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There is a multitude of values, relations to, and benefits provided to people by trees and forests. We can talk about intrinsic, relational, and instrumental values, about ecosystem services, with multiple scales involved. Forest governance is equally complex, with a multitude of actors involved, and even more actors affected.
One particular service of forests, namely the ability to capture carbon is increasingly focused on. This is accompanied by financial flows into projects to plant or protect forests. Conserving forests and planting more trees is frequently sold as an easy-fix triple-win for the environment, economy, and people. However, this does indeed sound a bit too good to be true and there are some more complexities and critical issues to consider.
For assessing this current situation and international forest governance in general, IUFRO published a new report, titled “International Forest Governance – a critical review of trends, drawbacks, and new approaches”. Building on a report on the International Forest Regime from 2010, it provides a thorough scientific review of the current state of international forest governance. In the nearly 15 years between the reports the complexity of forest governance has increased immensely, with new programmes and governance arrangements, and collaborations emerging. Synergies and trade-offs are not always straightforward, especially as not only the future of forests, but also livelihoods and well-being of people, surrounding ecosystems and various scales should be considered.
As Daniela Kleinschmidt (one of the editors of the report, alongside Christoph Wildburger, Nelson Grima, and Brendan Fisher) puts it, the conversation about how to manage forests “has been overtaken by the climate discussion” (quoted in an article by Kate Yoder in Grist). This can have consequences such as indigenous people being pushed out of their lands for the sake of carbon offset projects (often referred to as carbonised exclusion), or native grasslands (that also store carbon) being transformed into forests. Moreover, carbon sequestration markets tend to prioritise short-term profits over long-term sustainability. There are some initial studies showing the possibility of reconciling carbon sequestration in forests and the well-being of people living adjacent to these forests. However, this requires well-conceived approaches of possible trade-offs, involving the people affected in the design of the projects.
It is important to not loose sight of the larger complex picture and to not just focus on one particular aspect (such as carbon) while missing the larger story. For this, a comprehensive report such as the one published by IUFRO can be helpful.
The newly published report examines main aspects of the current landscape of international forest governance and draws on various scientific information published since the report of 2010. It thereby provides an overview over actors and instruments, the forest-related finance landscape, associated discourses, different governance designs etc. and sheds light on deficits and alternatives.
You can read the full report here.
A policy brief published alongside it, summarises the key messages from the abovementioned report. The authors highlight for instance that
the former dominant concept of a centralized International Forest Governance (IFG) in the form of legally binding, or non-legally binding intergovernmental agreements has continued to shift towards a more pluralistic understanding to IFG.
Forest-related finance for IFG has increased in complexity, with constantly emerging new policy instruments, incentives, standards, and targets in a wide variety of forms. This growing complexity is supported by actors and institutions with interests in short-term economic gain, rather than sustainability and a transition towards just forest governance. Alternative finance remains rare.
In the past decade, a 'climatization' of the forest governance discourses has taken place, which becomes evident in the growing public and private forest carbon markets.
Formerly, the critiques to IFG were focused on technical aspects, but a 'critical critique' point of view is gaining traction following approaches such as political ecology and critical policy analysis. This form of critique addresses social problems such as power asymmetries, justice, post-colonialism, or exclusion. Often, this critique focuses on uncovering underlying power relations rather than offering specific suggestions for political solutions.
As a major conclusion, from the assessment it is singled out that further efforts to coordinate actors and arrangements at all levels of increasingly complex international forest governance are urgently needed.
Sources and further reading:
Full report: ws43.pdf (iufro.org)
Policy brief: gfep-governance-followup-policy-brief.pdf (iufro.org)