PhD Funding for Research on REDD

Are you planning to do research on REDD? If yes, we would like to hear from you. The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) based in Bogor, Indonesia, is at the beginning stages of conducting a four-year Global Comparative Study on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (GCS-REDD). We will be analyzing effectiveness, efficiency, and equity, as well as co-benefits in REDD. We are interested in finding PhD students to collaborate with us in each of the three components of our interdisciplinary initiative:

Component 1 focuses on national policies and processes related to REDD. We are looking for students (preferably in political science) who will conduct policy network analysis in the country-specific REDD arenas and/or conduct a media-based discourse analysis in 2010/2011.

Component 2 will conduct research on REDD project activities. We are looking for students preparing to do their field research at a specific site or sites. Our approach will analyze REDD before and after the
introduction of incentives, at both impact and control sites. We will be measuring socioeconomic and biophysical variables.

Component 3 will focus on national-level reference emissions and project-level carbon monitoring. We are looking for PhD students (in the biophysical sciences as well as in economic modeling) who will conduct data collection, testing and validation of models for reference levels and other biophysical factors.

The research will be conducted in the following countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Components 1 and 3 will conduct research in Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, and Indonesia during the first project year (June 2009 to May 2010) and will extend their efforts to Tanzania and Vietnam in subsequent project years. Component
2 will work in all six countries beginning in the first project year.

Component 1 tasks are already covered in Bolivia. GCS-REDD will extend its work to three additional countries beginning in the second project year.

We are offering to provide at least a portion of the funding for your field research and other forms of support if and only if: your background, interests, skills, and timetable match what we are looking
for; you apply our standard methods in a portion of our research; and give us access to the results produced through this method.

Please note that we are on a tight timetable. Activities in Component 1 will be carried out from March 2010 onward, in Component 2 from January 2010 onward, and in Component 3 from March 2010 onward.