Communities, policy actors and conservationists benefit from understanding what institutions and land management regimes promote ecosystem services like carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. However, the definition of success depends on local conditions. Forests’ potential carbon stock, biodiversity, and rate of recovery following disturbance are known to vary with a broad suite of factors including temperature, precipitation, seasonality, species’ traits and land use history. Methods like forest changes over time , and comparison with 'pristine' reference forests have been proposed (...) to compare the structure and biodiversity of forests in the face of underlying differences. However, data from previous visits or reference forests may be unavailable or costly to obtain. Here, we introduce a new metric of locally weighted forest inter-comparison to mitigate the above shortcomings. This method is applied to an international database of nearly 300 community forests, and compared with previously published techniques. It is particularly suited to large databases where forests may be compared among one another. Further, it avoids problematic comparisons with old-growth forests which may not resemble the goal of forest management. In most cases, the different methods produce broadly congruent results, suggesting that researchers have the flexibility to compare forest conditions using whatever type of data is available. Forest structure and biodiversity are shown to be independently measurable axes of forest condition, although users’ and foresters’ estimations of seemingly unrelated attributes are highly correlated, perhaps reflecting an underlying sentiment about forest condition. These findings contribute new tools for large-scale analysis of ecosystem condition and natural resource policy assessment. Although applied here to forestry, these techniques have broader applications to classification and evaluation problems using crowdsourced or repurposed data for which baselines or external validations are not available. (shrink)

The Forestry Pilot Plan set intomotion collectively-owned and managed forestry in overforty communities in Quintana Roo, Mexico and hasshown the promise of a forestry development model thatpromotes conservation by giving local people a genuinestake in sustainable resource management. Today, thelegacy of the PPF is under great pressure. Externally,neoliberal policy reform restructures agrarianproduction in ways that favor individual overcollective management of natural resources.Internally, organizational problems createinefficiencies within both forestry ejidos(cooperative agrarian communities) and theirintermediate level forestry civil (...) societies. Peasants'capacity to defend their interests and dealeffectively with their production problems throughstrong representative organizations is beingundermined by new rules for economic associationwithin the ejidos and by the turning over of technicalservice financing to the market. Though organizationalinnovations within the ejidos hold positive potential,existing civil societies merit continued assistance askey actors promoting sustainable forestry. Studyingcommon property management regimes across multiplelevels and dimensions reveals that in Mexico, policyreform overlooks the crucial social resourcesrepresented by peasant organization, undermining thepossibility of sustainable forest management whileassigning the peasant most of the cost ofconservation. If conservation is indeed encouraged bythe genuine participation of those with a stake insustainable use of natural resources, national andinternational communities that value Mexico's tropicalforests should also invest in both social and economiccosts of conservation. (shrink)

The Society of American Foresters (SAF) has long had an ethic of using forests to benefit society. Now many foresters, prompted by Aldo Leopold and his land ethic, are wondering if SAF does not need a forest ethic, respecting the integrity of natural systems, to complement its ethic for society. Forests are communities as well as commodities. Forest management ought to expand from an ethical of multiple use to one of protecting multiple values found in forests.

The advent of new forestry in the United States represents a traumatic shift in the philosophy of national forestry praxis, a broadening of values to include aesthetics and sustainability of natural ecological process. The ethics of traditional forestry are shown to be 'Stoic utilitarian' and positivist, while the ethics of new forestry adhere closely to the 'land ethic' of Aldo Leopold. Aesthetics in traditional forestry are shown to be modernist, and to have developed from, and (...) in opposition to a Romantic aesthetic of the late nineteenth century. This transition is traced from the first U.S. landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., to the first U.S.-born forester, Gifford Pinchot. The language and precepts of new forestry are shown to parallel those of postmodernism, and the possibility of a broadened aesthetics of forestry, developed through postmodernist criticism, is outlined. The language of gardening is used as a model of forestry praxis, with traditional forestry adhering to the principles of vegetable gardening, while new forestry offers an opportunity to flesh out an entire spectrum of gardening genres. (shrink)

This paper examines the intersection of environmental history and the history of science, specifically the impact of forestry science and fire management on land use and community dynamics in rural Portuguese mountains. It further traces the evolution of fire management from an ancestral rural practice to a scientific concern and the subsequent integration of vernacular knowledge with scientific methods. In the early twentieth century, fire was a common tool in rural Portugal for land clearance, pasture management, and soil enrichment. (...) Rooted in local knowledge, these practices were increasingly challenged by the rise of scientific forestry, which viewed fire primarily as a threat to be controlled. By the mid-twentieth century, Portuguese forestry policies had undergone a significant shift toward aggressive fire suppression and large-scale afforestation, reflecting a broader trend of prioritizing timber production and forest protection. Notable shifts occurred in the 1970s, marked, among other factors, by the increase in rural fires, a new socioecological vision for the forest and the introduction of prescribed fire techniques influenced by international models. The paper argues that the establishment of scientific fire management practices represents a merging of expert knowledge with local experience. This move represents a shift from exclusionary policies toward a more nuanced understanding of fire’s role in landscape management. An examination of these historical developments demonstrates the intricate interrelationship between science, the environment, policy, and local practices, illustrating the way knowledge systems both shape and are shaped by environmental governance. (shrink)

