International and Domestic Sustainable Forest Management Policies: Distributive Effects on Power among State Agencies in Bangladesh

Lukas Giessen,Md Rahman,Pradip Sarker

doi:10.3390/su8040335

Lukas Giessen, Md Rahman + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su8040335

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Apr 7, 2016
Citations: 101	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Göttingen

Abstract

The last two decades of forest policy discussions have been dominated by calls for sustainable management of forest resources. Consequently, multiple international and domestic policies, supporting sustainable forest management (SFM), have evolved in numerous jurisdictions. Policies in developing countries often rely on foreign donors’ projects, which supplement domestic SFM policy. These policies assign various policy tasks to specific public bureaucracies, who then compete for these very tasks, as well as the related staff and budgets. Therefore, project and policy task assignment greatly influences bureaucratic power. This article analyzes the distributive effects of SFM policy on power (in terms of coercion, incentives and dominant information) among relevant domestic and foreign donor bureaucracies in Bangladesh. Concepts from power theory, bureaucratic politics theory, and concepts of policy and policy process were combined to analyze 121 Bangladeshi SFM policies from 1992–2013, which assign a total of 1012 policy tasks to specific public bureaucracies. Using qualitative content analysis, inferences about power were assigned to specific competing bureaucracies by the totality of SFM policies made. Results identify domestic and foreign bureaucracies whose power distribution benefit most from the SFM policies viz. their competitors. It is concluded that bureaucracies gaining the most power set the limits and directions in designing, implementing and evaluating various elements of any national SFM policies.

Highlights

In the aftermath of the 1992 world summit on environment and development in Rio de Janeiro, calls for the sustainable management of forests around the world gained momentum [1,2]
Policies on sustainable forest management (SFM) in developing countries often face the challenge of being perceived as an overall hindrance— within agricultural development—as well as challenges related to a lack of funds for the pursuit of SFM policy development [14,15,16,17]
All policy documents were collected from the Bangladesh Forest Department (BFD)’s library, the Department of Environment (DoE)’s library and personal communication within an expert circle and the administrative staff of respective agencies in February and March 2014—all of which are responsible for planning, policy making and policy implementation on SFM issue in Bangladesh

Summary

Introduction

In the aftermath of the 1992 world summit on environment and development in Rio de Janeiro, calls for the sustainable management of forests around the world gained momentum [1,2]. The number of policies addressing forests and support for their sustainable management were formulated internationally, at global and regional levels [1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10], as well as domestically at national and sub-national levels (e.g., [11,12]). In industrialized countries, such policies often focus on productive sectors, with administration and implementation by well-established and equipped public bureaucracies [12,13]. Domestic bureaucracies often ally with foreign donors from industrialized countries in the interest of either domestic or international SFM policy development [11,17]

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