An institutional analysis of deforestation processes in protected areas: The case of the transboundary Mt. Elgon,Uganda and Kenya

Protected areas (PAs) are a country's key strategy to conserve and manage forest resources. In sub-Saharan Africa, the effectiveness and efficiency of PA institutions in delivering sustainable outcomes is debated, however, and deforestation has not been avoided within such formal regimes. This paper analyzes the processes that led to deforestation within the PAs on the transboundary Mt. Elgon, Uganda–Kenya, employing institutional theory. Landsat satellite imagery helped identify and quantify forest loss over time. The study showed how, since 1973, about a third of all forests within the PAs on Elgon have been cleared in successive processes. Within formal protected area regimes, complex political and institutional factors drive forest loss. We argue, therefore, that policies to counter deforestation using a PA model have to be considered and understood against the broader background of these factors, originating both inside and outside the PA regimes.     

Social capital in small-scale forestry: A local case study in Southern Sweden

Small-scale forestry builds upon interactions among local stakeholders. Forest management entails multiple social situations such as consultations or cooperative engagements between owners and forest professionals. Successful social endeavours rest on positive social capital as operationalised via trust. Based on qualitative in-depth interviews with forest owners, managers and other forestry stakeholders, this study explores how trust influences the social relationships in a local context of Southern Swedish forestry. Most strikingly, the analysis reveals large differences in owners' trust towards two major actors: the Swedish Forest Agency (SFA) and the forest owner association (FOA) Södra. Permanence of personnel, a client-based approach, and personal features of SFA's local forest officer lead to strong local anchoring and high trust towards SFA. Södra proved to be a trustful partner in the aftermath of calamities; however its industrial priorities seem to erode owners' trust. The empirical findings of this study demonstrate the importance of recognising personal relationships and the catalysing role of bonding social capital in order to understand the local forest management situations. Our results are useful for forestry organisations and policy-makers willing to comprehend the local context and implement best practices in small-scale forestry.     

Barriers to policy implementation and implications for Zambia's forest ecosystems

Policies play a vital role in setting priorities and actions for forest use and management. High rates of forest loss can be attributed to failure by policies to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. It is argued that in most Least Developed Countries such as Zambia, adopted forest and natural resources policies are rarely put into effect resulting in ecosystem degradation.This study examined policy actor's perception of implementation of policies aimed at reducing deforestation and forest degradation and their implications for forest resources.To examine policy implementation, 55 policy actors were interviewed at national, regional and local levels. This included government officials, Non-Governmental Organisations, traditional leaders and local people. Interviews were analysed using discourse analysis.Findings show that policy implementations deficits are prevalent in Zambia's forest sector. Policy actors identified the main barriers as inadequate institutional capacity, inadequate legal framework, political influences, insecure land tenure, poor funding, and lack of intersectoral coordination. The paper has shown gaps between policies and their implementation. To halt deforestation and forest degradation, it is imperative that formulated policies are implemented. This will require improved communication and coordination among government units and various stakeholders, sufficient resources and harmonizing policies and legal frameworks.     

Spatial mapping of the social value of forest services: A case study of northern Jordan

ABSTRACT

Despite the growing body of research on ecosystem services and their valuation, Jordan still faces many challenges with integration of ecosystem service concepts into forest sustainability policy and management planning. One major challenge is the incorporation of local communities into policy design, planning, and implementation. This article aims to provide information about the social value of forests’ provisioning and cultural services in a spatial context using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The study utilizes a new approach to mapping value in rural areas by projecting local forest value from interview data. A value index is created based on indicated importance of services as well as proximity to households, permitting interpolation of value in forested areas between survey points. The resulting maps illustrate ecosystem service “hotspot” areas of significance to planning and management. This mapping technique can be applied in other locations where homes are situated near and within the ecosystems being assessed. The resulting maps serve to inform forest management policy and planning by better integrating communities’ preferences into development and conservation efforts, ensuring more efficient utilization of ecosystem services.     