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a global private governance system overseeing the sustainability and biodiversity of the world forestry system through certification of forests and forestry processes and products, and is perceived as the strongest of the various certification schemes available (Domask, Globalization and NGOs: Transforming Business, Government, and Society , 2003 ; Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics , 2004 ). It has seen more success in developed than developing countries in terms of amount of forest certified (...) and number of chain-of-custody certificates issued, raising questions as to its ability to promote biodiversity Gulbrandsen, Global Environmental Politics , 2004 ). A number of challenges have risen to the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC as a global governance system: alternative certification schemes, output and market access, cost of certification, plantations, and illegal logging. I examine each of these challenges as they pertain to the dimensions of pragmatic and moral legitimacy of the FSC. I conclude with a discussion of theoretical implications for global governance systems using ecolabel schemes, as well as a discussion of practical implications for the FSC in particular. (shrink)

Forest resources are important economic assets to Mississippi. Therefore, the forestry community needs to maintain viable relationships with key constituency groups such as teachers. The study’s objectives were to use focus groups and mail questionnaires to determine values, attitudes, and educational needs of Mississippi’s public school teachers toward forestry and forest industry. Most teachers had positive or somewhat positive attitudes (70%) toward forest industry. No significant differences were found between prekindergarten through 3rd- and 4th- through 8th-grade teachers (t (...) =0.308, p =0.758), prekindergarten through 3rd- and 9th- through 12th-grade teachers (t = –0.667, p = 0.506), or 4th- through 8th- and 9th-through 12th-grade teachers (t = 0.246, p = 0.806). Preferred communication methods for teachers in general were school visits, educational materials, and partnerships. Preferred topics of interest were the environment, wildlife habitat, and wildlife. This study stresses the importance of tailoring communication and educational activities to address state-specific social and cultural needs of teachers. (shrink)

This study tests whether participation and values favouring forest protection vary in different forms of community forestry, and whether members' identification with institutional values and forest central ity determines people's participation. Three hundred ninety seven members from 17 forest institutions and their leaders were interviewed. Participation was significantly higher in indigenous community forest management than in crafted community forest management and joint forest management. Values of 'livelihood security from forest', 'sacrificing the present benefit', and 'avoidance of free riding' emerged (...) as important for indigenous and crafted community forest management compared to joint forest management. Members' identification with institutional values and centrality of the forest to the lives of members in forest institutions were higher in indigenous and crafted community forest manage ment than in joint forest management. Irrespective of forest institutions, the higher the value congru ence and centrality of the forest, the higher was people's participation. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine empirically the impact of environmental certification on firm financial performance (FP). The main question is whether there is a "green premium" for certified firms, and, if so, for what kind of certification. We analyze the short-run and the long-run stock price performance using an event-study methodology on a sample of Canadian and U.S. firms. The results of short-run event abnormal returns indicate that forest certification does not have any significant impact on firm (...) FP regardless of the certification system carried out by firms. Unlike the short-run results, the long-run post-event abnormal returns suggest that forest certification has, on average, a negative impact on firm FP. However, the impact of forest certification on firm FP depends on who grants the certification, since only industry-led certification (Sustainable Forestry Initiative, Canadian Standards Association and ISO14001) are penalized by financial markets, whereas non-governmental organizations—led Forest Stewardship Council certification is not. (shrink)

Forests are a significant component of integrated agriculture-based livelihood systems, such as those found in many parts of Asia. Women and the poor are often relatively dependent on, and vulnerable to changes in, forests and forest access. And yet, these same actors are frequently marginalized within local forest governance. This article draws on multi-year, multi-case research in Nepal that sought to investigate and address this marginalization. Specifically, the article analyzes the influence of adaptive collaborative governance on the engagement (...) of women and the poor in community forestry decision making. A description of adjustments to governance processes and arrangements is followed by the consequent changes in engagement observed, in terms of: efforts made by female and poor members to be involved, express views and exercise rights; leadership roles played by female and poor members; and the extent to which the user groups’ priorities and actions reflect the marginalized members’ interests and needs. The main finding is that the engagement of women and the poor increased across sites with the shift from the status quo to adaptive collaborative governance, although not without challenges. The article explores interconnected factors underlying the changes, then considers these through the lens of the “three-gap analysis of effective participation.” This leads to specific insights concerning the conceptualization and strengthening of engagement in community forestry including the central roles of power and learning. (shrink)

