Governmentality in evidence? Evolving rationalities of forest governance in Peru

Abstract

During the recent decades, the effectiveness, sustainability and equity of environmental and resource policies have become increasingly intertwined in governance reforms. This situation with potentially inherent trade-offs has challenged not only the policy planners and implementers, but also the scientific and expert communities to justify the role of specific forms of scientific knowledge in the pursue of multiple and often conflicting objectives. Evidence is a closure of a particular science-policy interface in which the offered scientific knowledge satisfies institutional decision-making criteria. Therefore, for decision-makers evidence is not only information that is judged useful to make their decisions but also a persuasive tool for them to justify the decisions made through giving reasons. We focus on how different prevailing decision-making and administrative rationalities, governmentalities, have shaped the knowledge base and epistemic requirements of forest governance in Peru. We depict a shift from a forester-dominated to legalistic and neoliberal forest governance structure whose main goal has been to foster the forest economy under an economistic sustainable resource use mentality. Increasingly complex administrative processes to support tracing timber extraction, transport and trade have resulted from the institutional adjustments, but, parallelly, also emerging participatory planning processes have challenged and re-politicized the forest governance structure.