11. Political forest Flashcards
Colonial tree-planting to the present
Tree-planting is a key part of imperial history.
‘Taux de boisement’ - forest cover metric, used throughout European tropical colonies
Climate was linked to civilisation and development.
This obsession persists today with huge tree-planting initiatives that disinherit forest-rooted populations since they require labour and land that are not necessarily under state control, meaning further territorialisation must be justified.
Davis & Robbins (2018)
What has changed now? Neilson (2022) argues that there are stil questions over how tree planting discourses actually translate into territorial shifts since local factors will always impact how things happen on the ground.
Empires of forestry
An account of professional forestry, which originated in Germany and was exported to colonies.
However, professional forestry has never been universal, since power plays on the ground between different actors and within different contexts meant that it only gained authority in certain places.
Forestry networks grew out of hybrid practices both during and after colonial eras
Vandergeest & Peluso (2006)
200-year genealogy of political forestry in SE Asia.
From territorial colonialism, to forestry for development, to armed insurgency and ‘the jungle’
Vandergeest & Peluso (2015)
Writing Political Forests
Core argument of the co-production of forests - they are never entirely natural.
Idea of ‘empty’ forest space is repeatedly brought up with assertions that only scientists are able to manage a nation’s valuable forests for the greatest good.
Territorial control is often violent
Vandergeest & Peluso (2020)
Discourses of forestry as progress
Discourses of forestry as progress, specifically in Burma.
Bryant (1996)
Eucalyptus tree, example of scientific forestry. Known as ‘El Dorado’ and planted across continents.
Adapted to poor and dry conditions in a combination of settler colonialism + forestry, symbolising remaking of Africa in the image of Europe.
Scientific forestry has a deeply social history related to visions of modernity that create a reordering of nature
Bennett (2010)
On the difficulty of defining a ‘forest’, Malagasy context
McConnell & Jull (2014)
Who shapes the politics of expertise?
Proposes a framework of co-production of knowledge using political forests in Thailand.
Sometimes knowledge becomes authoritative because it is left unchallenged, not necessarily because knowledge claims are conscious forms of rationality designed to impose control.
For example, villagers adopted certain ‘facts’ about watershed functions - which had been used by the state to gain access to forestland - to make a case for their own expertise
Forsyth (2020)
The political forest in the era of green neoliberalism.
Devine & Baca (2020)
From colonial concessions to carbon credits: 3 global forest regimes.
Recurring themes of unequal power relations, colonial coercion, violence, top-down nature of conservation
Changes: tropical forests becoming strategic in increasingly complex ways
Overarching theme of rendering technical forests that focus on their global importance
Global discourse seems to offer panacea
Note that original author now thinks we need to split up the green capitalist forest regime
Scales (2017)
Green grabbing
In the context of the political forest:
Green-grabbing occurring due to carbon off-setting schemes and PES
Forests now valued for carbon sequestration - a ton of carbon anywhere is the same as anywhere else
Fairhead et al (2012)
Governing and implementing REDD+
REDD+, established in 2008
Incentives for countries to protect resources by recognising the financial value of carbon storage in trees.
This not only alters the physical landscape but is a governance process where multiple actors influence what forests should look like, and how they should be used.
Corbera & Schroeder (2010)
Problematising REDD+ as an experiment in PES
REDD+ is the world’s largest experiment in PES.
Consistent with the neoliberalisation of nature and a paradigmatic example of market-based conservation
Three problems: overly utilitarian approach undermines ecological resilience; a single valuation language crowds out other values; a multiple-win discourse erases forms of social exclusion
Corbera (2012)
REDD+ in Asia-Pacific
Case study demonstrating impacts of REDD+
* Programs have been guided by state forestry burearucracies
* Consolidated control of state and corporations over the forest has resulted in local displacement
* Mixed results for rural smallholders. Some of them have enhanced tenure security and others have been locked into agreements with plantation companies
Barr & Sayer (2012)
State vs non-state influence in struggles over Malagasy forests
Madagascar has seen state territorialisation under neoliberalism involving increasing range of NSAs.
In 2003, the then-President Marc Ravolomanana launched the Système d’Aires Protégées de Madagascar which sought to triple PAs in 5 years to cover 10% of the country. This demonstrates skill in negotiating changing policy fashions of the West to keep donor money flowing. State institutions are reconfiguring their power
At the same time, NSAs undeniably have a huge impact since SAMP was part of a larger environmental programme sponsored by the WB, financed by an association of foreign donors such as US-AID, who held huge sway in dragting and finalising guidance/laws that were then issued by the Malagasy government.