The relationship between traditional and scientific ecological knowledge is a dynamic one. Consider the use of fire in land management. In the 1910s and 1920s, Aldo Leopold and other US foresters dismissively campaigned against burning as 'Paiute forestry', denigrating and driving out indigenous land management as though it had never existed, as though there was no credible ecological knowledge proir to settlement. Fire suppression as a longstanding policy across the US and Canada not only failed in reading historical tribal (...) burning practices and in applying that knowledge to settler resource management, but also systematically undercut tribal ecological knowledge. A century later, scientists and restorationists are coming to better understand the dangers of fire suppression, benefits of burns, and the fact that these are not really new insights but epistemically marginalized ones. If prescribed burning is a complex assemblage of epistemic practices, and settler-colonial reactions have perpetrated epistemic injustices against indigenous peoples, how can modern (tribal, settler, and collaborative) burning practices and policies be better? In this project, I offer a close reading of early 20th Century light-burning debates, with a particular focus on Leopold’s characterizations of indigenous ecological knowledge. I then turn to critically evaluate several 21st Century prescribed burn projects and policies for their reparative potential in both social-ecological and social-epistemic terms. (shrink)

Forestry science is firmly based on the ideas of rationalization, emancipation, and progress as embedded in the Modernity Project. Its emergence in the late Seventeenth century is primarily a rationalization of timber production, although to some extend attention is given to other functions of the forest. As an applied science, forestry was preoccupied with bio-technical and economic research. The development in forestry science during the last four decades is described as a broadening of this narrow rationalization concept. (...) Social and ecological dimensions of forestry are acknowledged as legitimate and undeniable fields for forestry research. The new rationalization concept is not yet operationalized, but encompasses besides economic efficiency also equity and ecological sustainability. Since the narrow rationalization concept resulted in irrational outcomes, the new concept of sustainable development might be characterized as a rationalization of the Modernity Project. As a critical counterpoint to this mainstream forestry thinking, a Non-modern Project is emerging. Indigenous forestry as an ethnoscience points at the cultural and philosophical biases still underlying professional forestry and forestry science. (shrink)

Fragile kingdoms of innumerable organisms and rich beauty, forests today are both our most plentiful and our most endangered natural resource. Understanding their workings and how to sustain them is imperative to ensuring the future of humanity. John Berger urges us to learn what can be done to preserve these treasures, and he offers here a compelling guide to the complex issues surrounding forest preservation. An expanded and revised version of Berger’s bestselling Understanding Forests, Forests Forever offers (...) a clear and readable survey of forest history and management. Berger draws upon diverse sources in law, ecology, economics, politics, and anthropology to argue that ecology, rather than the marketplace, should be the driving force behind forest management. Historical case studies of forests worldwide support this contention, the book reveals, as does the history of governments’ forest policy. Keeping pace with today’s issues, Berger critically evaluates government policy over the last seven years, including a contrast between the destructive policies of the Bush Administration and model programs instituted by the Canadian Boreal Initiative and others. Ultimately, he offers us the guiding principles of sustainable forestry as an answer to the ever-increasing demand for wood products. Anchoring the account are galleries of breathtaking full-color images of trees, forest, wildlife, and other forestry subjects taken by the world’s leading nature photographers. A concise and wholly readable account, Forests Forever issues a call to arms for all those concerned with preserving and managing the world’s forests today. (shrink)

Focusing on forests and trees, this book investigates how relations between society and nature change over time. It traces historical perceptions and woodland management practices, explores the rise of scientific forestry methods, discusses in depth the organizational culture of the Forestry Commission, and considers the claim that present-day forestry has become a postmodern phenomenon.

This article analyzes how the European Union’s Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR) could affect the production of forest goods in Mato Grosso (MT), a Brazilian state whose economy depends on commodity exports. The text is divided into five topics: the first discusses the context of forestry products in the Brazilian state; the second analyzes the trade in forestry goods in the EU, its regulation, and the prospects for its application in MT; the third offers a conceptualization of the Brussels (...) Effect and its manifestation in Brazil; the forth one presents the results of field research with actors in the forestry sector in the state, exploring their perceptions about the EU Brussels Effect; and the last one analzyes which Mato Grosso’s municipalities are more exposed to the EUDR in their timber exports. The results obtained through semi-structured interviews highlight the diversity of knowledge of the different groups interviewed about European regulations in the country’s timber forestry industry. State authorities show a clear awareness of the influence of EU regulations, mainly concerning local public policies and international pressure on deforested areas in the Amazon. Stakeholder perceptions reveal a complex intersection between environmental, economic, and social concerns, highlighting the importance of constructive dialogue between different actors to mitigate conflicts and promote sustainable practices in the forestry sector, in line with global and local conservation demands for environmental and sustainability. Additionally, more than 80 Mato Grosso municipalities will be directly impacted by the EUDR, given their export profiles. (shrink)

