Community Forestry and Tree Theft in Mexico: Resistance or Complicity in Conservation?

Community forestry is thought to diffuse the kind of tensions over access to resources that frequently make centralized forest management systems based on the principles of scientific forestry ineffective and conflictive. Centralized systems often create resistance, as communities whose vegetation management practices have been declared illegal by forest bureaucracies anonymously contest the restrictions imposed on them by ‘stealing’ trees and committing ‘arson’. These restrictions are intimately related to the requirements of scientific forestry, however, so co‐management strategies relying on scientific forestry might also engender various forms of internal resistance, such as tree theft. Local interpretations of justice in access to resources, together with community social structures and the distribution of resources can result in internalized resistance, rendering community‐based resource management ineffective. In a Mexican community case‐study, scientific forestry and tree theft co‐evolved during a period of concessions and continue under co‐management. This system creates an arena where anonymous individual resistance like tree theft can give way to forms of protest more likely to result in legitimate and effective forest management systems.     

Troubled Encounters: Payments for Ecosystem Services in Chiapas,Mexico

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is a well-established conservation policy approach worldwide. Where forests are owned and managed by rural and indigenous communities, PES initiatives often aim to incentivize the joint adoption of forest protection and sustainable management practices. However, not all communities might have the will or capacity to maintain such practices over the long term. This article examines a PES programme in a rural community of Chiapas, Mexico. It shows that while a majority of the community's landowners have engaged in PES through two distinct working groups, a large share of the community forests remain outside the PES programme, and many landowners resist the extension of PES rules to non-targeted forests. The authors argue that this incipient form of fragmented collective action on forest management results from challenged leaderships, and from PES accommodating a history of increasing individuation of the commons. This accommodation, however, has ignited social conflict, reified tenure inequalities, and failed to strengthen local institutions to enable them to legitimately deal with the contested interests that underpin the fate of community forests. This article shows the limits of PES when parachuted into a context of uneven land tenure, weak collective action and contested leaderships.     

Maintaining Centralized Control in Community‐based Forestry: Policy Construction in the Philippines

Community‐based forestry management is emerging as an important component of forest policies in the developing world. Using the Philippines as a case‐study, this article critically examines the way in which community‐based forestry is constructed and understood among government policy makers. The author suggests that the new policy discourse of community‐based forestry policy in the Philippines is still shaped by efforts to maintain centralized control over forest management and a political economy orientated towards commercial timber production using the principles of ‘scientific management’. While timber production and the technical aspects of forest management are emphasized, social and environmental considerations remain neglected.     

Who Shapes the Politics of Expertise? Co-Production and Authoritative Knowledge in Thailand's Political Forests

Expert environmental knowledge has often been described as a governmental rationality that reduces political debate and facilitates state control. In this paper, I argue instead that this line of reasoning simplifies how knowledge gains political authority, especially when expertise is shared and left unchallenged by diverse actors, including those in conflict with each other. Using the framework of co-production from Science and Technology Studies (STS), I apply this argument to conflicts over the supposed watershed functions of forests in Thailand, where simplified narratives about the impacts of land use on water supply are used as justifications for territorialisation and restrictions on forest land. In particular, I focus on local resistance to the proposed Kaeng Sua Ten dam in northern Thailand in order to demonstrate how protestors have deliberately reproduced formal expertise to empower themselves, but by so doing also reinforcing simplified visions of watershed science and community culture. I argue that exposing the co-production of authoritative knowledge and visions of social order offer greater opportunities for understanding the role of expertise as a political force than analysing competing assemblages based on oppositions of state-led expert knowledge and traditional local practices.     

