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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Two Models of Residential Conservation: communal life in an Australian box-ironbark forest

Grassroots community organisations offer simple ways of maintaining natural heritage values. Given the degradation of landscapes supporting fauna in many parts of the world, such organisations promise direct benefits for local communities and ecological biodiversity. Also, global warming, resulting in part from the removal of forest, will abate with the restoration of trees. The Bend of Islands (Victoria, Australia) boasts two organisations dedicated to the communal conservation of a landscape of remnant box-ironbark (eucalypt) forest. This woodland heritage is managed by residents to preserve its ecological values.The Round the Bend Conservation Co-operative (RBCC) is a land settlement co-operative. Members are committed to maintaining the local bushland in as natural a state as possible using minimal-impact environmental practices. The Bend of Islands Conservation Association (BICA) was established several years after the co-operative, but with the same environmental purpose. It covers a broader area, incorporating over 130 private land titles. This article describes the history and practices of RBCC and BICA and indicates their potential as models for the development of conservation principles and practices by other communities in similar landscapes.     

Forest Policy Reform and the Organization of Logging in Peruvian Amazonia

Reform in the forest sector in Peru resulted in a new forestry law, developed with substantial input from international conservation and donor organizations. While it incorporates the principles of sustainable forest management, biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement, inconsistencies remain between the regulatory mechanisms and actual practices and outcomes in the field, leading some to consider the legal framework a failure. This article suggests that problems in the sector persist because the legal and regulatory frameworks do not incorporate existing local institutions, norms and practices — all of which are rooted in complex historical social, political and economic relationships. Based on information from interviews, data on movement of timber and analysis of secondary information, the authors examine the local structure, actors and dynamics of the concession forestry system in the Peruvian Amazon. The article focuses on how financial, social and political relationships in the network of actors, and particularly the patronage system, have helped actors in the sector adapt to the new policy framework. It is proposed that any further reform in the forest sector must be based on a keen understanding and appreciation of the praxis of timber extraction in the region.     

Loggers,Development Agents and the Exercise of Power in Amazonia

Many believe that Amazonian communities could benefit from the growing market for timber through self‐governed approaches to forest management. However, there is no clear understanding of how communities are to develop such approaches given logging frontiers that are characterized by informal negotiations with loggers and community forestry initiatives that are promoted by development agents. This article reports on research from four study areas in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru which reveals that external players exercise considerable power over communities. First, loggers and development agents impose forest management schemes directly on communities, hindering them from developing their own approaches. Second, paternalistic relationships with loggers and development agents prevent communities from identifying common interests and expressing these through their representative organizations. Finally, loggers and development agents use powerful discourses to shape acceptable schemes in forest management, silencing communities’ voices in debates. Through these different power mechanisms, external agents thwart the emergence of self‐governed community management approaches.     

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.     

Transformation of forest policy regimes in Finland since the 19th century

In this paper, interpretations of sustainable forestry are investigated against the historical background of transformations in the industrial utilisation of forests. Three distinct forest policy regimes in Finland since the 19th century are identified. First, the introduction of the German forestry model, with the central notion of sustained yield, and the establishment of the Finnish Forest Service took place simultaneously in the latter half of the 19th century. These actions aimed at changing patterns of local forest use considered detrimental to long-term forest utilisation. Second, a national forest sector was established during the 20th century. Industrial forestry was seen as a guarantee of economic independence for the new nation-state. Third, during a recent phase the influence of non-governmental organisations and international forest industry companies has increased, and traditional power relations have changed as issues such as biodiversity, forest certification and global investments have been introduced to the debates. It is concluded that the recent transformations in forest management should be read as transformations in industrial forestry rather than as abandonment of industrial forest use models; the legacy of the 19th century German forest science still prevails in forest management.     

"The Experts Taught Us All We Know": Professionalisation and Knowledge in Nepalese Community Forestry

Environmentalist concerns over the state of Nepal's "fragile forests" resulted in the establishment of Community Forestry projects. These community‐based projects are partnerships between the state and community user groups that invest user groups with a great deal of control over their forests. Project implementation, however, begins with the assumption that users have little prior knowledge of forest management and need to be taught modern silviculture. I examine the extent to which different community members embrace notions of professional forestry materially and symbolically. The development of written management plans, the need for careful accounting records and the promotion of silviculturally based management strategies by District Forest Officers serve to (re)inscribe differences between users based on education and literacy. Which users embrace these discourses and practices and for what purposes lends insight into the workings of neoliberalism and how it is implicated in the reconfiguring of social and power relations within localities and, in this case, the consequences of this for ecological change. It is argued that the promotion of expert knowledge and professional practices in Community Forestry is often used as a somewhat contradictory vehicle for educated elites to retain control over forest management, thus undermining some of the key objectives of the program.     

