title: Opportunities and challenges to capturing the multiple potential benefits of REDD+ in a traditional transnational savanna-woodland region in West Africa.
abstract: The REDD+ scheme of the United Nations intends to offer developing countries financial incentives to reduce the rates of deforestation and forest degradation for reducing global CO2 emissions. This is combined with building carbon stocks in existing wooded ecosystems and fostering other soil, biodiversity and water conservation objectives. Successful application of REDD+ to the Xylophone Triangle of West Africa faces substantial challenges and risks to both meeting REDD+ objectives and to the local people's rights and livelihoods. The transnationality of the culturally coherent area requires collaboration of three national governments. The opportunities, however, are great to capitalize on the region's biodiversity, the well-developed traditional ecological knowledge and the use of local medicinal plants as an integral part of the agro-ecosystem. Possibilities open to, not only sequester carbon, but also to increase the resilience of the ecosystem and of independent rural livelihoods in the face of climate change and globalization.
authors.affiliation: School of Global Studies, Global Sustainability Studies, Human Ecology, University of Gothenburg, Box 700, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden. gunilla.olsson@globalstudies.gu.se
authors.forename: E Gunilla A
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Olsson
authors.forename: Syna
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ouattara
mesh_terms: D000354:Africa, Western; D044822:Biodiversity; D002245:Carbon Dioxide / Q000032:analysis; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends; D003906:Developing Countries; D017753:Ecosystem; D016468:Forestry / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends; D038622:Internationality; D010946:Plants, Medicinal / Q000254:growth & development; D012424:Rural Population; D014197:Trees / Q000254:growth & development
chemical_list: D002245:Carbon Dioxide