Change in forest governance in developing countries – in search of sustainable governance arrangements

Abstract

Deforestation, forest degradation, biodiversity loss and rural poverty have long been important concerns in forest management in developing countries. Many of these countries lack appropriate forest legislation, regulation and incentives to promote sustainable forest governance practices. Also, many developing countries have inadequate funding and human resources for setting up and implementing forest management plans, and lack mechanisms to ensure stakeholder involvement in forest planning and development. Therefore, the search for governance arrangements that are better suited to meet the challenges of sustainable forest use in developing countries remains an important issue. Since the mid 1980s, the majority of national governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have launched decentralization initiatives in natural resource management. Since then, decentralisation has become a prominent feature of forest governance (Ribot et al. 2006: 1864). The expectation is that, given the right conditions, decentralized governance is superior to centralized governance regarding the improvement of the quality of public management and the responsiveness to people's needs. It would subsequently lead to enhanced and more equitable development. Moves to decentralise forest governance were impelled partly by international donor organisations who sought better forest governance from recipient countries. In addition to external pressures, decentralisation was also spurred by domestic demands for a greater recognition of local communities' needs for forest products and their role in managing local forests for multiple purposes (Cronkleton et al. 2008). Concomitantly, forest research on local participation, resource management, and governance helped provide some justification for decentralization reforms (Dietz et al. 2003). Over the past two decades, decentralization reforms resulted in a significant increase of forest governance by local communities and organizations (Molnar et al. 2004). In addition, we can observe a number of further trends and changes in forest governance (Agrawal et al. 2008). Civil society organizations and market actors play an increasingly dominant role, for example, through certification initiatives and changing consumer preferences. Another example concerns the substantial role of logging companies in forest concessions, typically for selective logging in tropical forests. Today, changes in forest governance are for the most part related to non-hierarchical governing involving stakeholders and actors from different levels in formal and informal processes of cooperation and interactions from local to global level (Lemos and Agrawal 2006). Like in other sectors, forest governance not only refers to governmental regulation and law enforcement for sustainable management but also involves the political, organizational, and cultural frameworks through which diverse interests in natural and cultural resources are coordinated and controlled. The changes in forest governance are associated with the emergence of new institutional arrangements to cope with complex challenges in the forest sector. The aim of this special feature is to take a look at changes in forest governance and actor constellations, and factors that lead to sustainable governance arrangements in the countries of the South. We collected three articles that, from different angles, address these issues.