This article describes and proposes the “environmental subsidiarity principle” as a guiding ethical value in forestry governance. Different trends in environmental management such as local participation, decentralization or global governance have emerged in the last two decades at the global, national and local level. This article suggests that the conscious or unconscious application of subsidiarity has been the ruling principle that has allocated the level at which tasks have been assigned to different agents. Based on this hypothesis this paper (...) describes the principle of subsidiarity and its application to environmental policies within forest governance and proposes the “environmental subsidiarity” principle as a critical conceptual tool for sustainable resource management. The paper explains as an example how “environmental subsidiarity” is the key principle that can link payment for ecosystem services (PES) with environmental public policies and applies this principle with all its political consequences to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) architecture. It concludes by showing how the adoption of “environmental subsidiarity” as a ethical principle could help to maximize benefits to all stakeholders involved in PES schemes such as REDD+. (shrink)

A survey of professional foresters in the northeastern United States was conducted to determine whether professional forest resource managers viewed forest ecosystem management and other "new" forestry language as representing practical constructs, and whether there is a difference between USDA Forest Service foresters and private-sector foresters in the degree to which they have applied "new" forestry. Results suggested that the forest management behaviors of most foresters in the region may be influenced more by traditional forestry concepts and (...) language than by "new" forestry. (shrink)

Forests in Nepal are central in people's imaginations and daily lives and are a key means to social, political and economic power. This paper explores how an aesthetic appreciation of forests is tied in to other knowledges and experiences including the social-politics of resource use and management in the context of community forestry in Nepal. As such, more than one 'forest' inhabits the same spatial extent and these socially and politically framed views are central to aesthetic valuing (...) of forests. The paper thus argues for a 'thick' aesthetics that ties together an understanding of the forest as an ecologically and socially emergent entity with a variety of knowledges that inform aesthetic valuing to analyse how competing visions of what the forest ought to be materialise. (shrink)

This paper explores the dynamic potential inherent in stable looking technological systems. I follow a small Finnish heating business and describe how alternative production practices were established within Finnish forestry. The case shows an interesting development in a sector where local activities have traditionally been coordinated through standardised practices and the physical structure of the forest. My focus is on micro-level shifts of power and I analyse the changing position of local actors in the margins of conventional forestry (...) to understand the fragile nature of the forestry standards. They not only stabilise forestry practices but enable complex interactions and new combinations of actors. Therefore, they also increase the degrees of freedom. My analysis draws from theoretical perspectives of technology studies, actor-network theory and recent discussions in geography on the spatial distribution of power. (shrink)

This article views gender dynamics and strategies for change in a small Swedish village from a systems perspective. In the context of the struggle for the communal management of forests, tensions arose in the relations among the people in the village who differed in their opinions as to how to approach village development. Some village women argued for the importance of issues other than only community forestry in the development of the community's future livelihoods and well-being. They also (...) believed that linking these activities with each other are vital for the community. Co-operative inquiry with women in the village reveals that, in their view, the community's overall needs are the most meaningful point of departure and not just individual resource management initiatives. They believed that it was vital to link resource management with other developmental activities in the village. The inquiry process also shows how the differences that may arise between men and women are dependent on the context, their relationships, and the networks they activate rather than the differences emerging solely from gender roles or the structure. Attention to how women and men “draw boundaries” around their activities and relationships expands our understanding of the diverse means they use for reaching their objectives. It also highlights the role of innovators who cross these boundaries and work toward change. (shrink)

Uncertainty, insufficient information or information of poor quality, limited cognitive capacity and time, along with value conflicts and ethical considerations, are all aspects thatmake risk managementand riskcommunication difficult. This paper provides a review of different risk concepts and describes how these influence risk management, communication and planning in relation to forest ecosystem services. Based on the review and results of empirical studies, we suggest that personal assessment of risk is decisive in the management of forest ecosystem services. The results are (...) used together with a reviewof different principles of the distribution of risk to propose an approach to risk communication that is effective aswell as ethically sound. Knowledge of heuristics and mutual information on both beliefs and desires are important in the proposed risk communication approach. Such knowledge provides an opportunity for relevant information exchange, so that gaps in personal knowledge maps can be filled in and effective risk communication can be promoted. (shrink)

Edward Harold Fulcher Swain (1883?1970) developed a unique idea about the importance of forests, advocating the creation of a new society based upon forests, and he pursued policies to implement his unique vision of forestry when he served as the Director of Queensland's Forestry Board from 1918 to 1924 and the Forestry Commissioner for New South Wales from 1935 to 1948. Swain's beliefs developed out of a combination of his Australian experiences and connections with foresters (...) in the British Empire and America. When he could not convince Australian elites about the need to create a forest-based society, he asked foresters at the 1947 Empire Forestry Conference in London to assert the primacy of forestry in land management in the British Empire. Many foresters positively received parts of Swain's argument, but his ideas could never be fully implemented in the British Empire because of the dominance of agrarian doctrines of development in post-Second World War colonial planning and the rapid process of decolonization. Swain's life sheds light onto current debates among historians about the origin and legacy of forestry in Australia and the British Empire. His ideas, many that parallel the basic tenets of modern environmentalism, require historians to rethink the relationship between Empire forestry and environmentalism. (shrink)

