Global Forest Governance Research Articles

Revealing the main factors affecting global forest change at distinct altitude gradients

Anthropogenic activities and climate change play crucial roles in the productivity and sustainability of global forests. Although the impacts of anthropogenic activities and climate change on forests in specific regions have been reported in previous studies, their impact on the global forests along the elevation gradient remains poorly understood. Thus, here, we aimed to investigate anthropogenic activities and climate change effects on global forests by focusing on the drivers on the altitude gradient. To this end, we used spaceborne remote sensing and statistical methods to elucidate the forest areas experiencing significant change and the main factors governing the changes. Our analysis demonstrated that: (1) With respect to the altitude distribution of forest greening/browning, the higher the altitude is, the smaller is the indicated area of forest, and the smaller is the area of forest, the more significant is the greening/browning. In addition, although the area with significant forest greening was generally larger than that of browning, this trend was not consistent through the months or altitude gradients. (2) Except for the high-altitude areas in August and September (>2400 m), the impact of human global forest governance activities on the greening of forests in most altitude areas and months was greater than that of climate change. However, at most altitudinal gradients, the area of forest with significant browning caused by anthropogenic activities was smaller than that caused by climate change. This was because the scope of the impact of climate change was usually larger than that of anthropogenic activities. (3) Although temperature was the main factor responsible for significant monthly forest greening, it was not always the most crucial factor at specific altitudes. Temperature and sunshine duration were the most influential factors causing significant forest greening for the most months of the year in five terrestrial ecoregions. Sunshine duration, as the largest influencing factor causing significant forest browning, had the longest monthly impact in five terrestrial ecoregions. The findings of our study can provide a reference for better global forest management and sustainability.

Determination Factors for the Spatial Distribution of Forest Cover: A Case Study of China’s Fujian Province

Understanding the determination factors of the spatial distribution of forest cover is crucial for global forest governance. This study contributed a nuanced case, focusing on the determination factors for the spatial distribution of forest cover in Fujian Province, China, in 2020. In order to achieve this, a high-resolution GIS-based data set was used, and spatial auto-correlation and geographic detector approaches were adopted. Three findings are presented in the results. First, the spatial distribution of forest cover is affected by natural conditions. In regions with more precipitation, higher altitude, or cooler temperatures, forest cover is higher. The relationship between the spatial distribution of forest cover and slope is an inverted-U shape. Second, socioeconomic factors have a greater explanatory capacity. In particular, regions with dense populations or roads have less forest cover. Third, there is an inverted-U-shaped relationship between the spatial distribution of forest cover and GDP per capita. With the growth of GDP per capita, forest cover is first positive, but subsequently negative. The results indicate that natural factors could shape the spatial distribution of forest cover, while socioeconomic factors could play a more significant role in the spatial distribution of forest cover.

Zero deforestation in the Amazon: The Soy Moratorium and global forest governance

AbstractDeforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has recently increased, and one of the main drivers is the expansion of soy production for international markets. The Soy Moratorium (SM) is a market‐based, zero‐deforestation commitment banning traders from purchasing soy produced in the Amazon’s deforested land after July 2008. Combined with public conservation policies, the SM has contributed to a decrease in the direct conversion of forests for soy production. This article considers the SM’s links with global forest protection, revealing that measures to protect forests at local levels are consistent with global trends. Specifically, the article suggests that the SM exemplifies the growing importance of non‐State actors in global environmental protection, the close relationship between forest protection and climate change goals, and the reconciliation of environmental practices with economic growth. As such, the article helps explain how the SM advance global forest governance at a time of erosion of environmental protection.

Investigating Forest Governance Through Environmental Discourses: An Amazonian Case Study

ABSTRACT This study investigates the interplay between different environmental governance discourses to assess to what extent each discourse finds ground for implementation. This study sheds light on the constituencies for broader transformational changes in global forest governance and, more emphatically, explores how different discourses built around forest and environmental governance employ different mechanisms (discursively and through policy instruments) within the operation of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) debate. The focus of the analysis is the case of the jurisdictional REDD+ program in the state of Acre, in Brazil's Western Amazon. The underlying assumption in this research rests in the belief that REDD+ operation is linked to coupled social-political and economic contexts, which tend to follow social contingencies, and historical dependencies. Through documental analysis and the assessment of local stakeholders´ narratives, the research highlights the overall dominance of discourses built on to concepts of efficiency in contrast to a minor presence of discourses of social justice. In more broader terms, this study suggests that path dependencies place barriers which condition the extent to which transformations are rendered possible (or desirable) through program design and implementation.

