+ assemblage are the resources, technical systems, finances (money or promises of it), documents and discourses that hold it together. Carbon credits are a new resource, albeit intangible, invisible and mobile, unlike resources of the past (wood, water, fuel)—and self-evidently global. They are measured, valued by firms, academics and experts (Lovell and Liverman 2010). Financing is important to make it work. Funds for REDD+ in Burkina Faso and Tanzania have been used for setting up an infrastructure at the national level and developing REDD+ strategies and plans, workshops, capacity building and the training of staff and local people at various levels. In Tanzania, substantial funding went into collaboration with Norwegian Universities on measuring, reporting and verifying techniques though being able to measure, map and tabulate have been major challenges. These technologies are not neutral tools but integral to building up the REDD+ architecture and “active forces in the very construction of the objects of governance” (Boyd 2010:849). Equally important are the documents—from the Cancun Declaration (UNFCCC

2011) to the Investment Plan (Forest Investment Program 2012) in Burkina Faso and the National REDD+ Strategy (United Republic of Tanzania 2013) in Tanzania —meant to guide the REDD+ process. A plethora of reports, evaluations and plans give voice to REDD+ discourses on the primacy of economic returns and the importance of stopping deforestation. They outline a market citizenship that is at the same time buttressed by a moral imperative, a common atmosphere and the responsibility of all citizens to keep it clean. At the heart of the assemblage are the forests. They shape processes at the local level but also form the contours of the assemblage at other scales. The most concrete artefacts of the REDD+ assemblage and policies are the pro-

jects themselves. Our specific focus is on a pilot project in the villages of Kinyope and Likwaya in Tanzania and on the project planning process in Burkina Faso. In Burkina, REDD+ project plans aim to build on local forestry groups “as major players of the management, maintenance and conservation of forests instead of simply exploiting forests” (African Development Bank 2013:38). The projects seek clear boundary demarcation and registration of land and transhumance tracks (often a source of conflict), the construction of roads and other infrastructure to facilitate market access. The participatory forest scheme in Burkina that began in the mid-1980s focused on producing and selling fuelwood to urban areas and

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managing forests for a sustainable supply. The REDD+ focus is on a larger market and carbon sequestration. As cash from carbon credits cannot be expected in the near future, REDD+ development goals include income generation from forest products other than wood. New supervisory actors besides government officials, local communities and NGOs include “interest groups, private sector operators and specialized technical services” (World Bank 2013:21). The project in Tanzania also builds upon past participatory forest management

schemes. The projects aim to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation in Tanzania in ways that provide direct and equitable incentives to communities to conserve and manage forests sustainably” (NGO project report). Charcoal-making and shifting cultivation are described as local causes of deforesta- tion in project reports. The NGO received money directly from the Norwegian government for implementing pilot projects but their aim is to establish channels to carbon markets that would provide eventual long-term funding beyond the pilot project stage. Project funds were used to simulate payments from a carbon market in order to test benefit-sharing models as well as to promote entrepreneurship in the villages through new income-generation activities. Shifts in authority between state and other actors evident in the REDD+ assem-

blage are not new. In many ways, REDD+ projects extend past agendas. In Tanza- nia, NGOs hope that financing from REDD+ projects would facilitate participatory forest management programs. In Burkina, the potential for scaling up past projects in forest conservation and agro-forestry enabled its becoming a REDD+ pilot coun- try. Yet, the scale, as well as the recourse to the market and its legitimacy, makes way for the presence of non-state organizations in new ways as we examine further.

Citizenship in the New Global Commons Citizenship is customarily located in its relation to national territory—to rights and responsibilities vis à vis land. In Burkina Faso and Tanzania, boundaries and jurisdic- tion are being reconceived in readiness for REDD+ programs—the “spatialization ef- fects” of REDD+ governance. The “state” in Burkina and Tanzania is “respatialized” (Ferguson and Gupta 2002), that is, reconfigured with the dynamics of globaliza- tion and domestic politics. We go on to examine how that might happen as abstract space is carved out of the present. A WB officer in Burkina Faso explained:With map-

ping … the objective of this piece of land is changed, it becomes specialized. People know that this place is set up for conservation and this place is set up for production … a way to enforce land use. It won’t be like, five years later we say, “oh, this was sup- posed to be conservation but now I don’t care, I’m just using it in production.” No. You need something to avoid changing the objective of land use.

