Forest Policy and Economics最新文献

Sustainable development is an important concept for competitive advantage for all types of organisations and is often implemented by a top-down strategic approach. Forest owner associations are based on the co-operative idea and are therefore expected to include key stakeholders such as members in strategic decisions. A challenge is to incorporate strategic sustainability management in an organisation. It refers to considering organisational objectives, maintaining relations with key stakeholders and keeping the organisational identity. This study aimed to explore how forest owner associations position themselves for sustainable development. A qualitative case study based on semi-structured interviews, (including five employees and eleven members) and sustainability reports suggests that sustainable development is integrated to different extents in forest owner associations in Sweden. A strategic approach is deemed necessary for a dynamic incorporation of sustainable development that is structured and leads to the improvement of responsible practice in the organisation. This study highlights the importance of considering sustainability strategies and co-operative identity in the process of implementing sustainability management in forest co-operatives. Further research could focus on corporate strategies for sustainable development with an extended longitudinal perspective.

Improving adoption rate is vital for realizing agroforestry innovations' financial and environmental benefits including fostering climate change adaptation and resilience efforts. Adoption rate of agroforestry innovations improves through feedback-enriched interventions. Yet, the lessons that decades of adoption research generated were only partially incorporated for improving prospective development interventions. Among others, application of reductionist approaches and rarity of holistic perspectives were primary causes for poor understanding of adoption contexts and subsequent incorporation in development programs. This study shows how to undertake holistic adoption empirical analysis by constructing Bayesian Belief Network (BBN). Findings revealed that household contexts consistently, followed by innovation attributes and system level features, influenced likelihood of adopting agroforestry innovations. BBN allowed discovery of the contribution of each variable and layer of variables on optimized adoption rate. Hence results suggested which (groups of) variables to focus when aiming to improve adoption results. Further testing hypothetical policy intervention allowed comprehension of potential outcomes. The approach consolidated the view that comprehensive assessment is essential for inclusive and actual understanding of adoption influencing factors. The stratification of farmers from discretization feature of BBN allowed potential of addressing all groups of farmers (e.g., poor, medium, rich, male decision-making dominated families), evading earlier concerns of development interventions benefitting only better-off farmers. Our findings proved that holistic analysis can better foster agroforestry innovations adoption by allowing targeted interventions and hence consolidated the forest sectors climate solution opportunities for smallholder farmers.

Numerous empirical studies have highlighted how women experience gender-based disadvantages in accessing, using, and exercising control over forest resources. This paper consolidates and analyses the increasingly rich empirical literature on gender and forest resources within low- and middle-income countries to unravel the multifaceted factors contributing to gender disparities. A systematic literature review comprising 135 studies was conducted analysing the gendered division of labour, access to and use of resources, decision-making power, and underlying gender norms. From the synthesis of these studies, we identify three key dimensions of gender norms affecting ‘gender and forest resources’. These can be conceptualised in terms of (1) gendered space, (2) gendered hardship of labour, and (3) gendered purpose of collecting and using forest resources. Each of these dimensions is characterized by internal contradictions, leading to a blurriness of what the norms dictate (‘what should be’) and the actual practices or reality (‘what is’). This begs the question: do the observed contradictions hinder the reinforcement of critical gender norms, or do they mark the beginning of a transformative shift in gender norms concerning forest resources?

Conservation easements (CE), as an emerging conservation strategy in China, have gained successful collective participation within the Qianjiangyuan National Park with all its collectively-owned forestlands under easements. This study uses an analytical framework developed from the social-ecological systems (SES) framework to explore systemic inter-dependencies among social, economic, political, and natural processes that contextualize the agreements and patterns of interaction where collective participation is achieved. The results indicate that broader-scale variables under socio-ecological contexts, by affecting the resource system, government system, actor system variables, and their interactions, play a more important role in CE participation than sole individual variables. At the regional scale, changing socio-political factors have influenced rural communities' resource utilization and reduced economic dependency on logging activities, facilitating CE adoption. Within the focal action situation, collective participation was achieved under the rural governance system in which actors interact to form community-level consensus through rural self-governance and consultation, influenced by the mobilizing power of the authority. The case study in China demonstrates the feasibility of using CE as a forest co-management strategy in densely populated protected areas under a common-property regime and the necessity of considering both regional-scale factors and local dynamics in CE design and implementation.

This article studies the notion of Sumak Kawsay as an Indigenous way of life and political project informing the normative fundament of the plurinational state of Ecuador. How does Sumak Kawsay shape the relationship between bio-based practices in Kichwa territories of Ecuador and the country's emerging bioeconomy policy? To address this question we study the production of two culturally meaningful products with an agroforestry base in two Kichwa territories. We find that Andean and Amazonian communities draw diversely on the principles of Sumak Kawsay to enhance bio-based systems of production combining ancestral knowledges and semi-industrial technologies. The latter are grounded in harmony-oriented values including economic goals, political visibility, and community-led practices. In the case of Chicha de Jora, bio-based production is linked with food sovereignty and women's political agency. In the case of Guayusa, the export of tea relates to Indigenous peoples' right to assert greater economic visibility in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This shows that neither modern/Western technologies and bioeconomy concepts, nor profits and markets per se, collide automatically with ancestral knowledges and bio-based practices in Indigenous territories. In the plurinational state of Ecuador, therefore, it is imperative that the country's bioeconomy policy is guided by these principles and experiences. This implies the move from a (top-down) state-driven towards a (bottom-up) transcultural approach to bioeconomy governance within the Earth's biophysical limits.

