Do new approaches to forest governance help the poor? Tracking science-policy processes

Policy debates around forests and livelihoods, biodiversity, sustainable timber production and watershed protection now emphasise social inclusion and participation. Yet comparative research in West Africa and the Caribbean demonstrates how current configurations of science and policy continue to exclude the knowledge and experiences of land users - especially the poorest - remaining antithetical to their interests, and compromising broader policy effectiveness.

Recent research has exposed many new perspectives on forest issues. Climate history, ‘new’ ecology and social anthropology, for instance, challenge established views of forests as stable, climax vegetation simply undergoing degradation. Yet the new perspectives are hardly represented in current policy and practice.

While this gulf might be due to poor dissemination, this research used anthropological approaches to explore ways that forest policy and science are ‘co-produced’, meaning that certain questions, agendas, and practices persistently dominate, whilst others are excluded. Case studies in Trinidad, Guinea and Ghana tracked the interaction of science and policy from local forest users, government and project fieldworkers, NGOs and district officials, to national research, policy and administrative settings and to international organisations.

The research revealed the marginalisation of (poorer) land-user perspectives in all countries, despite their differences, reflecting how:

• Science-policy processes concerning the environment produce and shape social categories: negative or positive labels such as squatter, fire setter, indigenous person contribute to simplified policy narratives and sharpen social fault-lines.
• Environmental communication in media and education is closely integrated with science/policy institutions. The mutually supportive field of messages amplifies and reinforces policy framings, narratives and social categorisations.
• Practices of ‘participation’ and public consultation frequently exclude stigmatised groups and their views. But public contestation of policies and science uses other channels, ‘citizen science’, political and legal action, or everyday forms of resistance.
• Field workers adapt to contradictions between mandated, simplified science-policy agendas and complex, ‘non-equilibrial’ land-user perspectives, but such creativity is rarely transmitted upwards to re-shape agendas.
• Project activities are frequently cast as ‘research’, ‘pilot’, ‘experimental’, or ‘laboratories’ – but within research agendas restricted by project goals and in ways that mask the political nature of interventions.
• Forest science and policy are increasingly globalised with international deliberation, conventions and regimes co-established and co-evolving with scientific committees. Emphasis on local specifics and participation sits uneasily with biases towards internationally-harmonised forest values and management systems.
• As international concerns and organisations link with national research and policy, older national research practices are often transformed in meaning to conform with global agendas.

If science/policy is to incorporate the perspectives of poorer forest/land users more effectively, there is a need to:

• Strengthen citizen participation and consultation through deliberative and inclusionary procedures which are explicitly opened to a variety of problem-framings and less powerful, stigmatised social groups.
• Build citizens’ platforms for expression of interests, demands and perspectives on science and policy on their own terms, whether through support to citizen-scientific confidence and skills, to media strategies which expose scientific uncertainties, diverse perspectives and values, or to independent, critical research within national institutions.
• Build better-informed and more reflexive national and international processes, which make the values underlying science and policy explicit, and allow perspectives from local settings to feed upwards and shape terms of debate and subjects of research.

Source(s):
'Environment, Forest Science and Forest Policy: Knowledge, Institutions and Policy Processes' Final Report to ESCOR (DFID) Project R7211 by M. Leach, K. Amanor and J. Fairhead, 2001
Environment Working Papers Full document.

Funded by: UK Department for International Development (Escor R 7211) 1998 – 2001

id21 Research Highlight: 9 October 2001

Further Information:
Melissa Leach
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: +44 1273 606262
Fax: +44 1273 621202
Contact the contributor: m.leach@ids.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

Other related links:
'Empowering forest users: lessons from Niger'

'What future for forest people? Can ethical trade help?'

'Are governments out of the woods? Returning Africa’s woodlands to communities'

The International Centre for Forestry Research has further research

ICRAF conducts research for more sustainable and productive land use

FTPP aims to improve community forestry activities

FAO addresses how to use forests and related resources to improve people's conditions