The predilection for managing resources and people through the making of abstract space recurred in pilot projects in Tanzania. Kinyope and Likwaya (as well as the other 15 REDD+ pilot villages in Lindi) did not have land use plans before REDD+ was introduced. In 1999, Tanzania’s Land Act was passed to protect community land rights and acknowledge the customary tenure system in villages. However, in the draft of the Tanzania National REDD+ Strategy, village land is taken

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as “general land” in conflict with the customary and statutory rights as phrased in the Act (Dokken et al. 2014a), reflecting longstanding differences between forest and land authorities. The NGOs have made efforts to secure village land certificates at the national level, but the process has been challenging and more time consum- ing than planned (Dokken et al. 2014b). Neither does the REDD+ Strategy tie carbon ownership to land or forest tenure “leaving communities and other forest owners vulnerable to losing out on rightful benefits, or possibly even compromising their current legal right to use and manage recognized forest land” (NGO project report). Complications of land tenure (Sunderlin et al. 2013) and vagueness about right-

ful owners of carbon rights (Karsenty et al. 2014) have riddled REDD+ negotiations and projects. Despite the absence of a legal framework, NGOs in collaboration with district and village authorities have begun the process of making land use plans to ensure proper demarcation of village and forest boundaries, absorbing the cost and responsibility of what previously fell under the authority of the government (Dokken et al. 2014b). Relations to other villages and their use of the forests also needed to be renegotiated and restricted. Yet, an overview of several countries, in- cluding Tanzania, indicates that NGOs are “experiencing a considerable mismatch between the tools applied and the size of the tenure challenge that have deep roots in history, are national in scope and whose origins often lie well beyond the bound- ary of the project site” (Sunderlin et al. 2013:48). Nevertheless, the phased REDD+ approach, the complexity, fragmented decision-making and ambiguity have created the space and time for a range of actors to enact their own priorities for REDD+ (McDermott 2014). Through active participation in the process, actors with differing agendas cement their authority on the ground. REDD+ can be likened to “citizenship that shades off into a great diversity of (sometime divisive) decision- making roles within civil society” (Bosniak 2000:196). In the two villages, most village forests were put under the REDD+ project and

some forests kept aside for use as before. Once the village agreed on the areas to be designated as REDD+ forests, households living in the area were asked to move areas within the village designated for agriculture (Dokken et al. 2014b). According to a district official, land use plans are important for the villagers to be able to plan their resource use: “We told them to include all forest. They asked, ‘how are we going to live?’ We said that you will still be able to use the forest, but with regulations.” He added that he had not seen villagers taking up any new activities yet, but they would be forced to, if the project went well: “They ask, what can I do now? And we ask them back, ‘What would you do if there were no more trees?’.” The setting aside of forests as abstract space designated for a sole purpose for all

time meant that charcoal-making, shifting cultivation and logging were no longer options. In both villages, people stated that it was now harder to get what they needed for subsistence. They had to look for activities in farming, brick-making or in transport to compensate for lack of income. According to several, charcoal-making (identified in project documentation as one reason for deforestation) suited the whole family. Forestland that had been burnt for charcoal by the men and used for cultiva- tion by women was less time-consuming to prepare and maintain. Vegetation did

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not have to be cleared off the burnt land and the sandy forest soil was easier to work than the clayey soil outside the forest. Women were pressured to produce more from cultivation, having to use old plots again instead of shifting cultivation in the forests. More time was spent on weeding and the crop yield was smaller. The villagers had to add more farm plots in the valley to make up for it, and harvest twice a year, increas- ing the pressure on farmland outside the forests. Hardships encountered by villagers were recognized by NGO and District Office

staff. These were seen as teething troubles. A district officer observed: “It will take time. Shifting agriculture is widespread so they will have to be taught. It will be hard for them at first, then it will be better. The land use plan will make them change.” As far as villagers were concerned, they had customary land rights. Distancing from decision-making with the coming of REDD+ was not due to the lack of legal title. According to an NGO officer, communities voluntarily decided to forego the freedom to clear forests in order to achieve benefits from a different kind of land use where they could sell their product to a global market. In practice, this meant their control over land would be mediated by new