Quo vadis global forest governance? A transdisciplinary delphi study

Deforestation and forest degradation remain huge global environmental challenges. Over the last decades, various forest governance initiatives and institutions have evolved in global response to interlinked topics such as climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, indigenous rights, and trade impacts – accompanied by various levels of academic attention. Using a Delphi methodology that draws on both policy and academic insights, we assess the currently perceived state of play in global forest governance and identify possible future directions. Results indicate that state actors are seen to be key in providing supportive regulatory frameworks, yet interviewees do not believe these will be established at the global scale. Rather, respondents point to issue-specific, regional and inter-regional coalitions of the willing, involving the private sector, to innovate global forest governance. Linking forest issues with high politics may hold promise, as demonstrated by initiatives regarding illegal logging and timber trade. Confident rule-setting in support of the public good as well as responsible investments are seen as further avenues. New forest governance “hypes”, if used strategically, can provide leverage points and resources to ensure sustainability effects on the ground. At the same time, informal markets are often crucial for governance outcomes and need consideration. As such, clarifying tenure in sovereignty-sensitive ways is important, as are innovative ways for inclusive “glocal” decision-making. Lastly, new technologies, big data and citizens’ capacities are identified as potent innovation opportunities, for making global dependencies between consumption, production and deforestation visible and holding players accountable across the value chains.

Oaxaca and global forest governance: Indigenous autonomy, local institutions, and forest outcomes in Southern Mexico

Oaxaca is the most biologically-and culturally-diverse state of Mexico, and considered by many to be a source of best practices for the role of Indigenous peoples in forest governance. Utilizing an original data set containing census and remote sensing information, I construct a set of empirical tests to assess the impact of indigenous peoples and decentralized local institutions on forest loss in Mexico. Recognizing the great biological and cultural diversity of Mexico, I employ an ecoregion sampling technique to understand trends in different vegetation regimes and to understand better how local institutions influenced forest loss between 2000-2015 by looking within shared watersheds crossing the Oaxacan border. The results indicate that, contrary to strategies based on targeting simply the presence of Indigenous peoples, Indigenous households weakly correlate with forest loss, while Oaxacan autonomous Indigenous municipalities, which retain meaningful influence on local institutions, consistently have lower forest loss across national, regional, and ecoregional samples.

Corporate Role Conceptions in Global Forest Governance

AbstractMultinational corporations (MNCs) are increasingly seen as key actors in global governance. This article introduces the concept of corporate role conceptions as a new and interdisciplinary approach for analysing the self‐conception of MNCs. To illustrate its analytical strength, the concept is used to explore how MNCs operating in major forest‐risk supply chains, that is, cattle, palm oil, pulp, soy and timber, conceive themselves and their function in global forest governance. The empirical analysis shows that their self‐conception is both complex and multifaceted as they seek to perform several functions at the same time: corporate decision‐makers consider it appropriate for their corporation to be a pioneer, a role model, a supporter and co‐creator, a dedicated worker, a force for prosperity, a good global citizen and a good steward. However, these corporate role conceptions are overlapping and partly incompatible, which leads to role conflict. I argue that this role conflict constrains corporate agency in global forest governance and therefore diminishes the potential of MNCs to promote positive change.

The potential of Amazon indigenous agroforestry practices and ontologies for rethinking global forest governance

This article explores the potential of Amazon indigenous agroforestry practices and forest understandings for making global forest governance more nuanced and thus rethinking the value of forests in the context of multiple global crises. Indigenous forest practices and their inherent knowledge are included in current global governance in very limited ways. Onto-epistemological openings in forest policies are needed in the face of converging climate, food and health crises. The indigenous forest relations and practices analyzed here may offer possibilities for such onto-epistemological openings. The current FAO and UNFCCC forest definitions are contrasted with indigenous forest understandings. While the current national and global definitions of forests contain a wide range of discrepant definitions, making the application of a shared forest policy difficult and even impossible, most institutional definitions share a positivist and technical approach to forest defining and governance. National and global discrepancies in definitions exist within the politics-as-usual process of forest defining, politics that could be challenged by the political ontology of forests that questions the deeper level of how forests should be conceptualized, placing greater emphasis on care, reciprocity, and the type of relational approach present among Amazon indigenous communities.