The challenge of applying governance and sustainable development to wildland fire management in Southern Europe

This paper discusses participatory processes in wildland fire management (WFM). Participation is an essential element of both the European Sustainable Development (SD) Strategy and the White Paper on Governance. Governance and SD have thus become an interconnected challenge to be applied to WFM (as a sub-area in forest policy), amongst other policies. An overspread weakness in WFM is lack of real participa- tion of stakeholders. Absence of (or deficient) participation can seriously impair contribution of this group to WFM in high-risk areas and runs counter governance and the SDS. Further, this weakness might prevent an efficient use of fire as a land management tool (prescribed burning, PB) and as a technique for fighting wildfire (suppression fire, SF). Even though these fire practices have been well known in many different places, they have been increasingly neglected or prohibited over time in Southern Europe. At present, forest and fire fighting administrations are turning their eyes back on them and analyzing the benefits of using fire in relation to preventive and suppressive actions. Therefore, participatory and diffusion mechanisms (the latter adopting the shape of national and international experts’ networks) are required in order to solve the so- called fire paradox: that is, the need to move from a one-dimensional perception of the negative impacts of fire to a more sophisticated one that also stresses its positive effects. Governance, based on broad social participation, and diffusion, through fire networks, are of utmost impor- tance in order, first, to diminish long-standing suspicion amongst differ- ent interests as to the use of fire and, secondly, to diffuse best practices associated with PB and SF. Most importantly, the EU should exercise itsenvironmental leadership so that these new fire practices and sustainable WFM are diffused across the international arena.     

Use of forest resources,traditional forest-related knowledge and livelihood of forest dependent communities: Cases in South Korea

The patterns of forest resource use in South Korea have been overviewed along with the forest resource availability to the forest users and in relation to the socio-economic conditions of local people. In South Korea, forest income arises more from non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and forest ecosystems services than from timber. The relationship between availability of forest resources and income of residents in mountainous villages was addressed with statistical analysis of results of household surveys conducted in Gangwon-do Province. The result indicates that the mere existence of forest resources and related cultural heritages is not enough for local communities to obtain income from forest land. Proper arrangements for local communities in accessing the forest resources and knowledge of making use of the resources is required to make the relationship constructive for people's livelihood. Joint management agreement between forest communities and the forest owner serves both parties for sustainable forest management in Korea as seen in the case of maple sap collection within Seoul National University Forests. The traditional knowledge held by local residents is of value for income generation for forest dependent communities and is considered as an integral part of sustainable forest management as seen in the case of native honey bee keeping near protected forest areas managed by the national forest authority. However, traditional cultural values may be positive or negative for ecologically sound forest management as seen in the pest management policy of the Korean government formulated based on cultural value rather than considerations of ecosystem health.     

Moroccan Forestry Policies and Local Forestry Management in the High Atlas: A Cross Analysis of Forestry Administration and Local Institutions

This paper examines how local forestry management has evolved in the Aït Bougmez Valley (Central High Atlas, Morocco) in the last three decades and how this evolution has affected forest ecosystem conditions. It focuses on the impact of the forestry administration on ‘traditional forestry management’ since its introduction in 1985, and of recent innovation in forestry policy. The relatively new Strategic Environmental Management Analysis (SEMA) framework is applied, rather than a more ‘classical’ new institutional framework. This approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of both strategic interactions between various actors and ecological consequences of these interactions. An interesting empirical findings is that instead of a quite simple opposition between the forestry administration and local populations, negotiation opportunities exist that are taken by the actors. This leads to specific actor configurations and sometimes unexpected environmental outcomes, even if from a global point of view, forest stands have been seriously depleted over the last 40 years mainly due to exploitation by local population and the absence of economic alternative to forest exploitation. On the other hand, the implementation of a new policy tool in such a context has to be understood as an opportunity for new actors to take part in forest management rules definition.     

Evolution of Portuguese community forests and their governance based on new institutional economics

Forest governance is under reorganisation in many European countries, because of the changes in property and forest tenure rights. Portuguese community-based forestry is an interesting research subject from a New Institutional Economics perspective. Community forests (an important part of community lands known as baldios) cover half a million hectares in the north and the centre of the country and are owned by local communities. Their average size of over 400 hectares and diversity of resources underscore their value, and their management contributes to rural development. Recent laws intend for the complete transfer of their tenure rights to communities and local authorities. In this study, we analysed the transformational processes of Portuguese community-based forestry. To structure this analysis and shed light on forest management-related problems, we followed the 'four-level institutional analysis' developed by Williamson. Particular attention was paid to the first three levels. The first concerned social practice and informal rules. We are describing the history of baldios, their use by rural populations, and the subsequent occupation by the State for afforestation. The second level addressed the institutional environment and formal rules. Here, we focused on the recognition of baldio community properties and their legal framework development. The third level addressed management and the interaction of actors in transaction cost savings. Here, we examined the current community-based management models and future trends. In our analysis, we identified the causes underlying baldio management problems at different levels, which highlight the importance of new governance models and economic activities. The analysis showed that overall, the Portuguese community forest governance is a flexible structure capable of adapting to political and demographic changes and offering valuable support for the development of rural areas in the north and centre of the country. Additional empirical research is needed to improve knowledge on the impact of institutions on the management of community forests, both nationally and internationally.