Corson (2011)
Case study: contentious forests in Java
The political forest in Java has seen weakening state control in the C21 - due to agency of villagers
- Previous colonial forest was controlled entirely by the state, and large-scale extraction lead to degradation which further rationalised territorialisation
- After the fall of Suharto in 1998, villagers ‘reclaimed’ the forest, cultivating the understory with food, fodder for cows and tree crops
- Although the state has tried to regain control by formalising village councils that have grown over time, villagers can still manoevuer and bargain
Lukas & Peluso (2020)
Slippery violence in Indonesia
REDD+ causing violence.
People living around sites are ‘othered’ as environmentally destructive and in need of economic incentives
Farmers given loans as start-up capital went into debt and then forced to turn to illicit repayment options
Howson (2018)
The digital political forest
Technologies are becoming increasingly instrumental in forming forests as spaces of conservation and extraction - a new modality of rendering technical (literally!)
They are argued to extend, transform and disrupt past practices of colonial governance through observation, datafication, participation, automation and regulation
E.G. REDD+ requires data to verify carbon emissions and enable payments. Technology such as remote satellite sensing is used to constitute forests as spaces of environmental protection - and ignores how they are also areas of subsistence.
So the smart forest maps onto pre-existing scientific practices
Gabrys et al (2022)
Also Brockhaus et al (2024)
Data is crucial to REDD+, and is silent about who/what bears the burden of the political forest.
New data is assumed to lead to improved knowledge and better policy - however, it is dependent on the interests represented in the policy processes they seek to inform.
E.g. Deforestation used to be assessed by the FAO through regular assessments. However, when this is not possible, proxy of changes in rural population densities are used instead. This links deforestation rates to population growth, reproducing the Malthusian myth of a growing poor population.
Brockhaus et al (2024)
Carbon payments in Chiapas, Mexico
- Low value of carbon payments in Mexico caused a switch in the framing of a carbon forestry project from planting/maintaining trees for carbon to doing it for timber
- Local factors such as markets for timber, fooder or food will always impact how tree planting programmes are mapped onto the ground
- SO we need to reflect on dominant belief that relationship between material landscapes and green neoliberalism is pre-determined
- Outcomes of PES schemes should not be interpreted as the result of a sole driving force (green neoliberalism) but as one component of a broader web of relations
Osborne (2015)
Use this to nuance Davis & Robbins (2018)
PES in Vietnam: shaped to fit local reality
Case study of PES in Vietnam
Neither a Pandora’s box of problems or a panacea as it melded to fit the reality of local political contexts
For example there has been a very strong state role in management - it is the first country in SE Asia with a national law on PES
McElwee (2012)
Linked to Osborne (2015), can nuance Davis & Robbins (2018) and from Nielson’s (2022) PhD thesis
Case study: fintech and the digital forest
ANT forest, a gaming app launched by Ant Financial, the largest Chinese fintech company
* Users can plant trees in the real world by earning ‘points’ e.g. by using Alipay - creating a path-dependence on the app that serves platform’s interests - or jogging/walking more
* Neoliberal environmentality: user behaviour is nudged in direction of economic considerations
* Supported by UNEP, who has co-launched a programme aiming to explore how fintech can reshape the financial system in a more environmentally compatible manner
* Over 220m trees planted
* But app intensifies the alienation of nature since users remain unaware of the ecological consequences of their consumption behaviour. Emphasis on the tree as an icon of sustainability
* But no information offered on afforestation’s ‘benefits’ or the drivers of environmental issues. Consumption patterns don’t change!
* Further spatial separation, distancing and alienation
Zeng (2023)
FPE of PES in Thuong Lo, Vietnam
Vietnam is one of the pioneering countries for PES, PFES, REDD+ and community forestry.
* Thuong Lo - village in central Vietnam
* Finds that PES payments were insufficient income for family support
* Men had an instrumentalist viewpoint of the forest
* Women unable to participate in forest management so lacked information and suffered from being unable to gather products that were their only source of independent livelihood
* Reports of being ostracised for breaking the rules even though it was needed to support the family
* So constrained by both gender-blind PES and macro-level dynamics such as lack of income, resource use and land rights
Tujinman et al (2020)
Link to Friman (2024)
The myths of sustainable forest governance
Debunking 5 myths in forest governance
* States manage forests for societal benefits
* Smallholders are a threat
* Markets are the solution
* Communities are currently included
* What is ‘counted’ counts
These myths are taken as ‘common sense’, apolitical and neutral - then used to justify interventions.
Delabre et al (2020)
