The bricolage of REDD+ in Zanzibar: from global environmental policy framework to community forest management

The policy framework known as Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is based on the underlying idea of creating economic incentives for forest conservation and CO2 emission reductions. This article explores what happens when REDD+, as a globally conceived environmental policy framework, is translated into practice in Zanzibar. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among actors involved in the policy translation process, the article investigates how these actors receive, interpret and give meaning to the introduction of REDD+. With the concept of institutional bricolage as an overarching perspective, the article engages in a discussion of what factors provide legitimacy to REDD+ at policy level in Zanzibar, and moreover, why certain elements of the REDD+ policy framework are incorporated into practice while others are discarded. The article demonstrates how actors make creative use of the resources available, but only within a spectrum that allows for reinvention of established practices and acceptable ways of doing. The article concludes that although the process of carbon accounting represents a ‘technical necessity’ of the REDD+ policy framework, it lack the legitimacy necessary to become durable. REDD+ in Zanzibar is thus at risk of becoming yet another example of a ‘conservation fad’ – an approach that initially invoked a widely shared enthusiasm, but later was dubbed a failure and abandoned.