Abstract
Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) implementation strategies articulate different aims, goals, and interests across different scales of governance and social-ecological contexts. When SFM is implemented in common pool or public forests, governmental initiatives play a central role in defining formal institutions that will interact with the local social-ecological context. At the same time, local actors’ practices on governing common pools forests are also a key-factor in SFM implementation. This paper analyses, through a critical institutionalism lens, how interactions between a new set of formal institutions with pre-existing local institutions result in (un) expected governance outcomes when implementing SFM on the ground. Using the Caatinga biome in Northeast Brazil as a case study, it shows how local actors (bricoleurs) perform institutional bricolage processes by rejecting, adapting, or integrating institutions linked to SFM implementation strategies to their social-ecological contexts. The paper is based on a qualitative data analysis from twenty interviews with local and governmental actors, and nine site visits to rural settlements and industries. The analysis leads us to conclude that formal SFM institutions in Caatinga do not dialogue with all the different roles that forests resources have in the livelihood of local actors, but rather have a dominant focus on the production of forest biomass for energy supply. Moreover, we found that the success of SFM implementation is highly dependent on the interactions amongst local actors within the social-ecological context. Accordingly, positive results are only achieved when these interactions help to face challenges, specifically those linked to bureaucracy and to technical capacity.
Highlights
Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) of native forests in Caatinga is based on clear-cutting techniques: yearly one parcel of the total area of the SFM plan is harvested for timber; this same parcel will be harvested again only after the time needed for natural forest restoration, which is determined as a minimum of 15 years for Caatinga (Brasil 2009)
We conclude that formal institutions linked to SFM implementation strategies fail to convincingly connect to the different roles that native forest resources have in a specific social-ecological context
The focus of SFM implementation strategies on the production of forest biomass in Caatinga is at the same time a clear example of how the use of native forest resources directly linked to forest loss is targeted over other uses of native forest resources that are linked to livelihoods of local populations, overshadowing their role in and potential for being key actors in the sustainable use of forest resources (Agrawal 2007)
Summary
Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) is currently part of different environmental debates on global, domestic, and local scales (IUFRO 2009; Locatelli et al 2010; Wagner et al 2014). These portfolios represent specific forms of resource use that are related to the specific socioecological contexts the communities are part of In another example, Le Tourneau and Beaufort (2017) found that for common pool resource management in the Amazon, the support of local social networks, such as the Chico Mendes movement, was crucial to maintain community management after external interventions end. This article focuses on how formal and state institutions linked to SFM implementation strategies in the Caatinga biome of Brazil interact with a pre-existing set of local institutions (Cleaver 2012; Cleaver and De Koning 2015) within a specific social-ecological context; and to what extent these interactions shape forest governance outcomes and forest practices on the ground. We conclude to emphasize the importance of considering local networks that include, and extend beyond, local communities and a broad range of forest uses when introducing SFM institutions
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