Global forest governance and sustainable development: reflections on the life and times of John Spears

The late John Spears' international career coincided with the emergence of global forest governance. His contributions at the World Bank, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and at the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD) are characterized by an unfailing call to integrate objectives towards forests and trees into broader development goals and particularly to tap the power of forests and trees to contribute to poverty alleviation.<br/> This paper describes the evolution of global forest governance since the early 1970s, especially focusing on the period when Spears was highly influential in the global forest policy debate. It gives an emphasis to the efforts the international community has made in adopting a more comprehensive perspective toward the role of forests in sustainable development. Despite this, global forest governance has recently tended to focus more narrowly on climate change at the expense of attention to the problem of poverty. While climate change is a major priority in its own right, we argue that this limited perspective needs to be overcome to unlock the full potential of forests in sustainable development, aimed at combating poverty.

Broadening ambition of forest policies: the Spears legacy

Tropical forests rose to prominence in international conservation in the late 1970s. Fifty years have now elapsed during which forest conservation has remained a subject of continuous debate and controversy. There have been multiple forest conservation initiatives and a diversity of proposals made to define what human societies require of forests and how to sustain those requirements. The debate about tropical forests has suffered from the phenomenon of issue cycles – compelling ideas that have succeeded one another as the focus of attention – none of which alone would make a significant difference to outcomes on the ground. Some of the issues that received attention and funding appear today quite improbable.<br/> John Spears played a pivotal role in the evolution of international policies and programmes throughout this 50-year period. Spears was committed to a broad and inclusive vision for conserving and sustainably managing forests. Spears had a profound impact by building coalitions and weaving together the multiple conflicting discourses on sustainable forest management. He convened people from widely different interest groups and made valuable contributions in bridging the silos that separated different communities.<br/> Activists and advocates, who often lack the deep subject area competence of Spears, are today having profound influence on forest policies and programmes. An integrated understanding of the social, economic and ecological underpinnings of tropical systems is rare. Better future outcomes require that the pragmatism and on-the-ground experience epitomised by Spears play a greater role in guiding the improvement of global forest governance.

Scaling up zero-deforestation initiatives through public-private partnerships: A look inside post-conflict Colombia

The rise of public and private zero-deforestation commitments is opening a new collaborative space in global forest governance. Governments seeking to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by protecting and restoring forests are partnering with companies motivated to eliminate deforestation from supply chains. The proliferation of zero-deforestation initiatives is creating opportunities for policy synergies and scaling up impacts, but has led to a more complex regulatory landscape. Drawing on policy analysis and expert interviews, we explore public-private policy interactions in Colombia as a case study for tropical forested nations with interest in aligning climate, forest, and development goals. We consider how zero-deforestation priorities are set on the national agenda and scaled up through public-private partnerships. We identify zero-deforestation initiatives in three overlapping governance domains—domestic public policy, REDD+, sustainable supply chain initiatives—and highlight ten multi-stakeholder pledges that have catalyzed supporting initiatives at multiple scales. Emerging from decades of armed conflict, Colombia is pursuing a peace building model based on low-emissions rural development. The peace deal provided a focusing event for zero-deforestation that converged with political momentum and institutional capacity to open a policy window. A government pledge to eliminate deforestation in the Colombian Amazon by 2020 set the national agenda and stimulated international REDD+ cooperation. Lessons from Colombia show that governments provide important directionality among the proliferation of zero-deforestation initiatives. Public pledges and the orchestration of actors through public-private partnerships allow governments to scale up efforts by aligning transnational activities with national priorities. The case of Colombia serves as a potential zero-deforestation model for other nations, but challenges around equitable land tenure, illegality, and enforcement must be overcome for multi-stakeholder initiatives to produce long-term change.