     

A journey towards shared governance: status and prospects for collaborative management in the protected areas of Bangladesh

Establishment of Protected Areas (PAs), in the face of rapid deforestation, forest degradation and climate change has been one of the key efforts in conservation of biodiversity worldwide in recent times. While Bangladesh has gained a degree of prominence in the world for its successful social forestry programs, the concept of collaborative protected area management is rather new in the country, initiated in 2004 by the Bangladesh Forest Department in five PAs with financial assistance from USAID. Based on empirical evidence from three of the pilot PAs, we examined the achievements and associated challenges and prospects for co-management. Our fieldwork revealed a number of challenges faced by co-management institutions: (1) institutions were dominated by the elite group, overshadowing the voice of the community people; (2) mutual trust and collective performance are key to good governance but had not taken root in the PAs; (3) encroachment onto forest land and subsequent conversion to agriculture remained a serious problem that discouraged forest-dependent people from participating actively in co-management initiatives; (4) legal provisions (including acts, rules and policies) were not clearly and adequately disseminated and understood at the community level; (5) there remained a degree of ambiguity regarding the roles and responsibilities of forest department (FD) and co-management committees (CMC) in field operations, and this was not enhancing transparency and accountability of the overall initiative; (6) the long-term sustainability of co-management institutions was another major concern, as the local intuitional structure was still in a nascent stage, and provisioning of resources (either internally or externally) remained somewhat uncertain. We offer recommendations for improvement.     

佛坪保护区社区共管的现状、问题与对策研究

摘要佛坪保护区社区社会经济状况落后。佛坪保护区对区内及周边社区没有行政管理职能。划定保护区边界、制定管理措施,并未改变社区对野生资源的依赖性。目前佛坪保护区的社区共管工作,仍局限于政策宣传,而且社区开拓意识差。解决上述问题,只有提高社区村民的文化素质,倡导科技兴农,变“输血型”经济为“造血型”经济。本研究试图找到切实可行的社区共管对策。本文提出了保护区与社区“利益共同体”,阐述了佛坪保护区社区共管现状和展望,对保护目标相近及社区经济状况相近的自然保护区具有参考借鉴作用。     

What rights and benefits? The implementation of participatory forest management in Kenya: The case of Eastern Mau Forest Reserve

The study espoused the access analytical framework to investigate how introduction of Participatory Forest Management (PFM) in Kenya has changed the various actors’ ability to benefit from the forest resources of Eastern Mau Forest Reserve. Data collected through key informant interviews, and a household survey showed that implementation of PFM has triggered new income opportunities for forest adjacent communities in seedling production and beekeeping. However, PFM bestowed no real decision-making powers to the established Community Forest Associations (CFAs) over important forest resources such as timber and firewood. Members of the local communities and other actors have continued to access these resources through various structural and relational means, in the same way as before the introduction of PFM. Further, it is documented that PFM has introduced additional burdens on the local communities, especially the poorest households, as a result of increased enforcement of rules. Based on these findings, it is suggested that the PFM policy in Kenya, in its current form, is unlikely to realize its dual objectives of forest conservation and livelihood enhancement. To attain them would require a further devolution of rights to the CFAs.     

A Civic Conversation About Public Lands

Summary

Community-based ecosystem management (CBEM) is being offered as an alternative to agency-based public land management. Its fundamental premise is connecting communities to public lands for the purpose of increasing ecosystem stewardship and community sustainability. For CBEM to appropriately serve the public interest, new social and institutional relationships will need to be formed, collaborative learning will need to occur, and capacities in community participation and ecological literacy will need to be developed. A new civic conversation about public lands is essential to these relationships, learning, and capacities. Community governance processes, which guide these collaborative and participatory activities, must correspondingly reflect the community-based nature of CBEM, while preserving the national interests in public land resources.     