intermediaries. Their land became a part of a new “global commons” to be protected for the common good (Goldman 1998). According to Peluso and Lund (2011:677), “when people accept carbon forestry, they must recognize–at least by implication–the authority of the institution allocating land to them, which shifts the terms of hegemony and sovereignty, taking away the rights and decision- making power of earlier users.” The biophysical territory shaped the villagers’ citizenship as the social conditions of existence and relationships in the villages. These were now to be regulated through a system of rights and duties that went far beyond the villages—decisions on what forests could be used, what kind, how much of the forests could or could not be used.

Carbon and Cash: Citizenship-in-Practice Forest products such as firewood could be collected in non-REDD+ forests in Lindi with free permits while permits for other products such as timber had to be paid for. Prices and fines were to be decided by the Village General Assembly. A commit- tee suggested prices and REDD+ bylaws to the Assembly for decisions and was responsible for the management of permits and fines. Another committee managed the distribution of the REDD+ money when it was received from the NGO. However, uncertainty reigned about the rules that were already in force, not only

at village and district levels, but also at NGO offices in the district and in the capital. The villagers had varying views regarding what forest use was allowed or when you needed to pay for a permit to collect forest products. While some claimed they needed no permits to continue making charcoal, others believed they could now not use REDD+ forests at all and were in fact stealing, even when an NGO worker pointed out in a group discussion that they were not. A common perception in both villages was that nothing could be taken for free anymore. According to the NGO, it was the villagers’ decision through the general assembly that permits were to be used to get produce from the forest. It was also clear that the villagers had

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received strong encouragement from the NGO. The decisions of what to do with their land was in the villagers’ hands, but in practice, the confusion around what was “right”, had fenced off the forests for the villagers even if villagers did break rules. Restrictions were in place long before any benefits were visible to the villagers. An NGO officer and some men explained in a group discussion that the permit

system (including free permits) enabled the monitoring of what was being taken from the forest. It was seen as a way of knowing who was in the forest and what was being taken. If a fire were to start, it was easier to find the responsible person. It was a safety issue in knowing who was in the forest. In individual interviews, some joked, though not without seriousness, that previously it had been easier to get poles and use the forests and keep out of the way of district authorities responsible for the permits in line with the Participatory Forest Management framework. Now, surveillance was at village level—they were meant to be watching each other. The devolution of responsibility to the villages was accentuated with REDD+. With the involvement of the Village Committee, there was an increased pressure to implement rules that in theory already existed—a territorialization of sorts. The emphasis on cash due to the permit system paradoxically created a shortage

of cash in the two villages. The villagers did not have easy access to timber and poles that they could sell and they had to pay for them with cash permits. Cash was now needed for pole permits to build or repair their houses. Many people who did not have cash at their disposal could no longer harvest the timber and poles. Those without farmland outside the forest needed to rent land and pay rent either in cash or crops. Some worked on others’ farms. Carbon forestry came with promises, but also had the potential of exacerbating social differentiation. An NGO officer commented: “There are not a lot of alternative activities available to people. It depends a lot on the household. People who already are entrepreneurial will be the ones who benefit most. The poorest that we really are targeting are left behind.” This had gendered dimensions. Women who did most of the subsistence farming

had less access to cash. They were forced to sell crops to get cash for buying house- hold necessities. Working on other people’s farms was considered inappropriate. Thus, the effects of the REDD+ pilots depended on whom you asked. As a woman said: “Some say it is difficult, some say it is not. If you don’t have money for permits it is hard; if you do, then it is not hard.” Carbon was “terrorialized” in Lindi forests and the new carbon economy in the

villages promised cash. Ironically, REDD+ also accelerated the need for cash. For- ests and access to it were no longer determinants of citizen rights. Cash was be- coming a new mediator in everyday citizenship. Rights were obtained through cash. Less cash meant in practice less rights to the environment. While forests and carbon needed to be rendered legible to policy-makers, carbon traders and scientists for standardized market calculations and management strategies, it ren- dered other products and practices such as taking poles, making charcoal and shifting cultivation illegible and illegal, changing the terms of everyday citizenship. These were accompanied by subtle shifts in authority, as villagers became enrolled

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in a diffuse assemblage, entailing new relationships and responsibilities. Promises of the (as yet, distant) market shaped human behaviour and facilitated the “contractualization of citizenship”, from “non-contractualization rights and obliga- tions” between the polity and citizens to the principles of “quid pro quo market exchange” (Somers 2008:2).

