Forest politics in Thailand between global climate politics and local specificity

Abstract

In the context of stagnating climate change negotiations and the search for new ways to reduce CO2-emissions, forest politics have increasingly gained the attention of both the public and politics. In particular the proposed instrument REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) has raised hopes as well as concerns. First efforts to transform national forest policies in accordance with REDD+ show that a whole variety of different problems and negotiation processes arise in the implementing countries, corresponding with specific, historically established, practices of forest use, dominant discursive patterns and material flows. Using Massey’s concept of “place” and its duality between territories and flows, the article outlines in a first step a theoretical perspective which conceptualizes the currently observable negotiations around forest politics between the global and the local. In a second step results from a case study in Thailand are used to illustrate how the impacts of global climate politics on contemporary power struggles on the national level are inextricably linked with historic constitutions of networks and territories.