Forestry Decentralization in the Context of Global Carbon Priorities: New Challenges for Subnational Governments

Antoine Libert-Amico,Anne M Larson

doi:10.3389/ffgc.2020.00015

Antoine Libert-Amico, Anne M Larson

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2020.00015

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Abstract

The recent emphasis on the role of tropical forests in facing climate change has made forest decentralization debates more relevant than ever. Discussions on multilevel governance, polycentricity, and nested approaches to governance surround the central question, ever more pertinent considering global environmental change, of who holds the mandate over forests. Different levels of government, as well as private and civil society actors (companies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), indigenous peoples and local communities), compete over the rights of ownership, administration and management of forest landscapes – decisions with a crucial impact on land use, land use change and the future of forests. Understanding the relations among different levels of governance, and government specifically, is essential to understand how carbon forestry has engaged with decentralization and the role of subnational governments (SNGs) in developing practical land use solutions. We draw on current trends in the forestry decentralization literature to ask: (i) has carbon forestry opened new opportunities for SNGs to support the sustainable governance of forest landscapes?; (ii) have meaningful powers been assigned to SNGs in support of democratic processes of decision-making over forest landscapes? And (iii) is carbon forestry influencing the relationships between levels of government in a way that challenges unequal power relations? By examining carbon forestry projects and forestry decentralization processes across five countries (Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Tanzania and Vietnam) with carbon forestry initiatives, we demonstrate how the role of SNGs is circumscribed by existing forestry decentralization trends. Decentralization initiatives in recent decades have provided SNGs with new mandates to manage forests, but new attributions do not always imply meaningful powers. The implementation of carbon forestry projects is moulded by pre-existing power relations that shape the impacts of forestry decentralization on livelihoods and forest ecosystems. We find that carbon forestry, with both centralizing and decentralizing tendencies, operates within the spaces left by existing power dynamics that mould the way transfers of power are put into practice. Jurisdictional approaches will need to negotiate with this context to be able to push forward sustainable pathways.

Highlights

Decentralization—and forestry decentralization in particular— was a hot topic in research and discourse in the 1990s and 2000s (Agrawal and Ribot, 1999; Colfer and Capistrano, 2005; Larson and Soto, 2008)
We explore these questions based on research carried out in 2013–2017 by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in five countries: Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Tanzania, and Vietnam
Semi-structured interviews were implemented with a range of actors representing different levels and sectors of government, as well as local communities, NGOs, private firms, researchers and activists, among others (CIFOR, 4Except in Tanzania, where mid-level jurisdictions only have minimal administrative responsibilities, we chose to focus on two contrasting ecological zones, which comprise multiple districts. 5Except in Peru, where we studied three regions. 2015; Ravikumar et al, 2015a; see Supplementary Materials and methods documents: Saito-Jensen, 2015)

Summary

Introduction

Decentralization—and forestry decentralization in particular— was a hot topic in research and discourse in the 1990s and 2000s (Agrawal and Ribot, 1999; Colfer and Capistrano, 2005; Larson and Soto, 2008). As is common with such initiatives, decentralization in policy and practice has continued but with much less explicit attention. Decentralization was confusing, and certainly not unidimensional, with tendencies to decentralize on paper but not in practice (Koch, 2017) or to recentralize while decentralizing (Ribot et al, 2006). With the current interest in “landscape” or jurisdictional approaches to mitigate emissions from land use change and support sustainable alternatives (Hsu et al, 2017; Reed et al, 2019), it is important to understand how carbon forestry has engaged with and/or (re)shaped decentralization and the role of subnational governments (SNGs)

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