In the Global South, there is a push to drive agricultural modernisation processes through private sector investments. In West African drylands, land concessions are required for such agri-businesses are often negotiated through customary authorities, and inject large amounts of money into localised rural systems with low cash bases. The article argues that such transactions serve to increase area under crop cultivation on an inter-seasonal basis, as financial spill-overs allow for farmers to purchase larger quantities of agricultural inputs and prepare larger tracts of land.

Forests are the most important land ecosystems that can mitigate the earth’s ongoing climate change through their ability to sequester CO2 as C stock in forest biomass and soil. Short-rotation deciduous hardwoods or N2-fixing species are ideal candidates for afforestation and reforestation, given that most of the carbon accumulates in the first 30 years. Alders match both of the above-mentioned features, and Italian alder, which is less dependent on riparian habitats and more drought tolerant, is an ideal candidate.

This article introduces the special issue “REDD+ crossroads post Paris: politics, lessons and interplays”. The contributions to the special issue demonstrate, first, that REDD+ design in the studied countries has generally lacked social legitimacy and sidelined key actors that have an important role in shaping land-use sector dynamics. Second, they show that REDD+ early actions have tended to oversimplify local realities and have been misaligned with other policy goals and local needs.