It is easy enough to describe this deadlock and its causes are well-known. Many states and some powerful non-state actors reason that they derive greater benefits from the status quo than from proposed alternatives. An increasingly complex set of governance arrangements contains a correspondingly large number of veto points that can be used to block change so forest area is lost and forest conditions continue to deteriorate. If we are to take steps right now to reverse this situation, more innovative and ambitious solutions need to be pursued.
To meet the urgent need for change, the proposal outlined in this policy brief is a radical one. Our review of the broad global forest governance arrangements shows that, in spite of some overlap and duplication, there is generally good coverage of the key themes and issues facing forests. In spite of the drawbacks of complexity in governance, the issues are complex and global forest governance arrangements need to reflect that complexity. The most important challenge is not how to simplify these arrangements but how to coordinate them in ways that build more authoritative, effective and enduring global governance.
To meet the governance challenge, problem focused, synergistic coordination is required. By this, we do not mean a return to multi-stakeholder processes in which deliberation is fostered in the absence of purposeful agreements. Instead, we are proposing ways to support problem-focused learning about institutional interactions that promotes legitimate, meaningful and effective global forest governance. This approach to learning is currently overshadowed, in both the scholarly literature and among practitioners, in favour of “win win” multi-stakeholder negotiations that tend to privilege compromise over problem solving.
The current global forest governance arrangements contain examples of attempted coordination through binding international law and through the provision of incentives. The vast majority of these mechanisms are neither forest-focused nor demonstrably effective in achieving the global objectives on forests. Our proposal is to add both structure and function to international coordination efforts by using learning as a governance mechanism.
This approach builds on the existence of the forest goals found in the Non Legally Binding Instrument on All Types of Forests. It acknowledges both the strength of the scientific and management expert communities that have developed the sustainable forest management paradigm and the vigour of the experiments currently under way with alternative approaches. Global forest policy will achieve very little if it is not scientifically grounded and evidence based; governance arrangements need to reflect this fact, not fight it.
However, our proposal is not simply a call for “more research”, which, like the compromise focused multi-stakeholder negotiations, cannot overcome the current obstacles to building better global governance arrangements. To be sure, enhanced knowledge of how to achieve the forest goals is always desirable. However, problem-focused learning that improves the coordination of institutions and the effectiveness of interventions is not simply about research. Instead, it stresses knowledge mobilization and knowledge translation over knowledge production. It takes a problem-based approach to learning to generate good practices in addressing forest problems. It seeks to diffuse these practices through the international community as rapidly as possible. Using a variety of tools such as benchmarking, criteria and indicators, guidelines and reporting, it identifies those who are leading the adoption of these practices and those who are lagging behind. Above all, it is directed towards authoritative, effective and purposeful efforts that result in measurable behavioural change.
Many of the component parts of learning as coordination are already in place. Global objectives for forests have been negotiated. Reporting of forest extent and condition is already well advanced through the State of Forests reports. There is a decade or more of experience with the criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management, which relate practices to goals. Independent auditing of sustainably managed forests is being conducted on behalf of certifiers. There is wide-spread recognition of the importance of scale and context in forest management that will prevent mistaken attempts to impose “one size fits all” solutions. Yet the many examples of good practices that exist at a variety of scales have not been broadly diffused through the international policy community because these components of policy learning have not been assembled into a comprehensive supporting mechanism for international forest governance.
Rather than calling for more research, learning as coordination requires a re-organization of the research effort. Reducing and, ultimately, reversing deforestation and forest degradation will be based on a greatly improved understanding of the complex interconnections and interdependencies between environmental and socio-economic factors. For successful policy intervention, recognition of the complex interplay of social, economic and environmental factors must be accompanied by a careful analysis of the specific causal relationships that operate in particular cases.
Once these causal relationships are brought to light, they reveal the existence of perverse incentives to engage in destructive – and often self-destructive – actions. Where such incentives persist, and whether they promote deforestation by powerful interests from outside the forest sector or by local communities, the political and economic costs of traditional, top-down government action alone is often too high to be seriously contemplated.
At this point, a coordinated effort to get countries to use the right mix of regulatory, market-based and informational instruments is the key to finding the appropriate level of intervention that will lead to the improvement of forest conditions and livelihoods.
Although creating such a policy mix will not be easy, it can be done. The international forest policy community’s understanding of the complex linkages between social, economic and ecological systems is already improving through research and learning from policy outcomes and practices. This learning and understanding must be strengthened. The magnitude and urgency of the challenges that are being revealed as this understanding improves require more than minimal changes, and these changes must take place at a variety of scales.
How can the system of international forest governance that has been built up over the last two decades contribute to meeting these challenges? There are two essential steps:
First, instead of asking how the fragmented and complex international forest governance system can be restructured into a new and tidier top-down regime, reformers should embrace inter-sectoral and inter-institutional complexity. To emphasize this crucial need for institutional cooperation and inter-sectoral coordination, we call this ambition of embracing complexity ‘Forests+’: looking beyond forests is essential for solving forest-related global problems.