Citizen Responsibility Devolving responsibility to forestry groups has been on the development and for- estry agenda since the 1990s. In REDD+, the absence of an overall policy and a more active role by NGOs and village authorities presage a new kind of responsibil- ity. Voluntarism is a cornerstone of REDD+ projects. In Burkina, the possibility of villagers rejecting REDD+ projects finds little mention in program documents. Government, donor and NGOs believed that villagers would participate in projects if they had enough knowledge, training and information. One official observed, “We need to try and reverse the tendency of degradation. This can be done if we change people’s mentalities.” In Tanzania, projects need to obtain “Free Prior and Informed Consent” from

communities who have the right to give or withhold consent to proposed projects that may affect the lands they customarily own, occupy or otherwise use. In Lindi, the NGO played an important part in establishing functioning village assemblies and committees and in organizing meetings to discuss and take decisions on REDD+ with the whole village. A few villages refused to participate in REDD+ pilot projects. NGO workers and district officials explained unwillingness to participate as a lack of understanding of the projects, the low level of education, and the fear that it would lead to land-grabbing. An NGO officer pointed out that all the villages in Kilwa District that initially refused participation later joined the REDD+ project once NGOs had raised awareness about REDD+. A district official explained how they had introduced the project to the villagers:

They were told that the aim of REDD+ was to tackle climate change. They said it is drier now when we asked them to brainstorm about changes in the climate. We told them that you conserve here, but the change will happen in a larger area. We tell them that trees give fresh air … The villagers believe that they will get rain. We are telling them that if they conserve forest the rain will come.

Needed, according to official planners and NGOs, were entrepreneurship, an at- titude of care that protected the environment (an environmental subjectivity) and a sense of global awareness (responsibility). In a discussion about the lack of alterna- tive livelihoods in Lindi, some NGO workers emphasized opportunities for creativity that the new challenges presented—as positive drivers for local entrepreneurship. The villagers had been asked what kind of income-generating projects they would prefer as part of REDD+. Discarding ideas that were seen as too expensive, such as cows, buses and motorbikes, the NGO project staff had decided to give chickens to groups of villagers to start chicken farming. While the villagers were still waiting for the chicken, the first simulated REDD+ payments had funded village structures as well as individual payments to villagers.

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The scale of responsibility was moving—in the villages, previous forestry pro- grams that aimed to hand over responsibility to community groups were being ac- tualized. On a broader scale, it was a contract with the (idea of) global market and new responsibility as rational and willing conservationists in hopes of future gain. The institutional context for collective identity, central to citizenship, was shifting.

Ambiguous Membership in a New Assemblage In the end, as one of the district officers quipped, the success of the REDD+ pro- ject and underlying drive to promote local entrepreneurship depends on some- body buying the carbon that the project was trying to conserve. He acknowledged the hardships it brought to the villagers, “It is important to con- serve the forests but … when it comes to survival it is different. In some villages, people are on the line.” An NGO officer professed scepticism about the income-generation projects,

saying that the focus could not just be on carbon storage but also needed to be feasible for villagers. In his view, cash payments gave people far more flexibility to decide how to use the benefits. These had been immensely popular in the communities.11

