Abstract
Halting forest loss and achieving sustainable development in an equitable manner require state, non-state actors, and entire societies in the Global North and South to tackle deeply established patterns of inequality and power relations embedded in forest frontiers. Forest and climate governance in the Global South can provide an avenue for the transformational change needed—yet, does it? We analyse the politics and power in four cases of mitigation, adaptation, and development arenas. We use a political economy lens to explore the transformations taking place when climate policy meets specific forest frontiers in the Global South, where international, national and local institutions, interests, ideas, and information are at play. We argue that lasting and equitable outcomes will require a strong discursive shift within dominant institutions and among policy actors to redress policies that place responsibilities and burdens on local people in the Global South, while benefits from deforestation and maladaptation are taken elsewhere. What is missing is a shared transformational objective and priority to keep forests standing among all those involved from afar in the major forest frontiers in the tropics.
Highlights
Tropical forests and lands are highly visible on today’s political agendas and are being claimed for a myriad of global, national, and local interests linked to timber, biomass resources, and the production of commodities such as soy, oil palm, and pulp and paper
Despite evidence to the contrary (Ziegler et al 2011; Dressler et al 2017; Bruun et al 2018), the framing of shifting cultivation and mobile husbandry, of pastoralists and peasants, as responsible for deforestation and degradation has persisted since colonial rule (Thu et al 2020; Scoones 2021). Such ideas affect till today decisions over what counts as deforestation or does not, and they legitimise which drivers are defined as legal or illegal, measured and reported by whom, how databases are constructed and made accessible, and where are the blind spots—highly political questions as cases 1, 2, and 3 in particular show
Case 1 in particular highlights these processes, with analysis from Indonesia showing how forest-based mitigation was initially linked to large political change but is reduced to a technical project (Moeliono et al 2020), or in Brazil, where interests in keeping forest standing has been shifted over time towards restoration interests linked to intensified biomass production (Gebara et al 2020)
Summary
Tropical forests and lands are highly visible on today’s political agendas and are being claimed for a myriad of global, national, and local interests linked to timber, biomass resources, and the production of commodities such as soy, oil palm, and pulp and paper They are the scene of ‘sustainable’ and low emission development, poverty reduction, conservation, and ‘green’ growth (Redclift 1997; Scheidel and Sorman 2012; Seymour and Busch 2016). A prominent and persistent myth is the assumption that states and government bureaucracies manage the forest autonomously from largescale economic interests driving deforestation, with an intention to achieve what is best for their country’s society This assumed autonomy of state actors has been questioned for the case of REDD? For global forest governance to foster sustainability in tropical landscapes, those attempting to halt deforestation and enabling local forest-based adaptation will need to recognise the power dynamics and complex interactions resulting in injustices and inequalities within and across communities, societies, and regions (Locatelli et al 2008; Menton et al 2020)
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