Sustainable forest management as an approach to regional development in the Russian Federation: State and trends in Kovdozersky Model Forest in the Barents region

Abstract

The Russian forest sector is under transformation, and the Model Forest (MF) concept is used as an innovative approach to regional sustainable development based on forest goods, ecosystem services and values. This study evaluates the development of the MF concept in north-west Russia's Barents region, using Kovdozersky MF in Murmansk region as a case study. This report (1) describe the main historical phases of forest use, (2) summarizes the state and trends of the economic, ecological and sociocultural situation, (3) explores reasons for establishing the MF, and (4) evaluates the main steps towards implementation of the MF concept. Qualitative and quantitative methods were applied. Actors were identified and interviewed to understand the process of MF development. Statistic data were collected and analyzed. The main goal of this MF is to support development through participatory collaboration regarding (1) balancing needs and interests among actors and stakeholders, (2) implementation of sustainable forest management, (3) encouraging the development of ecotourism and bioenergy production in the area, and (4) increasing public awareness with respect to sustainable forest management. Potential challenges for the MF partnership include: (1) domination by partners from the traditional forest sector, with their potentially more narrow needs and interests in the partnership development, and (2) disparity in sharing responsibilities and power between regional and local levels in MF management.     

我国天然林的多目标综合管理

文中提出了天然林多目标综合管理的概念、原则、方法和管理程序。天然林多目标综合管理以社会经济信息和资源信息为数据基础, 以生态系统评估为依据, 以土地利用战略规划为核心, 以多部门共同管理为保障, 打破传统的针对天然林经营规划的管理方式, 实现以天然林区为对象的综合管理方式, 把天然林资源的经营与当地林区的发展结合起来, 实现天然林可持续经营和当地可持续发展的双赢。这种管理模式可解决我国天然林管理中存在的诸多矛盾, 发挥天然林的多种功能。     

Competing Visions: Domestic Forests, Politics and Forest Policy in the Central Western Ghats of South India

Rural people in developing countries including India continue to access a number of types of ‘forests’ to meet specific needs such as fuelwood, fodder, food, non-timber forest produce and timber for both subsistence and income generation. While a plethora of terms exist to describe the types of forests that rural people use—such as farm forests, social forests, community forests and small-scale forests—the expression domestic forest has recently been proposed. Domestic forest is a term aimed at capturing the diversity of forests transformed and managed by rural communities and a way to introduce a new scientific domain that recognises that production and conservation can be reconciled and that local communities can be effective managers. This paper argues in the context of the central Western Ghats of south India that while the domestic forest concept is a useful umbrella term to capture the diversity of forests used by rural people, these domestic forests are often not autonomous local forests but sites of contestation between local actors and the state forest bureaucracy. Hence, a paradigm shift within the forest bureaucracy will only occur if the scientific forestry community questions its own normative views on forest management and sees forest policy as a means to recognise local claims and support existing practices of forest dependent communities.     

Assessing the sustainability in community based forestry: A case from Nepal

Community based forestry is seen as a promising instrument for sustainable forest management (SFM) through the purposeful involvement of local communities. Globally, forest area managed by local communities is on the rise. However, transferring management responsibilities to forest users alone cannot guarantee the sustainability of forest management. A monitoring tool, that allows the local communities to track the progress of forest management towards the goal of sustainability, is essential. A case study, including six forest user groups (FUGs), two from each three community based forestry models—community forestry (CF), buffer zone community forestry (BZCF), and collaborative forest management (CFM) representing three different physiographic regions, was conducted in Nepal. The study explores which community based forest management model (CF, BZCF or CFM) is doing well in terms of sustainable forest management. The study assesses the overall performance of the three models towards SFM using locally developed criteria (four), indicators (26) and verifiers (60). This paper attempts to quantify the sustainability of the models using sustainability index for individual criteria (SIIC), and overall sustainability index (OSI). In addition, rating to the criteria and scoring of the verifiers by the FUGs were done. Among the four criteria, the FUGs ascribed the highest weightage to institutional framework and governance criterion; followed by economic and social benefits, forest management practices, and extent of forest resources. Similarly, the SIIC was found to be the highest for the institutional framework and governance criterion. The average values of OSI for CFM, CF, and BZCF were 0.48, 0.51 and 0.60 respectively; suggesting that buffer zone community forestry is the more sustainable model among the three. The study also suggested that the SIIC and OSI help local communities to quantify the overall progress of their forestry practices towards sustainability. The indices provided a clear picture of forest management practices to indicate the direction where they are heading in terms of sustainability; and informed the users on issues to pay attention to enhance sustainability of their forests.     

