The increased attention to human rights in conservation practice is arguably a humanistic triumph. Global environmental programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) are called to protect local and Indigenous rights, ranging from free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) to local tenure security. At the same time, there is increasing interest in scaling up such rights-based efforts across conservation programs, leaving open the question: How are conservation policymakers and practitioners protecting those aspects of rights and governance not so easily scaled? This dissertation combines institutional and community ethnography through a multi-sited approach to examine how rights-based conservation is pursued in the Berau Forest Carbon Program, Indonesia’s first landscape-scale REDD+ project. Working from the international to village level, this research pays explicit attention to how such efforts are translated across governance levels, spatial extents, and actor groups. In this way, it highlights how REDD+ policy has centered human rights in conservation work and presents a cautionary tale for conservationists by describing the complex ways rights such as FPIC and tenure security are shaped by political economic, cultural, and historical contexts. Drawing additionally on a mapping project pursued with the community of Long Lamcin, this dissertation argues for the need to center relationships and an expanded sense of sociality in rights-based conservation. Such a relational focus offers lessons for considering the co-production of rights-based agendas and environmental governance regimes, the translation of policy concepts across governance levels and actor groups, and how to more fully respect customary tenure regimes for diverse co-benefits. It also argues for more clearly considering power differences across humans and non-humans in complex conservation landscapes and the relations of respect and care fundamental to maintaining them. I end my dissertation with a reflection on my multimedia counter-mapping project, the representational and ethical challenges faced, and the need to be discerning regarding public versus private data in community research. With rights-based agendas growing in popularity across governance realms, this research investigates how REDD+ social safeguards are translated and enacted on the ground and explores what this means for promoting and protecting local communities’ rights.