The importance of forests is reflected in the national forest legislation which has been developed and implemented in European countries over recent years. Due to regional and national specificities, forest regulations include culturally immersed terms specific to the described area. The aim of this paper is to analyses the culturally driven legal terms existing in specific legal regulations concerning forestry in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Poland, and identify possible ways of translating them. (...) In order to take the interdisciplinary nature of the issue into account, the degree of hybridity of the selected texts will be examined by means of corpus analysis. The methodology applied in the paper uses a comparative approach. Additionally, the authors also resort to the aforementioned corpus analysis, as well as the analysis of comparable texts and the analysis of terminology according to the three categories of equivalence as determined by Šarčević, and the techniques of providing equivalents for non-equivalent or partially equivalent terms as research methods. The material used for analysis comes from selected German, English and Polish legal acts regulating forest management and maintenance that are considered as corpora for the selection of culturally immersed terminology, namely: the Polish Act on Forests of 28th September 1991 [Ustawa z dnia 28 września 1991 r. o lasach], Title 16 U.S. Code Chapter 2—National Forests, Forestry Act 1967, Chapter 10, German Forestry Act 1975 [Gesetz zur Erhaltung des Waldes und zur Förderung der Forstwirtschaft von 1975]. The paper concerns potential problems that could occur in the translation of culturally immersed legal terminology due to the terms’ rigidity and high degree of specificity. The studies presented will allow conclusions to be drawn regarding the possibilities and strategies for translating culturally immersed terms. In addition, the availability of terminological dictionaries for these language pairs will be discussed. (shrink)

The forestry profession has no offical policy on forest aesthetics: Neither foresters nor the public have clear guidelines as to what a socially acceptable, actively managed forest should lookl ike. Hints of an impplicit policy can be found in the Society of American Foresters position statements on timber harvesting and in various recommendations for best management practices found in state, federal, and industrial forestry publications. These implicit policies may send a hypocritical message to the public about the practice, (...) intent, and ethics of forestry. (shrink)

Analysis of academic forest scientists’ ethical reasoning and values given decision-making scenarios indicates that Holmes Rolston, III’s value theory, specifically his ethics of “following nature” is an important and current environmental ethics in forestry. Nevertheless, while academic forest scientists appear to espouse “following nature” in decision making, they also make use of numerous other values and ethics. Academic forest scientists’ moral reasoning is more akin to a pragmatic approach to decision making rather than an approach based on building or (...) advocating an internally consistent and coherent moral position. Rolston’s environmental ethics is relevant and useful to decision making in forestry if it is interpreted as one among various value theories used to guide decision making rather than an ethical theory to be accepted or rejected en bloc. (shrink)

Forests are under immense stress globally. Economic growth is one reason for this: its impacts can lead to deforestation and put tremendous harvesting pressure on forests. In light of increasingly popular – and growth-based – bio-economy strategies, the need for more wood is likely to accelerate. Degrowth, in contrast, rejects economic growth as the central economic principle, arguing that the material throughput of countries in the Global North must shrink to achieve global sustainability. Although the concept has gained (...) importance, there have been no attempts to link degrowth with the forest sector. This article argues that degrowth principles are beneficial for basing the forest sector on sustainable grounds, while the degrowth movement also needs to define its relationship to the forest. Against this backdrop, this contribution sets the cornerstone by linking the Swiss forest sector to central degrowth principles, and discussing possible interrelations and mismatches. Finally, a future research agenda for degrowth and the forest sector is presented. (shrink)

Classical proof forests are a proof formalism for first-order classical logic based on Herbrand’s Theorem and backtracking games in the style of Coquand. First described by Miller in a cut-free setting as an economical representation of first-order and higher-order classical proof, defining features of the forests are a strict focus on witnessing terms for quantifiers and the absence of inessential structure, or ‘bureaucracy’.This paper presents classical proof forests as a graphical proof formalism and investigates the possibility of (...) composing forests by cut-elimination. Cut-reduction steps take the form of a local rewrite relation that arises from the structure of the forests in a natural way. Yet reductions, which are significantly different from those of the sequent calculus, are combinatorially intricate and do not exclude the possibility of infinite reduction traces, of which an example is given.Cut-elimination, in the form of a weak normalisation theorem, is obtained using a modified version of the rewrite relation inspired by the game-theoretic interpretation of the forests. It is conjectured that the modified reduction relation is, in fact, strongly normalising. (shrink)

