Mechanisms to exclude local people from forests: Shifting power relations in forest transitions

Simone Gingrich,Martin Schmid,Melanie Pichler

doi:10.1007/s13280-021-01613-y

Simone Gingrich, Martin Schmid + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01613-y

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Abstract

Forest transitions may significantly contribute to climate change mitigation but also change forest use, affecting the local people benefiting from forests. We analyze forest transitions as contested processes that simplify multifunctional landscapes and alter local livelihoods. Drawing on the Theory of Access, we develop a conceptual framework to investigate practices of multifunctional forest use and the mechanisms that exclude local forest use(r)s during forest transitions in nineteenth century Austria and twenty-first century Lao PDR. Based on historical sources, interviews and secondary literature, we discuss legal, structural and social-metabolic mechanisms to exclude multifunctional forest practices, marginalizing peasants and shifting cultivators. These include, for example, the increasing enforcement of private ownership in forests or the shift from fuelwood to coal in Austria and restrictive land use planning or the expansion of private land concessions in Laos. By integrating political ecology and environmental history in forest transitions research we unravel shifting power relations connected to forest change.

Highlights

Reforestation can contribute to prevent the most detrimental effects of the climate crisis (Bastin et al 2019)
In the analysis of both the Austrian and the Lao case study, we focus on those practices and mechanisms that (a) policy makers and forestry experts emphasize for their importance in minimizing forest degradation and that (b) play an important role for local livelihoods
For the territory of present-day Austria, quantitative assessments based on archival documents and statistical publications identify a gradual increase in both forest area and forest biomass density between 1830 and the early twentieth century (Gingrich et al 2007)

Summary

Introduction

Reforestation can contribute to prevent the most detrimental effects of the climate crisis (Bastin et al 2019). A ‘‘forest transition’’ transcribes the gradual shift from net deforestation to reforestation (Mather 1992; Meyfroidt and Lambin 2011; Gingrich et al 2019). Studies identified ideal-type ‘‘forest transition pathways’’, ranging from state interventions and economic development to globalization and smallholder tree planting that drive forest expansion or recovery (Rudel et al 2005, 2020; Lambin and Meyfroidt 2010). Substantial contributions highlighted the importance of economic (Barbier et al 2010), cultural (Kull 2017), biophysical (Gingrich et al 2019) and governance (Haider et al 2018; Riggs et al 2018) dimensions in explaining and assessing forest transitions. Politics and changing power relations have received little attention in forest transition research (for exceptions, see Lestrelin et al 2014; Pichler et al 2021)

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