To conserve and use forests sustainably, it is helpful to have accurate and regular assessments of their health and status. A key tool in this regard is the regular global overview provided by the Food and Agriculture Programme (FAO) in their Global Forest Resources Assessments (GFRA), now issued every five years. As of 2000, the GFRA required member countries to report statistics related to non-wood forest products (NWFPs). However, the NWFP statistics in the country appendices to the GFRA bear little resemblance to the situation on the ground, as shown by our assessment of entries for India, Nigeria, and South Africa against verified in-country studies. Our analysis shows that GFRAs often inaccurately report NWFP quantities, lack consistency between reports, omit data on amounts or values even when in-country studies exist, list the top ten NWFPs inaccurately, and fail to cite sources. Taken together, these shortcomings mean that the NWFP country statistics in the GFRA cannot be used to make comparisons between countries, regions or globally, track trends, or make policy or management decisions. The underlying reasons for these shortcomings are considered. Lastly, we suggest nine steps that need to be implemented to make the NWFP section of the GFRA reports a reliable and valued source of data and global analysis, that can be used by policy- and decision-makers and researchers globally.

Wood-based construction (WBC) is considered important for climate change mitigation, as buildings provide long-term carbon storage and contribute to sustainable urban solutions. Research shows that a lack of coordination among policy actors hinders the more rapid development of WBC in many contexts. Gaining a better understanding of the characteristics of local WBC-related policy networks is critical for speeding up WBC development. We conducted an exploratory case study on one WBC forerunner city, Joensuu, Finland. The results from our quantitative social network analysis show that the WBC policy network of Joensuu is moderately dense and mostly consists of research and business organizations. However, the local hub, Business Joensuu, holds a central position in the network despite being an intermediary non-profit business and a regional development organization. Information and knowledge sharing are the most common resources distributed among the actors, which implicitly suggests that the network is primarily contributing to research and innovation around WBC. Considering the diverse policy goal priority, statements related to WBC, actors are mostly interested in climate change mitigation measured by reducing carbon emissions from construction materials, followed by creating new employment opportunities. From the policy perspective, our findings concerning the WBC policy network of Joensuu showcase the importance of national and international policies in the local diffusion of WBC and the key role of collaborative actors.

The continuing destruction of the Amazonian forest, the largest remaining tropical forest ecosystem, has massive social and environmental consequences for local populations, but also for the climate, global food security and biodiversity. With some 20% of the forest already lost and the Amazon region likely approaching a tipping point, the conservation of its forests is a burning issue. High expectations are vested in the sustainable use of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) as a means to reconcile conservation and development. Accordingly, hundreds of initiatives have been launched over the decades that rely on NTFPs. With the proliferation of the bioeconomy discourse in recent years, they have received a new impetus. But are these expectations justified and backed-up by facts? Based on a systematic literature review, this article assesses the state of knowledge on NTFPs as a basis for sustainable local development in the Brazilian Amazon. The analysis reveals that while the number of studies has been growing continuously, the knowledge base is rather patchy. Coverage is limited mostly to a few NTFPs with high commercial value. The literature mostly attests positive effects of NTFP use on forest conservation and contributions to meeting socio-cultural needs of local communities. By contrast, existing studies identify limitations in terms of local income generation and suggest to combine the use of NTFPs with the commercial management for timber and the sale of environmental services. In terms of biodiversity conservation, some studies also point to risks of initiatives that emphasize income generation and stress the importance of diversifying production. It is worrying, that empirical knowledge on the effects of such combined and diversified approaches is scarce. A research agenda is crucial to support the successful promotion of NTFP-based value chains in the Brazilian Amazon. This agenda should include a comprehensive analytical framework that enables robust evaluations of past and future interventions. A better understanding of the actual impacts of such initiatives is vital as evidence for proof of concept and for deploying them at scale.

Community forestry enterprises (CFEs) have diverse governance structures impacting their organizational performance, while limited research has explored the drivers and impact of these diversified institutions. Adopting a comparative case approach, this study examines three types of CFE models in southern China—shareholding forest farms, community-corporation partnerships, and cooperative reforestation—to understand the selection of the CFE's governance structures and their impact on organizational performance from the resource mobilization perspective. In three cases, the ranking of overall performance from the highest to lowest is cooperative reforestation, shareholding forest farm, and community-corporation partnership. However, all three models have their advantages and limitations, and social capital and human capital are critical for all CEF types. This study showcases the institutional diversity of CFEs, offers insights beyond the archetypical distinctions of CFEs identified in the literature, and illuminates the complex effects of organizational structures on CFEs' organizational performance. These findings may guide CFEs in optimizing their institutional arrangements according to their unique circumstances.