Acknowledgments

The origins of this book lie in my previous professional work as a lawyer in the fields of human rights and climate change. As a delegate of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law to the 11th, 12th, and 13th sessions of the UNFCCC COP held in Montreal in 2005, Nairobi in 2006, and Bali in 2007, I had the opportunity to witness the emergence of REDD+ in the international climate negotiations as well as the enthusiasm and controversy that it generated among the delegates in attendance. Next, at the 15th session of the UNFCCC COP held in Copenhagen in 2009, I served on the first (and last) delegation sent by Amnesty International to the international climate negotiations. During the negotiations, I participated in the first meeting of what would later become the Human Rights & Climate Change Working Group, an informal network of lawyers and activists working to integrate human rights standards and principles into international climate law. I also had the opportunity to discuss the role and relevance of human rights to the governance of REDD+ with a number of civil society and government delegates throughout the negotiations. This experience, along with fortuitous encounters with a number of graduate students from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies attending the climate negotiations in Copenhagen, led me to apply to pursue a PhD in environmental studies at Yale University. In fact, I prepared and submitted my application to Yale while sitting on the floor of the overcrowded Bella Centre in anticipation of the start of a negotiating session that would never take place due to the collapse of the talks in Copenhagen.

From 2010 to 2015, I had the opportunity to complete a PhD in environmental studies at Yale, which proved to be a more intellectually enriching and academically ambitious journey than I could ever have envisioned. The support of numerous individuals and organizations was critical to my progress along the way. At Yale, I benefited immensely from the encouragement, creativity, and enthusiasm of my supervisor, Benjamin Cashore. I learned so many different things from Ben during my doctoral studies and I hope to inspire, support, and mentor my own doctoral students in a similar manner. I also benefited from the expertise, wisdom, and encouragement of the other members of my doctoral committee, Daniel Esty, Alec Stone Sweet, and Jaye Ellis, who have each contributed in very different ways to my doctoral research and to my development as a legal scholar. Thanks are due to my former colleagues at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and in the community of Trudeau Scholars, with whom I had stimulating exchanges about important academic questions as well as sharing the small victories and defeats that come with the daily grind of completing a doctorate.

I also want to thank the ninety-four individuals who agreed to discuss their work with me as well as the many other individuals across dozens of organizations who provided me with access to sites, meetings, and documents relating to REDD+. Although I do not necessarily agree with their views or positions on all matters relating to REDD+, I am inspired by their determination to find solutions to complex problems at the intersections of forest governance, climate change, human rights, and sustainable development.

There is absolutely no way I could have completed this research without the financial support that the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Climate and Land Use Alliance provided for my doctoral research. I must especially single out Josée St-Martin at the Trudeau Foundation and Elisabeth Barsa at Yale for supporting me every step of the way, in the face of the financial, personal, and administrative challenges that typically materialize in the course of completing a doctorate. In addition, I am very grateful to Catherine Potvin, who was kind enough to host me as a visiting doctoral student in the Neotropical Ecology Lab that she directs at McGill University. More recently, I have benefited from Catherine’s mentorship and support as a junior colleague and have participated in some of the many important projects and initiatives that she leads in the fields of REDD+ and climate change.

While completing the research that is at the heart of this book, I had the honour of joining McGill University’s Faculty of Law as an assistant professor. I have benefited from the advice and support of numerous colleagues in the early stages of my career, especially Mark Antaki, Adelle Blackett, Angela Campbell, Jaye Ellis, Richard Gold, Tena Groot, Alana Klein, Hoi Kong, Richard Janda, Robert Leckey, Marie Manikis, Fred Mégret, René Provost, Ron Niezen, Nandini Ramanujam, and Shauna Van Praagh. I have also had the opportunity to work with numerous talented undergraduate and graduate students at McGill. I especially want to thank Rosine Faucher, Kathryn Hansen, Katherine Lofts, Anna McIntosh, and Audrey Mocle for the invaluable research and editing assistance they provided for this book. I should mention that an insight development grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has been instrumental in enabling me to complete this book and carry out related research on the linkages between human rights and climate change.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to John Berger and the dedicated staff of Cambridge University Press. John supported this project from the outset and guided the book from the peer review stage to its publication. The feedback received from two anonymous peer reviewers was also useful in finalizing this book. I am also grateful to the many scholars who offered comments on different drafts of this work that I presented at conferences and workshops over several years. I want to single out a scholar that I greatly admire, Lisa Vanhala, whose feedback was very useful in the final stages of preparing this book.

I want to thank Carbon Tanzania for giving me permission to use the photograph taken from its Yaeda Valley Project that appears on the cover of this book. Carbon Tanzania is a social enterprise that works with Indigenous communities in Tanzania to support the protection of their forests through engagement with the voluntary carbon market. Given the high level of social and environmental performance that it has achieved in its project and its community-based approach, I have committed to purchasing carbon credits sold by Carbon Tanzania to off-set the carbon emissions resulting from any travel that I may undertake to promote this book.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the critical role that the love and encouragement of my friends and family has played throughout the process of writing this book. It is a real privilege to go through life knowing that so many people are rooting for your success and are ready to help whenever they can, in ways big and small. Merci à maman, papa, Martin, Geneviève, Marie-Danielle, Charles-William, Anne-Élizabeth, Suzanne, Stéphane, Alfredo et Charles. Most of all, I owe an unending debt of gratitude to my wife, Sarah, and my daughter, Camille. Every day, they inspire me to be a better scholar, citizen, and person.

While I have been really blessed to benefit from the support of many individuals throughout the preparation of this book, I must emphasize the important contributions of a mentor who passed away in June 2014: Rod Macdonald. As a law student at McGill in the first half of the 2000s, I had the privilege of studying administrative process and legal education with Rod. Over the succeeding decade, he strongly and consistently encouraged me to pursue an academic career. He also introduced me to the idea that law is a plural phenomenon that is not reducible to the formal institutions of the state – an idea that underlies my approach in this book. In view of his influence on my career and thinking, I would like to dedicate this book to his memory and propose the following alternate title: “Or How I Learned to Study the Lessons of Everyday Transnational Law.”