Over the last 20 years, Uganda has emerged as a testing ground for the various modes of carbon forestry used in Africa. Carbon forestry initiatives in Uganda raise questions of environmental justice, given that people with comparatively negligible carbon footprints are affected by land use changes initiated by the desire of wealthy people to reduce their more extensive carbon footprints. In this project, we have examined the notions of justice local people express in relation to two widely contrasting carbon forestry projects in Uganda, the Uganda Wildlife Authority – Forests Absorbing Carbon Emissions (UWA-FACE) project and Trees for Global Benefit (TfGB). UWA-FACE closed down operations after 10 years as a result of deep controversies and negative international publicity, whereas TfGB is well regarded as an exemplary design for smallholder carbon forestry in Africa. The approach we take builds upon an emerging strand in the literature of empirical analyses of local people’s notions of justice related to environmental interventions. The findings show the continued expansion of TfGB in the way it meets people’s primarily distributional concerns, without challenging their expectations of recognition or procedural justice. In contrast, controversy across the range of justice dimensions in UWA-FACE has ultimately led to the project’s demise. The controversy around UWA-FACE case has led to some criticism of the carbon buyers, using frames of carbon colonialism, in a way not seen at all in the TfGB case. Attention to notions of justice can therefore contribute to a fuller understanding of the reactions of people to carbon forestry projects, and the pathways and ultimate outcomes of such interventions. The research responds to the emergence of global norms intended to reconcile natural resource management with poverty alleviation. The norms possess the potential to transform development practice, so long as they effectively support poor people’s rights to natural resources and sustainable livelihoods. This research examines the effects of global norms on poverty alleviation through explorations of forests and water. The research focuses on the cross-scale relationships between local environmental struggles, higher-level mobilizations for environmental justice and global norms through the lens of environmental justice. Struggles over justice are an integral element of environmental politics across scales, connecting local struggles to mobilisations at (inter)national levels as well as the conceptions informing global norms - and causing frictions between them. The research proceeds by way of four comparative case studies from Nepal, Sudan and Uganda. In Nepal, it analyses indigenous people’s successful mobilisation and resistance to hydropower projects as well as their participation in a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus (REDD+) pilot project. In Sudan, the Merowe hydro-electric dam exemplifies a case where local people have been dispossessed from land despite support from exiled community members and international activists. In Uganda, an afforestation project has not led to any significant mobilisation despite the presence of significant injustices.

Five key respondent interviews, and a similar number of group interviews with villagers in sites affected by UWA-FACE. No quantitative data were collected at the UWA-FACE site, and no new data was collected at the TfGB site in western Uganda.