Forestry policy in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe: continuity and change

Using the case of Mafungautsi Forest Reserve, this paper discusses continuities and changes in policy and practice at the communal and reserved forest interface in Zimbabwe. Colonial forestry policy in Zimbabwe has often been labelled as oppressive, as communal area citizens were not allowed to participate effectively in its formulation and implementation. Independence in 1980, it was thought, would usher in an era of greater participation within the forestry sector. However, the hope that local communities would have greater input in the forestry policies and management has largely remained unfulfilled. The state institutions responsible for managing forests have largely remained unsympathetic to the involvement of local communities in the management of forestry resources despite the pre-independence rhetoric. Alongside the co-management attempt to make local peasants citizens through their inclusion in decision-making has been the continuity of the colonial policy that treated local peasants who used resources as criminals destroying trees and forests. This paper examines how the fundamental policy perspective of forestry in Zimbabwe still perceives local peasant farmers to be unsustainable exploiters of forests. The local resource users have not remained passive recipients of the repressive forestry policies and practices based on science but have actively contested them since the 1950s.     

Carbon Sequestration in Community Forests: Trade‐offs,Multiple Outcomes and Institutional Diversity in the Bolivian Amazon

Carbon sequestration in community forests presents a major challenge for the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programme. This article uses a comparative analysis of the agricultural and forestry practices of indigenous peoples and settlers in the Bolivian Amazon to show how community‐level institutions regulate the trade‐offs between community livelihoods, forest species diversity, and carbon sequestration. The authors argue that REDD+ implementation in such areas runs the risk of: 1) reinforcing economic inequalities based on previous and potential land use impacts on ecosystems (baseline), depending on the socio‐cultural groups targeted; 2) increasing pressure on land used for food production, possibly reducing food security and redirecting labour towards scarce off‐farm income opportunities; 3) increasing dependence on external funding and carbon market fluctuations instead of local production strategies; and 4) further incentivising the privatization and commodification of land to avoid transaction costs associated with collective property rights. The article also advises against taking a strictly economic, market‐based approach to carbon sequestration, arguing that such an approach could endanger fragile socio‐ecological systems. REDD+ schemes should directly support existing efforts towards forest sustainability rather than simply compensating local land users for avoiding deforestation and forest degradation.     

A Forest of Contradictions: Producing the Landscapes of the Scottish Highlands

While total global forest cover is decreasing, in many parts of the world forests are on the rebound. Uncritical examinations of this phenomenon credit the benign diffusion of capitalist development for this "forest transition." More critical readings of this question—including green Marxian and poststructuralist approaches—might conclude something very different, however. In this paper, we explore the question of expanding forest cover, using the case of the Scottish Highlands, where forestland has tripled since the 1920s, in an attempt to critically explain regional land–cover change. Drawing upon historical sources and Scottish Executive and Forestry Commission data, we examine the specific environments currently forming in the Highlands under conditions of economic change. We conclude that two divergent forestry practices and ecologies have been formed in the wake of economic restructuring: those geared towards industrial production and those targeted at consumption through ecotourism. We conclude, therefore, that capitalism's spatial fix to declining industrial power in the region is an inherently ecological one that takes the form of "schizophrenic forestry," in which forest expansion leads to the rise of degraded monocultures alongside "pristine" sites of conservation.     

State power and protected areas: Dynamics and contradictions of forest conservation in Madhya Pradesh, India

The traditionally coercive and state-controlled governance of protected areas for nature conservation in developing countries has in many cases undergone change in the context of widespread decentralization and liberalization. This article examines an emerging “mixed” (coercive, community- and market-oriented) conservation approach in managed-resource protected areas and its effects on state power through a case study on forest protection in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The findings suggest that imperfect decentralization and partial liberalization resulted in changed forms, rather than uniform loss, of state power. A forest co-management program paradoxically strengthened local capacity and influence of the Forest Department, which generally maintained its territorial and knowledge-based control over forests and timber management. Furthermore, deregulation and reregulation enabled the state to withdraw from uneconomic activities but also implied reduced place-based control of non-timber forest products. Generally, the new policies and programs contributed to the separation of livelihoods and forests in Madhya Pradesh. The article concludes that regulatory, community- and market-based initiatives would need to be better coordinated to lead to more effective nature conservation and positive livelihood outcomes.     