Ecologic-economic systems tend to exhibit greater complexity than systems that are purely ecological or economic. The interactions between the two types often generates nonlinear relations that lead to various kinds of complex dynamics that complicate management and decisionmaking regarding them. Of these, forests have characteristics that lead them to have special problems not usually encountered in the management of such systems. A central one is the long time periods involved managing forests compared to most other such systems. This (...) means that the issues regarding determination of discount rates for valuing future outcomes are more important for forestry management than for many other systems. Also, forests generate a wider range of externalities than do most other ecologic-economic systems, with implications for various hierarchical levels of management. This paper considers the array of these problems as they appear for a variety of forestry management issues. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives have become a vital part of the organizational landscape for corporate social responsibility. Recent debates have explored whether these initiatives represent opportunities for the “democratization” of transnational corporations, facilitating civic participation in the extension of corporate responsibility, or whether they constitute new arenas for the expansion of corporate influence and the private capture of regulatory power. In this article, we explore the political dynamics of these new governance initiatives by presenting an in-depth case study of an organization often (...) heralded as a model MSI: the Forest Stewardship Council. An effort to address global deforestation in the wake of failed efforts to agree a multilateral convention on forests at the Rio Summit in 1992, the FSC was launched in 1993 as a non-state regulatory experiment: a transnational MSI, administering a global eco-labeling scheme for timber and forest products. We trace the scheme’s evolution over the past two decades, showing that while the FSC has successfully facilitated multi-sectoral determination of new standards for forestry, it has nevertheless failed to transform commercial forestry practices or stem the tide of tropical deforestation. Applying a neo-Gramscian analysis to the organizational evolution of the FSC, we examine how broader market forces and resource imbalances between non-governmental and market actors can serve to limit the effectiveness of MSIs in the current neo-liberal environment. This presents dilemmas for NGOs which can lead to their defection, ultimately undermining the organizational legitimacy of MSIs. (shrink)

The Canadian forest sector provides a rich contextual basis for examining organizational legitimacy and legitimating mechanisms. The author used qualitative methods and discourse analysis to explore how the Canadian forest sector exhibits a hybrid mix of substantive and symbolic management of legitimacy and of procedural and symbolic processes of legitimation. Findings support the mystifying nature of “green” legitimation and the superficial and mystifying nature of some of the discourse that is being used in this sector. In some cases, language is (...) being used to attempt to change definitions of social legitimacy to enhance a record of sustainable forest management practice. (shrink)

Rubin loves the beautiful sounds that are played by the orchestra. He wants to learn to play the violin and make his own music. But when Rubin plays, it doesn't sound like he imagines it should. Rubin goes into the forest to practice alone and despite only getting the violin to screech, he finds an unlikely audience that loves his unique style.

Much has been made in recent years concerning the ecological significance of the global boreal forest. In Canada, a highly coordinated political campaign is under way to halt the industrial pressures - mining, forestry, energy development - that threaten to undermine the ecological contributions made by the Canadian boreal forest. In this short commentary, however, it is argued that the current politicization of the boreal forest cannot be thought of solely as an innocent act of environmental protection, but must (...) also be thought of in terms of the colonial context from which its geography first emerged. Doing so raises problems for a conventional environmental subjectivity based on a sharp distinction between nature and culture. The author seeks to address this tension by advocating an environmental ethics that is based on a responsibility for the other. (shrink)

Historians of science can benefit from thinking more deeply about land. Scholarly emphasis on the geographies of scientific knowledge has become pervasive since the “spatial turn” of the late 1990s. At the same time, the history of science has increasingly intersected with environmental history. Despite these growing connections, historians of science have been slow to embrace a core concern of environmental history: land. While space and place now have a rich literature in the historiography of science, land appears in histories (...) of science in more scattered, incidental ways – largely as a place where science may occur or be applied. More than just a unit of ground, land is analytically connected to a web of questions about labor, property, governance, identity, and environmental change explored by environmental historians, geographers, and political ecologists. This article examines what historians of science – particularly, but not exclusively, historians of the field and environmental sciences – have to gain by taking land more seriously. A reexamination of the Rain Forest Project (1962–1970), a radioecology study initiated by systems ecologist Howard Thomas Odum in what is today El Yunque National Forest, Puerto Rico, serves as a case in point. Viewing this field site as land reframes ecologists’ fieldwork as a form of land use, highlighting its place within regimes of land tenure, its connections with other communities’ uses of the land, and its persistent local legacies. (shrink)

Since land is older than the borders which humans have drawn and redrawn upon its surface, it may seem that, unlike the artefacts which people make with materials taken from the landscapes around them, land itself is endlessly open for new waves of migrants to embrace as part of their own heritage. Yet humans do mark landscapes, sometimes in lasting ways: not only roads and buildings but agriculture, forestry, dams and diverted rivers, quarrying and mining and more. It is (...) landscape archaeologists who are most able to trace the material evidence of how landscapes were used and by whom; and so when interests in land are contested, archaeological evidence may be cited in order to distinguish the long-established community from the geographical Johnny-come-lately, or to cast doubt on whether this can meaningfully be done. (An example is litigation concerning forests in southern Belize, once logging had made them profitable: the ethnographic and archaeological question of whether peoples inhabiting the area were descended from the ancient Maya, or whether from more recent immigrants, became a point of legal disputation.) This chapter assesses the ethical use of scientific knowledge when settlement, and the traces of settlement which archaeology can uncover, can leave newer immigrants finding that the very ground beneath their feet already looks like someone else’s cultural artefact. (shrink)

Together, their work signals a new direction in the field and offers refreshingly original insights into a broad spectrum of texts.