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.     

Biodiversity and sectoral responsibility in the development of Swedish Forestry Policy, 1988-1993

In 1993 the Swedish parliament deregulated national forestry policy and established an environmental goal in parallel with the previous, long-standing goal of high wood production. This paper shows how the change occurred in the context of major changes in Swedish environmental policy during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Within a short time, new environmental legislation and the introduction of legal protection for small forest and agricultural habitats of high ecological value reoriented national forestry policy, away from an overriding focus on wood production to an increased awareness of nature conservation and biodiversity preservation. Reflecting a major compromise with the state, forest owners have gained greater freedom to manage their land, but must also improve environmental conditions while achieving high wood production, a policy known as 'freedom under responsibility'. The paper explains how both the parliament and industry supported increased nature conservation and biodiversity to maintain forest health and support the forestry industry, by favouring responsible resource use and not simply protection from human influence.     

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.     

Forest crisis narratives: Illegal logging,datafication and the conservation frontier in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains

Environmental crisis narratives escalate around the world. Their production and consequences demand scholarly attention. Drawing on the analytical tools of political ecology and highlighting long-term historical developments, this article examines the shift to a new narrative of conservation in forestry, which displaces older structures of state forest management. In particular, we explore the emergence and unfolding of a crisis narrative of illegal logging, which escalated in Romania in the last thirty years. Based on long-term research of digital sources, interviews and fieldwork, we analyze the contents of this narrative, the way it produced heroes and villains, and its entanglements with processes of datafication, criminalization, and the surge of forest violence. We argue that (1) the genealogies of the forest crisis narrative can be understood in relation to frontier-specific processes of deregulation and re-territorialization, which generate acute struggles for forest control and legitimacy; (2) the narrative of illegal logging unravells as a media spectacle surrounding the production of data by a plurality of state and non-state actors (3) in the attempts to curtail illegal logging, the emphasis on law, surveillance and criminalization posits forest conservation one step short of militarization, fuelling the trends for global environmental law enforcement and securitization of conservation.     

‘We Live Like This’: Local Inequalities and Disproportionate Risk in the Context of Extractive Development and Climate Change on New Hanover Island,Papua New Guinea

This study examines the local processes, effects, and responses to large‐scale logging and agricultural development efforts in subsistence communities on New Hanover Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Recently, New Hanover became the site of three special agricultural and business leases (SABLs) that combined to cover approximately 79% of the island. The proliferation of SABLs within PNG is an outcome of recent national development initiatives promoting a significant increase in the production of commercial agricultural crops such as oil palm and biofuel. Accordingly, SABLs are designed to facilitate the development of long‐term commercial agricultural industries in rural locations across the country through the conversion of forested lands and the simplification of communal land tenure, for the purposes of private lease. However, SABLs have simultaneously provided a convenient loophole around more restrictive national forestry policies and thereby become attractive to traditional logging interests in the Asian/Pacific region. Consequently, many SABLs across PNG have failed to produce viable agricultural development or broad local benefit. It is within this context, that this study pays particular attention to the experiences of women and lower‐status landowners living through the processes of SABL conversion, during the El Nino drought of 2015. The study details the statuses and roles of these groups within the overall development process, the ways in which their social relationships changed in the context of development, why these groups were particularly vulnerable to the broad livelihood effects of forest conversion and drought, how they adapted to these effects, and what their hopes were regarding the future of the development project and life on the island. This study adds to current theoretical interests on emerging neoliberal frontiers of land and resource control by examining these SABL landscapes on New Hanover as contemporary examples of land grabs and documenting the very real local level consequences of this phenomenon. The study is also particularly significant in light of the growing threats to forests and forest‐dependent livelihoods and the recognition of the importance of local forest practices to global sustainability.     