Towards a donut regime? Domestic actors,climatization, and the hollowing-out of the international forests regime in the Anthropocene

Political responses to global deforestation, as a defining characteristic of the so-called Anthropocene, are a key field for scholarship and policy analysis. In the past decade, research has proliferated on global forest governance and the international forest regime (IFR), yet the academic literature on the IFR is just as dispersed and fragmented as the IFR itself. An emerging body of literature now suggests the key role of domestic actors in international forest governance, questioning an implicit top-down logic of global arrangements. In spite of all the resources at its disposal, the IFR is characterised by complexity, fragmentation and ineffectiveness regarding its main objective of reducing global deforestation.Based on an extensive literature review, the authors’ long-standing observations and selected own empirical findings, this review article aims to provide an updated historical account of the IFR and proposes a from-below approach for analysing the IFR from the viewpoint of domestic actors. In this bottom-up perspective the IFR is conceptualised as a set of resources that key domestic actors can pick and choose from according to their interests and in the light of domestic politics.Using illustrative empirical examples from recent research and own observations, the article finds that the IFR is being hollowed-out by (i) the growing policy links between forests and climate change - a process referred to as “climatization”- and (ii) domestic influences. We conclude that our from-below approach is instrumental in further explaining why deforestation has largely continued, despite the emergence of the IFR some three decades ago. Our findings about the importance of domestic actors illustrate that global governance arrangements cannot operate effectively, relative to their ambitious mandate and for tackling policy issues relating to the Anthropocene, unless they are granted adequate resources and support by key domestic actors.     

By,For and Of the People

Abstract

This paper describes the development of two community-managed protected areas in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Specifically, it focuses on the diverse factors that have allowed the community-based reserves initiatives to unfold and analyzes some of the social-institutional structures that communities have constructed for autochthonous management of land and resources. The information for this paper was gathered through institutional analysis employing semi-structured, open-ended interviews with administrators, manager-practitioners, local farmers, and community representatives from the Chimalapas and Sierra Juárez regions of Oaxaca. The results of this study support the conclusion that, given strong social institutions, local communities can successfully form management partnerships for forest conservation and autochthonous development.     

Benefits of forests in Cameroon. Global structure,issues involving access and decision-making hiccoughs

Among many other stakes, the economic stake derived from the exploitation of tropical forest resources is a burning issue. This is evidenced by insecurity in intergenerational access to forest resources and financial benefits relating to the latter, on the one hand, and by a deep iniquity at the intra-generational level, on the other hand. The following paper highlights, as a moral, social and policy dilemma, how stakeholders and generations, ‘self-interested’, mark out access to forest resources and to financial benefits relating to the latter. Through intensive participatory research, quantitative data collection, participant observation, future scenarios and some International Forestry Research's social science methods and interactive games (SSM & IG) based on the evaluation of the sustainability of forest management systems, field research conducted in the forest zone of Cameroon on access to forest resources has generated two central results. Firstly, future generations will be confronted—in a dramatic way—to quantitative and qualitative scarcity of forest resources, following their over exploitation by present generations. Secondly, as concerns the intra-generational access benefits generated by commercial exploitation of forests and the assessment of the circulation of forestry fees, there is much inequity, in as much as those benefits are more profitable to a ‘forestry elite’—‘a self-interested block’—than to local communities, who strongly claim to have historical rights over these forests. As a contribution of social science to public knowledge and to policy development, this article is nourishing ‘rational choice’ and ‘rational egoism’ theory and is targeting decision-making processes in the ever first attempt of forest management decentralization and ‘legal’ benefits sharing in Central Africa (the second largest forest of the World). The article recommends the shortening of the distance between decision-making and beneficiaries, downwardly accountability, ‘bottom-up’ mechanisms of public dialogue in forest management and a collaborative infrastructure in the circulation and the distribution of forest benefits.