Forestry disputes in provincial France during the nineteenth century: the case of the Montagne de Lure

The nineteenth century in France marked the origins of modern forest management. Two important dates mark the advent of the organisation of forestry: first in 1824, the creation of the Forestry School in Nancy, and then in 1827 the adoption of a Forestry Code specifying to what extent forests were to submit to the forestry regime. Throughout the nineteenth century, forestry administration crystallised the resentment of village communities in the Montagne de Lure through the increasingly strict management of activities linked to the forest. During the 1800s almost all foresters, with a few exceptions, claimed they were the ones who knew the truth and represented collective interests against local populations that they judged to be ignorant and not very concerned with the future. The policy of Restoration of Mountain Terrain (RTM) that was put in place in the Montagne de Lure near the end of the nineteenth century marks the outcome of such a process. It reflects the power of the centralised body of forestry engineers over forest management in France and the decline of local communities, weakened by massive rural depopulation and by a succession of economic crises. Forest space therefore crystallises during these decades of dispute between local and central power.     

Contesting land,creating community,in the Highlands and Islands,Scotland

This paper draws on research in four communities in the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, to explore how the notion of community and community identity are re‐worked in the political spaces created as communities claim collective rights to land. In the cases of the Assynt Crofters’ Trust, the Bhaltos Community Trust, and Laid, this has concerned land under crofting tenure; in the case of the claim of the North Sutherland Community Forestry Trust, the land on which the Naver Forests stand is the responsibility of the Scottish Ministers and is managed by Forest Enterprise. The four case studies differ with respect to membership and institutional practices and thus provide fertile ground on which to examine, comparatively, collective struggles for the land and the search for sustainable futures.     

Mundane mobilities,banal travels

Participatory approaches have become a critical and somewhat normalised methodology in geography for working in a positive and constructive way with Indigenous communities. Nevertheless, recent literature has seldom examined the sustainability of participatory projects or looked critically at their ongoing impacts. Since the early 2000s, Nibutani, an Ainu community in Hokkaido, Japan, has developed several participatory projects led by a non-Indigenous professional. The projects have involved community members working to revitalise and promote local Ainu culture. Over the last decade, some positive outcomes from the projects have been observed; for example, the younger generation has had opportunities to engage intensively in learning local Indigenous knowledge and skills. The projects have also helped some participants to develop a stronger sense of ethnic identity and gain empowerment. Still, the power transfer from the talented non-Indigenous leader to community members has been limited and Nibutani has yet to realise a sustainable project structure. Also, community members have multiple perspectives in regard to the direction of participatory projects and their impact. I discuss these issues in Nibutani's participatory projects based on my observations and interviews and suggest that Indigenous geographies need to undertake follow-up evaluations of participatory projects.     

Regional Forest Agreements: Resolving Resource Conflicts or Managing Resource Politics?

Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) are the latest institutional response to conflict over the allocation, use and management of forests in Australia. RFAs involve a process of resource assessment leading to a long-term agreement between federal and state governments. This paper examines the approach to assessment being used in RFAs with reference to the literature on the practice of resource and environmental assessment and the changing shape of intergovernmental relations in Australia. It concludes that RFAs have not succeeded in resolving conflict over forestry, as was intended, but have successfully managed forest politics, both between governments and in the broader policy community.     

Evaluating Community Archaeology in the UK

Abstract

Does community archaeology work? In the UK over the last decade, there has been a boom in projects utilising the popular phrase 'community archaeology'. These projects can take many different forms and have ranged from the public face of research and developer-funded programmes to projects run by museums, archaeological units, universities, and archaeological societies. Community archaeology also encapsulates those projects run by communities themselves or in dialogue between 'professional' and 'amateur' groups and individuals. Many of these projects are driven by a desire for archaeology to meet a range of perceived educational and social values in bringing about knowledge and awareness of the past in the present. These are often claimed as successful outputs of community projects. This paper argues that appropriate criteria and methodologies for evaluating the efficacy of these projects have yet to be designed. What is community archaeology for? Who is it for? And is it effectively meeting its targets? Focusing on the authors' experiences of directing community archaeology projects, together with the ongoing research assessing the efficacy of community archaeology projects in the UK, this paper aims to set out two possible methodologies: one of self-reflexivity, and one of ethnoarchaeological analysis for evaluating what community archaeology actually does for communities themselves.     

