Practice-Based Knowledge for REDD+ in Vanuatu.

The rural populations of small island developing states in the Pacific region are amongst the most exposed to the harsh realities of climate change. Forest management, tree planting, and agroforestry are some of the most promising strategies to build local resilience while providing food and income security in these remote areas. In this paper, we outline the contextual reasons for why deforestation and forest degradation continues, and provide practice-based approaches for REDD + to address deforestation. Our transdisciplinary methods include the construction of seven land use models to compare business-as-usual scenarios with respective REDD + strategies across Vanuatu's five REDD + islands, combined with a case study of Vanuatu's first REDD + project. Close collaboration between international researchers, local government officials, and Ni-Vanuatu non-governmental organizations and communities allowed for information sharing across epistemologies, adding local, place-based knowledge to scientific inquiry, responding to calls for more 'locally led' approaches to climate adaptation in Vanuatu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]