Discourses of FLEGT and REDD + Regimes in Cameroon: A Nongovernmental Organization and International Development Agency Perspectives

This paper applies the international environmental negotiations framework (IENF) and the multiple streams framework (MSF) to analyze the influence of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) and International Development Agencies (IDAs) in the development and implementation of the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade agreement (FLEGT) and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) regimes in Cameroon. Deforestation, forest degradation, and illegal logging are critical issues in forest management in many forest-rich countries around the world. In attempt to curtail illegal logging, global forest governance in the past few years has witnessed the development of a number of timber legality regimes including FLEGT. In the same light, the international community has recently seen the emergence of the REDD+ regime to fight against global warming and climate change. Based on sixty-eight interviews in Cameroon with representatives of NGOs and IDAs, government officials, the timber industry, and members of forest communities, as well as eleven informal conversations, and more than sixty documents, the paper finds that NGO and IDA influence on the FLEGT and REDD+ regimes in Cameroon has been growing in three areas: stakeholder participation, project development, and institutional development. Thus, the increasing influence of NGOs and IDAs will pave the way for future interventions on social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues, including land tenure, carbon rights, benefit distribution, equity, Free, Prior and Informed consent, legality, and stakeholder process, related to the FLEGT and REDD+ regimes in Cameroon.

Unearthing the myths of global sustainable forest governance

Non-technical summaryDespite efforts to address the global forest crisis, deforestation and degradation continue, so we need to urgently revisit possible solutions. A failure to halt the global forest crisis contributes to climate change and biodiversity loss and will continue to result in inequalities in access to, and benefits from, forest resources. In this paper, we unpack a series of powerful myths about forests and their management. By exposing and better understanding these myths and what makes them so persistent, we have the basis to make the social and political changes needed to better manage and protect forests globally.

From global forest governance to domestic politics: The European forest policy reforms in Cameroon

This article's originality and major contribution lies in its empirical roots. Based on the case study of the European Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (VPA-FLEGT) in Cameroon, the paper questions what happens when global forest governance reforms meet domestic politics in Africa. Coupled with a carefully selected literature, this entrenchment helped to clearly identify the formal and informal strategies deployed by key actors to put or resist the European sustainable forest management policy reforms on the agenda in Cameroon from 2003 to 2019. The signing of the VPA-FLEGT in Cameroon triggered several debates on the relevance of a new legal instrument for sustainable forest management against the backdrop of an already prolific (poorly or non-enforced) legislation. This article aims, on the one hand, at analysing the process through which VPA-FLEGT was put on the agenda in Cameroon, identifying the key actors involved and examining their roles, interests and strategies as regards this global forest policy instrument. On the other hand, it seeks to investigate how the institutionalisation of VPA-FLEGT in Cameroon change or not the politics of forestland governance in national arenas. In order to attain the aforementioned objectives, we adopted a sociology of the State-based approach. The research indicates that (i) although VPA-FLEGT is an innovative policy instrument in Cameroon, it essentially relies on recycled already existing forest policies. (ii) Several technical and political roadblocks, largely underestimated or overlooked by European actors hamper the implementation of this instrument. (iii) Lastly, the legitimacy and relevance of VPA-FLEGT in Cameroon is subject to many controversies and tensions among the main actors. Our research shows that Cameroonian state bureaucracy’s commitment to this initiative was mainly motivated by a ‘cunning government’ strategy of rents capture and blame avoidance tactics..

The Forest Policies of ASEAN and Montréal Process: Comparing Highly and Weakly Formalized Regional Regimes

Forests are governed by a combination of sub-national and national as well as global and regional regimes. Comparing the institutional variation of regional regimes, including their degrees of formalization, is gaining attention of studies on regionalism in International Relations. This study attempts to analyse the ways in which the selected cases of the forest-related Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and forest-focused Montréal Process (MP) regional regimes may have synergetic overlaps or disparity in their institutional design and forest policy development. For this, we combined IR’s ‘rational institutional design’ theory and a policy analysis approach. Using a qualitative data approach, we analyzed key structure-related historical regime documents (e.g., charters) issued since the inception of both regimes, and their latest forest policy initiatives for the periods 2016–2025 (Strategic Plan of Action for ASEAN Cooperation on Forestry) and 2009–2015 (Conceptual Framework for the Montréal Process Strategic Action Plan) with all relevant policy documents since the adoption of current policies. Based on that, we pose the empirical questions of how both regimes illustrate governance structure (i.e., institutional design), and on the other hand how to explain regime forest policies coherently and consistently in terms of their high versus low degree of formality. The results show that institutional design is highly explanatory based on treaty and non-treaty regime formation as well as forest-related/focused regime formation with the synergistic sustainable forest management (SFM) issue that embraces deforestation and forest degradation, biodiversity, timber certification, and greenhouse gas emission. Additionally, the results suggest that the policy goals adopted by both regimes are coherent and consistent based on the full set of policy elements. Concerning the remedy for fragmented global forest governance arrangements, both regimes would be an example of practicing SFM-focused policies with the incorporation of forest-related policy elements into a larger governance assemblage dealing with issues such as biodiversity conservation or climate change mitigation.