Governmentality studies show how environmental interventions seek to bring about particular roles for citizens in environmental governance, also a point we make in relation to the REDD+ “machinery of intentions”. However, it would be fac- ile to assume that people acquiesce because they were not protesting openly. Page (2005) avers that in an age of flexible governance systems, the disdain towards commodification is too simple. There is a need to examine the contingent and con- textual factors that prompt people to make their decisions (Hobson 2013). Al- though our studies were exploratory in as yet early stages of the projects, there are some instances that give pause. In a place with few alternatives, it was unlikely that villagers would say no to

promises of cash. Speaking about the incentives for accepting REDD+, an NGO of- ficer commented: “The villagers wanted REDD+ because we brought it. There is a momentum, and it … it’s very rare that people say ‘no, don’t come here’.” The vil- lagers had other means of dealing with boundaries on everyday citizenship. Most villagers complained that REDD+ had put the forests out of reach and made their lives more difficult. Many, however, were willing to wait and see. Villagers or pos- sibly the NGOs might not have chosen REDD+ as an answer to environmental ills or development goals. But now that REDD+ was there, they bought into it for various reasons. For villagers, subject to vagaries of national policy-making and uncertainty of legal tenure, it could be seen as retaining some control over their land. Villagers spoke of the lack of rain and the increasing risk of forest fires spreading to villages and they had been told that REDD+ would help. There was also a subtle shift in expectations. This time, a development project

spoke directly to individual gains from a new market dependent on their forests. This was evident in more optimistic pronouncements among some villagers, espe- cially those not directly dependent on the forests. One male shopkeeper saw in REDD+ a potential business opportunity: “Any business is tough when you start.

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They will get income through carbon trade later. In five years, the forest will be thick and they will get money. But now it is harder. We will be paid when we have five tonnes of carbon.” The deferral of returns from the REDD+ project coincides with the phased ap-

proach. Expectations are critical for REDD + —among authorities, NGOs and vil- lagers, individuals as well as communities. REDD+ encounters take the form of promises to come as people wait for cash from a carbon market. But these promises are dependent on the assemblage to make them happen. REDD+ appeals to indi- viduals but as in Likwaya and Kinyope, REDD+ needs to be enacted in a group, where some would benefit more than others. The core idea of REDD+ is a contract, conditional payment to forest carbon rights holders. In the absence of rights to land and carbon, increased regulations and mediation by others as well as by markets and through cash, it becomes propounded as an environmental responsibility with expectations of better rewards in the future. Responsibility shifts from the immedi- ate and is owed to a larger environmental cause and held accountable by a diffuse and shifting assemblage—as mediators of rights and responsibilities central to citizenship.

Conclusion: A New Global Citizenship In multiple ways, new belongings to the REDD+ assemblage are bringing about a “disaggregation of citizenship” (Benhabib 2006), changes in the formal and infor- mal relationships between the national state and the citizen. This is evident in the appeals to new collective identifications, in the confusion as to where the polity is and in who guarantees social rights and benefits. New governance mechanisms are meant to encourage village control and entrepreneurship. Risks are devolved to village groups and individuals. While consequences vary from place to place, vil- lagers are drawn into a larger global assemblage where centres of authority are dif- fuse and yet stringent, difficult to nail down and more often than not meant to be enforced by themselves. Their land is realigned and readied to be governed through carbon markets (a spatialization effect). They are drawn into new webs of relations of a shifting REDD+ assemblage and subject to new “identifications”— as entrepreneurs and responsible environmental citizens and meant to look after these new global commons—an identification effect promoted in line with what can be seen as the dark side of a “moral awareness of a global environmental citizenship” (Parekh 2003). In Likwaya and Kinyope and in plans for Burkinabé villagers, the reorganizing of daily practices now entail new and distant entities. The political space of environmental governance is changing and much of it is beyond the bounds of the nation-state. These state-effects, enabled by a cash economy, notions of environmental responsibility and international agreements are changing the substance of citizenship—citizen rights and responsibilities vis à vis local and national authorities and in citizens’ relations to each other. REDD+ processes are organizing landscapes using notions of abstract space and

measurable carbon and cash, propped up by international processes and national governments. While on paper having the “right” to decide over these new spaces, the villagers’ acceptance of REDD+ modulates their economic activity through a