Environmental Action,Gender Equity and Women's Participation

For poor households, and especially for the women who own little private land, forests and village commons have always been critical sources of basic necessities in rural India. However, the availability of these resources has been declining rapidly, due both to degradation and to shifts in property rights away from community control and management to State and individual control and management. More recently, though, we are seeing small but notable reversals in these processes toward a re-establishment of greater community control over forests and village commons. Numerous forest management groups have emerged, initiated variously by the State, by village communities, or by non-governmental organizations. However, unlike the old systems of communal property management which recognized the usufruct rights of all villagers, the new ones represent a more formalized system of rights based on membership. In other words, under the new initiatives, membership is replacing citizenship as the defining criterion for establishing rights in the commons. This raises critical questions about participation and equity, especially gender equity. Are the benefits and costs of the emergent institutional arrangements being shared equally by women and men? Or are they creating a system of property rights in communal land which, like existing rights in privatized land, are strongly male centred? What is women's participation in these initiatives? What constrains or facilitates their participation and exercise of agency? This article provides pointers. It also demonstrates the relevance of the feminist environmentalist perspective, as opposed to the ecofeminist perspective, in understanding gendered responses to the environmental crisis. 1 Abbreviations used in this article: FPC=Forest Protection Committee (under JFM); JFM=Joint Forest Management; NGO=Non-Governmental Organization; VCs=Village Commons; VP=Van Panchayat (forest council).
     

MAJORITY AND MINORITY NATIONALISM IN THE DANISH POST‐WELFARE STATE

The future of the nation and the Danish welfare state is one of the most important political issues today. The transition in neoliberal governance from welfare state to security state, the ongoing securitization of global and European mobility, the restructuring of public services and the re‐scaling of political and economic power has made the debate around the welfare state central. In this article I take an approach to the welfare nation state that is based on the practices and narratives of everyday life. The argument is that narrative practices in everyday life constitute a central sphere inviting studies of the struggle over the welfare community and meaning. The empirical material draws on two recent research projects that include narratives and perspectives from minority and majority population in Denmark. By analysing different perspectives on the nation the article intends to open up for both shared narratives on the welfare state but also differences in the ongoing struggle over the right to the nation.     

Forest as hazard,forest as victim: Community perspectives and disaster mitigation in the aftermath of Kelowna's 2003 wildfires

Situated within the political ecology of hazard, this article is an extended case study of the devastating 2003 wildfires in and around Kelowna, British Columbia (also known as the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire). This article reveals how compliance (or lack thereof) with fire mitigation strategies recommended by provincial, regional, and municipal agencies is complicated by differing social constructions of what constitutes ecologically sustainable forest management and community safety. Three perspectives emerge regarding the urban forests: “nature as hazard”—a volatile force to be controlled; “nature as instrumentally valuable”—a contribution to the character of one's surroundings and subsequent sense of place; and “nature as intrinsically valuable”—a distinct entity to be preserved and protected for its own sake. The article also examines how experiences of disaster influence community perceptions and result in a greater willingness to engage in fire mitigation strategies due to perceptions of heightened vulnerability. Forestry and fire mitigation agencies need to determine multiple courses of action among the varied and valid range of residents’ nature perspectives. The role of human agency in disaster mitigation must be examined, particularly as the risk of fire at the wildland‐urban interface continues to be exacerbated by encroaching human settlements and climate change.     

Engaging Local Knowledge in Biodiversity Research: Experiences from Large Inter- and Transdisciplinary Projects