Uncertainty of Carbon Economy Using the Faustmann Model

Forest growth predictions are used to build expectations about the future economic performance of management decisions. Faustmann land expectation value (LEV) is a widely used criterion in forestry to evaluate a diversity of decision parameters, such as rotation age and thinning regimes. Most of the predictions and, consequently, expectations are based on emperical knowledge, assuming a steady state in climate and a deterministic forest growth approach. However, the climate may change to potentially different degrees in the coming decades, causing a dynamic and uncertain forest growth and carbon budget. Moreover, carbon economy in forestry, defined as opportunity cost of in situ carbon sequestration, can hardly be analysed using empirical models and calls for process-based forest biomass production models. Process-based models include numerous parameters and processes that embody some degree of uncertainty. The uncertainty of these parameters and climate state propagates over time to the final decision about carbon economy and optimal management solutions. Here we quantify this uncertainty using Bayesian inference and apply twelve different climate change scenarios to evaluate the forecasts of the process-based forest model 3-PG, to predict the growth of European beech (Fagus Sylvatica) in central european conditions as an example. The results show a strong influence of the model’s parameters uncertainty on the final decisions about timber based and carbon economy. The uncertainty triples if different climate change scenarios are applied as a source of deep uncertainty where no probability can be assigned to any scenario. To deal with deep uncertainty, a robust decision-making approach has been applied to find solutions with minimum regret or maximum value at risk regarding all scenarios. We conclude that communicating uncertainty is a fundamental issue for forestry economics under changing climate conditions, especially if carbon sequestration is an asset. The key message for designing global forest governance policy in the uncertain times of climate change will be the necessity to take into account both the uncertainty on the demand side, that is, socio-economic developments and regional population needs for forest ecosystem services such as wood, but also the uncertainty of the supply side and the inherent ecological uncertainties in predicting the forests’ growth, resources, and climatic conditions.

Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees: The Oversight of Defaunation in REDD+ and Global Forest Governance

Over the past decade, countries have strived to develop a global governance structure to halt deforestation and forest degradation, by achieving the readiness requirements for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+). Nonetheless, deforestation continues, and seemingly intact forest areas are being degraded. Furthermore, REDD+ may fail to consider the crucial ecosystem functions of forest fauna including seed dispersal and pollination. Throughout the tropics, forest animal populations are depleted by unsustainable hunting to the extent that many forests are increasingly devoid of larger mammals—a condition referred to as empty forests. Large mammals and birds, who often disperse seeds of larger more carbon-rich tree species, are preferentially targeted by hunters and the first to be depleted. Such defaunation has cascading ecosystem effects, changing forest structure and composition with implications for carbon storage capacity. Failure to address defaunation would therefore be a major oversight in REDD+, compromising its long-term viability. We carried out a desktop study reviewing REDD+ documents and national implementation efforts in Colombia, Ecuador, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Indonesia to assess the extent to which they address hunting and acknowledged the ecosystem functions of fauna. We also assessed sub-national REDD+ projects to determine whether they recognized hunting and if and how they incorporated hunting management and wildlife monitoring at the project level. Moreover, we assessed to what extent sub-national REDD+ projects addressed the long-term impacts of the sustainability of hunting on forest ecosystem function including carbon storage. We found that hunting, the risk of defaunation, and its effects have been ignored in the REDD+ policy process at both the international and national levels. At the project level, we found some reference to hunting and the risks posed by the loss of forest fauna, albeit only addressed superficially. Our results underline the fact that forest ecosystems are being reduced to their carbon content and that, despite the rhetoric of biodiversity co-benefits, fauna is not treated as a functional component of forests. This neglect threatens to undermine forest ecosystem function and service delivery as well as long-term forest carbon assimilation capacity and hence, ultimately, to compromise REDD+ objectives.