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variety of diffuse and often contradictory regulatory techniques such as previous programs of participatory forest management and newer instruments such as carbon measurements and land categorization. This is mediated by the key role of outsiders who replace villagers as experts on forest commons on a larger scale than before. Questions of territory and the rights to own, manage and access environmental

resources that have dominated discussions of environmental governance and citi- zenship in the past are inadequate for understanding the changes taking place. The question is no longer “whose forests?”, part of a self-evident emancipatory pro- ject in the past. Those who might gain tenure rights over their forests need not ex- ercise control over it. Instead, this can be seen as a “citizenship project” (Rose and Novas 2005) aimed at constructing belonging in particular ways (Yuval-Davis 2011). REDD+ programs are an imagining of responsible citizenship as villagers in dispersed villages in Tanzania and Burkina are brought into global orbits to man- age, protect and conserve what are becoming a global commons. They are brought into the REDD+ assemblage not as unwilling subjects, but with expectations of monetary compensation and perhaps more rain. It is clear that villagers enter the market from a position of weakness (McAfee 2012). There might be some that ben- efit while others do not. Our intention has been to move beyond the debate over REDD+ and to highlight the need for the recognition of this new rural responsibility. Akin to the feminist argument on citizenship, that women’s care supported men’s privileges, the care that these villagers provide is indispensable in maintaining the citizenship privileges of distant others, giving the idea of universal citizenship an entirely new global connotation. New sites of citizenship have been discussed singularly for urban areas in current literature. Our focus on the importance of rural areas to this “citizenship project” decentres accepted meanings of core and periphery of the “global”. We need to move the discussion on environmental governance to deal seriously

with questions of a “global” citizenship, though not in the utopian sense of a cosmopolitan or global citizen but by bringing into the light, the dark side of global citizenship already in practice. By conceptualizing REDD+ as the renegotia- tion of citizenship on the ground, we want to bring into the frame of this “global governance”, people’s de facto global responsibilities—an aspect of citizenship al- ready being practiced although not called citizenship. Theory formation, like the practice of citizenship, must avoid the “territorial trap” (Habermas 2001:70). By placing them in the frame of a global citizenship, these responsibilities demand corresponding rights vis à vis the REDD+ assemblage and global governance. Understanding climate programs in terms of citizenship is as much a normative claim about citizenship’s future shape and direction in relation to environmental programs as it is a reading of the effects of current environmental relations and programs. We need to be able to name the new polities, although they might be a shifting

assemblage. The assemblage that seeks to include the villagers excludes them from political space at one and the same time by turning to technologies, markets and diffuse networks to answer to. Latta (2014:576) calls for alternative ontologies of political space, a reassembly of political space across different scales. The challenge

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is to name the assemblage as that political space and hold it accountable, to see it in the frame of citizenship to ensure that people have a meaningful role and member- ship in the politics of today. Global responsibility for the environment calls for a dis- cussion of global rights. For this, the recognition of labour and of social power axes is of crucial emancipatory importance (Yuval-Davis 2011). Forests and people are in practice made global—and we must now conceptualize the rights of this “global” citizenship. Citizenship in environmental governance is becoming denationalized, devalued in the contexts it has been known to function (Sassen 2006). We argue for giving it back its importance, “reclaiming” (Bosniak 2000) the sphere of global environmental governance for a differentiated (Young 2000) but “global” citizenship.

Endnotes 1 There is an extensive discussion on rights to tenure for local people, eg Naughten-Treves. 2 With the exception of two officials (one in each country), all other interviewees were

male. 3 For example, see discussions in Love of Country in response to Nussbaum’s (1996)

assertion of a “global citizen”. 4 Here taken to be title to carbon credits. A carbon credit is an instrument that represents

ownership of 1 metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent that can be traded, sold etc. 5 Trouillot draws on the work of Gramsci, Poulantzas and Scott for these theorizations. 6 Carbon offsets represent the additional carbon reductions from a baseline of emissions

through the investment in emission reduction projects that would not have otherwise taken place (Yamin 2005:30, cited in Bumpus 2011). Carbon offsets result in the generation of carbon credits.

7 Forest Investment Program—http://www.climateinvestmentfunds.org/cif/node/5 8 The UN-REDD Programme is a collaborative initiative that supports nationally led REDD+

processes—http://www.un-redd.org 9 Independent organizations that certify emission reductions.

10 Personal communication, delegate at negotiations. 11 E-mail, 2015.

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