内蒙古阿尔山森林资源枯竭型城市转型战略决策量化分析

本文通过对阿尔山市实际情况分析基础上,采用层次分析法(Analytical Hierarchy Process),通过建模、计算,对阿尔山市资源枯竭转型战略作了定量化分析,得出以下结论:在相当长的时期内,阿尔山追求生态效益应是第一位的,因此加强森林资源环境的保护与生态治理是首要战略目标,且加强森林养护与生态功能建设是第一重要的发展战略;当前亟待解决的首要发展问题是森林资源枯竭及生态环境恶化、林业系统体制矛盾及资金欠账严重,应采取的重要措施是依托国家政策尽快建立生态补偿机制及衰退产业援助机制,加快阿尔山林业企业的资产剥离重组,理顺政府与林业局关系,进而培育以"绿色"为主题的接续产业体系。     

Forests of Pleasure and Pain: Gendered practices of labor and livelihood in the forests of the Kumaon Himalayas,India

This article examines the dominant gender and environment discourse in India and argues that, so far, analyses of gender and environment have pursued a utilitarian and mechanistic understanding of the nature-society relationship. By focusing on gendered practices of livelihood, narrated memories, and oral accounts of embodied pain and pleasure in the forests of the Kumaon Himalayas, India, the author discusses the conceptual limitations that inform this discourse and argues for a culturally and geographically embedded understanding of nature-society relationships. It is argued that places of nature are not just biophysical entities, isolated from local, regional, and global relations of power, but are dialectically constituted by local politics of place, history, and ecology and are constitutive of social relations. In Kumaon, the identities of women are constituted through, always entwined with, everyday practices in the forest, and culturally specific notions of proper behavior, 'good mothers,' and 'dutiful wives' are mapped in the overlapping domains of village and forests. Such a view of the nature-society dynamic, it is argued, is critical for a grounded and locally meaningful understanding of how gendered relations are operationalized in nature and for insights into thinking about policy issues.     

Biodiversity and Sectoral Responsibility in the Development of Swedish Forestry Policy, 1988–1993

In 1993 the Swedish parliament deregulated national forestry policy and established an environmental goal in parallel with the previous, long-standing goal of high wood production. This paper shows how the change occurred in the context of major changes in Swedish environmental policy during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Within a short time, new environmental legislation and the introduction of legal protection for small forest and agricultural habitats of high ecological value reoriented national forestry policy, away from an overriding focus on wood production to an increased awareness of nature conservation and biodiversity preservation. Reflecting a major compromise with the state, forest owners have gained greater freedom to manage their land, but must also improve environmental conditions while achieving high wood production, a policy known as ‘freedom under responsibility’. The paper explains how both the parliament and industry supported increased nature conservation and biodiversity to maintain forest health and support the forestry industry, by favouring responsible resource use and not simply protection from human influence.     

Unpacking the ‘Joint’ in Joint Forest Management

This article examines the concept of ‘jointness’ in India’s Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, understood as an engagement between the state (in this case the Forest Department) and people organized into ‘communities’, with NGOs, where available, acting as the interface. By examining the commonalities between older examples of joint or co‐management of resources and current practices of joint forest management, the article challenges the notion that ‘jointness’ is a new feature of forest policy, or that it represents a resurgence of civil society against the state. Further, insofar as the basic agenda of the programme is pre‐determined, it cannot be considered very participatory in nature. None the less, within the limited degree of choice that JFM allows, there is a new and joint construction of needs.     

Sustaining the Forests: The Community-based Approach in South and South-East Asia

The concept of sustainability emphasizes four basic principles when applied to rural communities: that basic needs must be met; that resources should be subject to local control; that local communities must have a decisive voice in planning; and that they should represent themselves through their own institutions. These principles have been notionally accepted by development planners and conservationists at all levels. Yet, throughout the tropical forest belt, they are being systematically overridden by international and national policies and development programmes, leading to increasing poverty, social conflict and rapid deforestation. Traditional knowledge and systems of land use have proved far more environmentally appropriate, resilient and complex than initially supposed by outsiders. Forest peoples have successfully opposed many socially and environmentally destructive development schemes proposed for their lands. However, these societies are not resisting all change: population increase and the internal dynamic for development have also created social and environmental problems. A review of community-based initiatives in South and South-East Asia shows that in some countries, positive initiatives have been taken by local and national governments to promote a community-based approach. Notable successes have been achieved but many other initiatives have failed. The examples show that, besides the four principles noted above, environmentally successful management also depends on innovative political organization at the community level.