Abstract

The management of biodiversity represents a research topic that needs to involve not only several (sub-) disciplines from the natural sciences but, in particular, also the social sciences and humanities. Furthermore, over the last couple of years, the need for the integration of other kinds of knowledge (experience based or indigenous knowledge) is increasingly acknowledged. For instance, the incorporation of such knowledge is indispensable for place-based approaches to sustainable land management, which require that the specific ecological and social context is addressed. However, desirable as it may be, such an engagement of the holders of tacit knowledge is not easy to achieve. It demands reconciling well-established scientific procedural standards with the implicit or explicit criteria of relevance that apply in civil society — a process that typically causes severe tensions and comes up against both habitual as well as institutional constraints. The difficulty of managing such tensions is amplified particularly in large integrated projects and represents a major challenge to project management. At the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research — UFZ, several integrated research projects have been conducted over the past years in which experience has been gained with these specific challenges. This paper presents some of the lessons learned from large integrated projects, with an emphasis on project design and management structure. At the centre of the present contribution are experiences gained in the coordination and management of LEGATO (LEGATO stands for Land-use intensity and Ecological EnGineering — Assessment Tools for risks and Opportunities in irrigated rice based production systems, see www.legato-project.net), an ongoing, large-scale, inter- and transdisciplinary research project dealing with the management of irrigated rice landscapes in Southeast Asia. In this project, local expertise on traditional production systems is absolutely crucial but needs to be integrated with natural and social science research to identify future-proof land management systems.     

Territorializing spatial data: Controlling land through One Map projects in Indonesia and Myanmar

Once confined to paper, national cartographic projects increasingly play out through spatial data infrastructures such as software programs and smartphones. Across the Global South, foreign donor-funded digital platforms emphasize transparency, accountability and data sharing while echoing colonial projects that consolidated state-based territorial knowledge. This article brings political geography scholarship on state and counter-mapping together with new work on the political ecology of data to highlight a contemporary dimension of territorialization, one in which state actors seek to consolidate and authorize national geospatial information onto digital platforms. We call attention to the role of data infrastructures in contemporary resource control, arguing that territorializing data both extends state territorialization onto digital platforms and, paradoxically, provides new avenues for non-state actors to claim land. Drawing on interviews, document review, and long-term fieldwork, we compare the origins, institutionalization and realization of Indonesia and Myanmar's ‘One Map’ projects. Both projects aimed to create a government-managed online spatial data platform, building on national mapping and management traditions while responding to new international incentives, such as climate change mitigation in Indonesia and good democratic governance in Myanmar. While both projects encountered technical difficulties and evolved during implementation, different national histories and political trajectories resulted in the embrace and expansion of the program in Indonesia but reluctant participation and eventual crisis in Myanmar. Together, these cases show how spatial data infrastructures can both extend state control over space and offer opportunities for contesting or reimagining land and nation, even as such infrastructures remain embedded in local power relations.     

Empowering Pyromaniacs in Madagascar: Ideology and Legitimacy in Community‐Based Natural Resource Management

Development practitioners frequently rely on community‐based natural resource management (CBNRM) as an approach to encourage equitable and sustainable environmental resource use. Based on an analysis of the case of grassland and woodland burning in highland Madagascar, this article argues that the success of CBNRM depends upon the real empowerment of local resource users and attention to legitimacy in local institutions. Two key factors — obstructive environmental ideologies (‘received wisdoms’) and the complex political and social arena of ‘community’ governance — challenge empowerment and legitimacy and can transform outcomes. In Madagascar, persistent hesitancy among leaders over the legitimate role of fire has sidetracked a new CBNRM policy called GELOSE away from one of its original purposes — community fire management — towards other applications, such as community management of forest exploitation. In addition, complications with local governance frustrate implementation efforts. As a result, a century‐long political stalemate over fire continues.     

Property vs. Control: The State and Forest Management in the Indian Himalaya

The latest orthodoxy to emerge in environmental literature centres on the notion that state ownership of forests results in poor management and ecological degradation. Depending on their political persuasion, scholars, policy-makers and activists either advocate privatization of state forests, or demand their transferral to local communities as solutions for promoting sustainable forest management. This article argues that such proposals are flawed because they assume that ownership status determines the ways in which resources are used and managed. It argues that an analytical distinction needs to be made between property and control for understanding the complex interplay of social, economic, political and ecological factors that influence forest stock, composition and quality. Through a historical analysis of the development of state forestry in the Indian Himalaya, the article shows how state ownership of forests does not result in the monolithic imposition of proprietary rights, but emerges instead as an ensemble of access and management regimes.