This article analyses the representational politics of global commodity networks, where certified forest products are produced and consumed, approaching them as complex forms of governance in which diverse actors, images, conventions and values interact. The study draws upon a case study of certified Honduran community forestry groups producing furniture and kitchenware for Danish design markets. Special focus is on the forms of negotiation and contestation through which the different actors mediate the representations and imagery circulating in the marketing of (...) certified products and on their differential access to control and power. The research illustrates how leading retailers, in negotiation with environmental organisations, modify definitions of quality and guide consumers’ expectations of certified southern forest products, by building images of southern community forest producers as authentic and exotic ‘others'. The article concludes that certification as a market-based form of governance has had only limited impact on altering the unequal relationships characteristic of global networks of production and consumption. (shrink)

National governments in almost all developing countries have begun to decentralize policies and decision making related to development, public services, and the environment. Existing research on the subject has enhanced our understanding of the effects of decentralization and thereby has been an effective instrument in the advocacy of decentralization. But most analyses, especially where environmental resources are concerned, have been less attentive to the political coalitions that prompt decentralization and the role of property rights in facilitating the implementation of decentralized (...) decision making. By comparing decentralization in four cases in South Asia—Forest Councils in Kumaon in India, Joint Forest Management in India, the Parks and People Program in Nepal's Terai, and Community Forestry legislation in Nepal—this article provides answers to two questions: When do governments decentralize environmental decision making? and Which types of property rights must be devolved if decentralized decision making is to be effective? (shrink)

Resource extraction companies worldwide are involved with Indigenous peoples. Historically these interactions have been antagonistic, yet there is a growing public expectation for improved ethical performance of resource industries to engage with Indigenous peoples. (Crawley and Sinclair, Journal of Business Ethics 45, 361–373 (2003)) proposed an ethical model for human resource practices with Indigenous peoples in Australian mining companies. This paper expands on this work by re-framing the discussion within the context of sustainable development, extending it to Canada, and generalizing (...) to other resource industries. We argue that it is unethical to sacrifice the viability of Indigenous cultures for industrial resource extraction; it is ethical to engage with indigenous peoples in a manner consistent with their wishes and needs as they perceive them. We apply these ideas to a case study in the coastal temperate rainforest of Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada. In this case a scientific panel comprised of Nuu-Chah-Nulth elders, forest scientists and management professionals, achieved full consensus on developing sustainable forest practice standards by drawing equally on Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and Western science in the context of one of the most heated and protracted environmental conflicts in Canadian history. The resulting sustainable forest practice standards were later adopted by leading forestry firms operating on the coast. Our analysis of this scientific panels success provides the basis for advancing an ethical approach to sustainable development with Indigenous peoples. This ethical approach is applicable to companies working in natural resource industries where the territories of Indigenous peoples are involved. (shrink)

Finland is currently undergoing a fundamental structural transformation in the forestry sector, with factories closing in the Global North and production being shifted to the Global South (see also Carrere & Lohmann 1996; Cossalter & Pye-Smith 2003). This is accompanied by Finnish mass movements protesting unemployment and demanding corporate social responsibility (CSR) from theforest industry. The difficult domestic situation, however, seems to overshadow the circumstances of the new production regions in the South. What do we actually know about the (...) impacts of the Finnish forestry sector in those societies? The branches of global forest companies may be located in regions that are experiencing various societal conflicts – like in the case of indigenous communities in northeastern Brazil, where the question of land ownership remains unsolved. The aim of our paper is to bring out the perspective of these traditional communities and the legitimacy problems of the Finnish forest industry in Brazil. We also scrutinize the corporate tactics by which companies seek to gain societal acceptability in the region. These range from social programs and campaigns to violent confrontations, even to attempts to deconstruct the identities of indigenous communities. Our general argument is that while companies have outlined their CSR policies in theory, the situation in actual practice is quite different. Companies often fail to take into account the prevailing socioeconomic conditions in the region and some of the more marginal stakeholders like indigenous peoples, who obviously have no economic importance to the company. (shrink)

This paper addresses feminist materialism as political practice through a case study of IWW-Earth First! Local 1, the late Judi Bari's organization of a radical ecology/timber workers’ union in the ancient redwood forests of Northern California. Rejecting the Earth First! mythology of timber workers as ‘enemies’ of nature, Bari sought to unite workers and environmentalists in pursuit of sustainable forestry practices against the devastating approaches favoured by multinational logging corporations. In so doing, she brought a working-class feminist perspective (...) to the radical ecology of Earth First! Bari's work provided a significant instance of community organizing in opposition to the masculinist, exclusionary practices and misanthropic posturing of Earth First!'s self-proclaimed ‘eco-warriors’ and ‘rednecks for nature’. What is perhaps most interesting about the development of Local 1 is the articulation of feminist, environmentalist and labour discourses through a series of political actions. (shrink)