Effects of the sustainable forestry initiative fiber sourcing standard on the average implementation rate of forestry best management practices in Georgia, United States

Much of the discourse on the sustainability of forestry resources revolves around certified forestland. It is typically assumed that certified forestland is the hallmark of sustainable forestry. This reasoning has led to a general perception that uncertified forestlands are not sustainably managed. In this regard, the role of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Fiber Sourcing Standard is instrumental in promoting sustainable forest management on uncertified forestlands. We used an advanced spatial approach to determine the influence of the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard over space and time on Georgia's forestlands. We also assessed differences in the implementation rate of forestry Best Management Practices (BMPs) in Georgia on harvested sites located within the sourcing radius of mills certified to SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard relative to those harvest sites located outside the sourcing radius of certified mills. Our results suggest that the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard affects 80% or more of total forestland in Georgia. We also found that the average BMP implementation rate on harvested sites located within the sourcing radius (about 65 km) of certified mills is about 2% higher relative to harvested sites located outside the sourcing radius of such mills over time. Our results indicate that the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard is helping in ensuring sustainability of forestlands in Georgia, as forestry BMPs are an important indicator of sustainable forest management. We hope our results will bring clarity to the overall sustainability of uncertified forestlands in Georgia and other forested regions in North America in the context of global private forest governance systems like the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard.

From global forests to local politics: unwrapping the boundaries within forest certification

ABSTRACTFollowing decades of concern about unsustainable forest management practices, forest certification was developed in the 1990s to become an influential global forest governance approach. 25 years since its inception, forest certification is under attack, with questions raised regarding its legitimacy and efficacy in driving sustainable forest management. Recognising forest certification as a complex and dynamic boundary-spanning regime, understanding the impact of diverse boundaries on forest certification is essential to address escalating conflict and enable the improved design of forest certification systems. This paper empirically explores the implementation of a forest certification regime using a Forest Stewardship Certification pesticide derogation process. The case shows how competing boundaries place considerable pressure on the effectiveness and sustainability of the global certification regime. Embedded local interests and contested institutional claims hardened the boundaries between interests across the policy regime, weakening connections and hence weakening opportunities to find common solutions.

The rational design of regional regimes: contrasting Amazonian, Central African and Pan-European Forest Governance

Forests have been an important issue in world politics at least since the UNCED conference in Rio in 1992. Since then the focus of academic attention has been on global forest governance by an international forest regime complex consisting of several forest-related regimes. This strong focus leaves a research gap regarding regional regimes addressing forests as an issue area, which recently greatly gained in empirical and academic relevance. It is particularly important to understand the institutional structures on the one hand, and the policies developed within such regimes on the other. In order to obtain a better understanding of this in the forest case, the aim of this article is to analyse the institutional design of three regional forest regimes and to develop fields and hypotheses for future research. We built upon the rational design of international institutions framework developed by Koremenos et al. (Int Organ 55(4):761–799, 2001), and based our findings on content analysis of key documents as well as participant observations and expert interviews in selected occasions. The regional regimes chosen for this study were Amazonian, the Central African and pan-European forest cooperation. The results indicate that the designs of the three regimes greatly differ regarding membership, scope, control, centralisation, and flexibility. This seems to be mainly due to differing degrees of formality of the regimes (from treaty to non-treaty to hybrid regimes) as well as different power structures amongst members and regional hegemons involved. Based on our findings, future research fields for the study of regional forest-related environmental, trade, commodity, and management regime structures as well as regime policies are identified. Such insights advance our understanding of international forest governance not only by global, but by regional forest regimes as well. This is particularly true for our understanding that similar issue-specific problems, such as sustainable forest management, in terms of regime structures and regime policies may be addressed quite differently, largely depending on the preferences of regional powers and hegemons and other potential region-specific factors. We conclude by questioning a hypothesised diffusion of international institutions and propose the more precise concept of institutional osmosis instead.