The Value of Trees project, funded bythe International Development Research Council ofCanada (IDRC), supported the joint efforts of theUniversity of Alberta and the University of Zimbabweto investigate the economic costs and benefitsassociated with trees and forests in the small holderfarming sector in Zimbabwe. The Value of Trees project provided funding for graduate students andfaculty from the two participating universities tocarry out studies in the disciplines of forestry,agricultural economics, and sociology in order toprovide policy recommendations regarding the role ofwoodlands (...) in sustainable small holder farming in acontext where agricultural production appears to putincreasing stress on woodlands. The numerous projectsincluded such topics as the following: the use offuelwood under conditions of scarcity, tree tenure andlocal institutions in woodland use and sustainability,gender and wealth as related to tree planting andconservation, time preferences in natural resourceconsumption, ownership and economic impact ofeucalyptus woodlots, cultural and economic valuesassociated with woodlands, and uses and conflictsrelating to woodlands across different land categoriessuch as resettlement land and state forests. Manyother studies were not funded by, but were associatedwith Value of Trees. The findings fall withintwo broad categories. The first set includes thosedirectly related to generating values for differentaspects of the woodlands, particularly from theperspectives of rural households. The main finding isthat despite being highly valued by local people forboth economic and social reasons, woodlands are rankedlower in importance by local farmers than agriculturalland. The second set of findings relates to thecomplexities of the social system of the woodlands.Local institutions, history, resource conflicts, andtenure issues emerge as key to understanding the waythat people interact with the woodlands. Finally,local people have valuable knowledge and strategies tooffer in the design of sustainable management. Thepolicy implications of these findings for Zimbabwe arethat economic incentives could be important in asustainable woodlands strategy, but that anysuccessful program must incorporate an understandingof the profoundly complex and at times contradictoryhuman dynamics of woodland use and values. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the question of how the costs of undertaking an important type of climate change mitigation should be shared amongst states seeking an environmentally effective and equitable response to global climate change. While much of the normative literature on climate mitigation has focused on burden sharing within the context of reductions in emissions of greenhouse gas, I explore the question of how the costs of protecting tropical forests in order to harness their climate mitigation potential (...) should be distributed amongst developing and developed states. In response to this question, I outline and defend a ‘beneficiary pays’ account of forestry mitigation burden sharing that requires affluent states to finance measures supporting avoided deforestation while less affluent states, within whose territory these forests tend to be located, implement these measures. The normative basis for this account, I argue, is a principle of ‘unjust enrichment’ according to which developed states must bear much of the cost of avoided deforestation for its climate mitigation potential because of the huge economic benefits their citizens have accumulated from productive activities that have contributed to climate change. (shrink)

ArgumentMutuality in “contact zones” has been emphasized in cross-cultural knowledge interaction in re-evaluating power dynamics between centers and peripheries and in showing the hybridity of modern science. This paper proposes an analytical pause on this attempt to better invalidate centers by paying serious attention to the limits of mutuality in transcultural knowledge interaction imposed by asymmetries of power. An unusually reciprocal interaction between a Japanese forester, Ishidoya Tsutomu, at the colonial forestry department, and his Korean subordinate Chung Tyaihyon is (...) chosen to highlight an inescapable asymmetry induced by the imperial power structure. Ishidoya, positioning himself as a settler expert, as opposed to a scientist in Tokyo, pursued localized knowledge in growing interaction with Chung, resulting in Ishidoya's career change as a herbalist focusing on traditional medicine and Chung's leadership in Korean-only botanizing. However, their mutual transformations, limited by asymmetric constraints on their choices, did not unsettle the imperial power structure or the centrality of centers. (shrink)

The Confederated Colville Tribes collaborated with DroneSeed, a forestry drone start-up, to use drones to replant their tribal forest after a devastating fire. Using concepts from Bernard Stiegler to interrogate ethnographic data, this article argues that forestry drones are pharmaka: their biopolitics can be therapeutic, that is, negentropic, capable of reversing ecological simplification. Drone forestry is a type of arborescent governmentality, a tree-based computer-coded attempt to control the growth of a forest. For the Colville, this negentropy is (...) also an act of sovereignty that protects culture and honors multispecies relationships. For DroneSeed, it is an experiment in negentropic geoengineering, an attempt to profitably leverage technologies and biological regeneration to sequester carbon and reduce global existential risk. Ultimately the project was not the success desired; the failure of technoliberal projects that blend ecological and economic liberalism shows that a more radical approach might be necessary to root carbon and slow capitalism. (shrink)