Over the last decades, climate change and climate-induced disturbances have had an increasing impact on European forests. As climate change and disturbances alter the operational environment of forest management, measures need to be taken not only by practitioners on the ground, but also decision-making levels involving actors within the forest policy subsystem. This study examines how forest policy subsystem actors in Germany, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden perceive the importance of the driving factors influencing practitioners' responses to climate change and climate-induced disturbances. Based on a literature review, 28 driving factors were identified and grouped into STEEP categories. These were then discussed and evaluated in focus groups, in which the actors ranked their perceived importance. The results show considerable variation between the countries in how STEEP categories are rated. In Poland, Slovenia and Sweden, actors reported significant differences in the importance of certain STEEP categories, while in Germany perceptions were more balanced. The Technological category was ranked as least important in all countries. Six driving factors were ranked as particularly influential: ownership patterns and practitioners' values, objectives and experiences (Socio-cultural category), incentives (Economic category), increased occurrence of calamities and climate-related disturbances and successfully adapted management practice (Environmental category), and policy coherence (Political category). Socio-cultural driving factors were most frequently emphasized across all categories. Integrating structural and actor-centred perspectives can improve understanding of the complex processes shaping forest management under climate change, and provides a basis for more effective and context-sensitive policy design.
Forest Ecosystem Services (FES) are increasingly recognized for their vital contributions to human well-being, fostering a global shift toward integrating forest-based health interventions into public health frameworks. Forest Care Initiatives (FCIs), as one of the typical initiatives, include Forest Therapy (FT) and rehabilitation, health promotion and collaborative activities. However, the operational dynamics, business models, and long-term sustainability within the emerging paradigm of FCIs remain underexplored. This study investigates the development of government-granted FCIs in Taiwan to address the research gap. Utilizing a typology analysis of Taiwanese FCIs and a Business Model Canvas (BMC) assessment of three representative FCIs, this research examines their structural configurations and operational limitations. The results reveal a significant polarization in the development of representative Taiwanese FCIs between pursuing market-oriented resource autonomy and remaining heavily reliant on project-based government subsidies, which leads to financially vulnerable. These findings highlight that the emerging FCIs face systemic challenges, and identify the institutional barriers that impede their transition toward sustainable socio-economic enterprises. By illustrating the tension between grant-dependency and market viability of FCIs in Taiwan, this study offers a critical governance blueprint for policymakers seeking to integrate forest-based health interventions into broader healthcare and social welfare systems.
Forest loss is particularly relevant in mosaic landscapes where rural population relies on land. While existing studies have identified its socioeconomic drivers, they often rely on cross-sectional data. This study addresses this gap by analyzing surveys applied to the same sample of landowners in 2016 and 2021, combined with satellite imagery. We analyzed two periods: 2013–2016 (economic expansion, P1), and 2017–2020 (economic contraction, P2) in southern Chile. Our findings reveal a shift in the role of self-employment (off-farm income) concerning forest loss. In P1 it contributed to reducing forest loss, and the opposite in P2. This suggests that, under adverse economic conditions, self-employment may not act as a safety net but rather as an insufficient/uncertain source of income, intensifying households' dependence on ecosystems. In an economic crisis, as was the COVID-19 pandemic, self-employment may lead to greater pressure on forests to compensate for income's uncertainty. Moreover, in both periods, farms with an active forest management plan were more likely to experience forest loss, which questions the effectiveness of this legal tool to promote sustainable practices. These results show that specific socioeconomic factors may have a dual effect on forest loss, depending on the prevailing macroeconomic context, which should be included in forest policy by strengthening the monitoring capacities of the forest service, and focusing the economic incentives of the Law N° 20.283 on more vulnerable landowners during economic contraction periods. Creating a countercyclical fund to promote sustainable forest management, in periods when off-farm incomes are more scarce/uncertain is also relevant.
The discourse surrounding EU forest policy has grown across an increasingly crowded governance landscape, raising questions about how policy priorities are constructed and reconstructed over time. This article addresses this issue by conducting a systematic frame analysis of 492 EU policy documents published between 1965 and 2025. The documents cover different instruments, including regulations, directives, strategies, and communications. Using AI-assisted qualitative coding with ChatGPT and Julius, the study identifies five principal frames: “Policy architect”, “Ecological crisis”, “Eco-modernisation”, “Environmental justice” and “Science and systems thinking” as well as two nested frames: “Standards and trade” and “Territorial equity and cohesion”. The analysis shows that EU forest policy has not evolved through distinct paradigms, rather, it exhibits discursive layering, with established regulatory and economic frames coexisting alongside ecological, justice-oriented and technocratic narratives. In recent years, legal and compliance-oriented frames have increased, while participatory and normative frames remained concentrated in non-binding and strategic instruments. More specifically, the post-2000 period is characterised by an increasing focus on the “Ecological crisis” frame, together with a stronger “Policy architect” frame in legally binding policy instruments that require implementation. This article illustrates how an AI-assisted approach can support large-scale, longitudinal policy analysis, while also highlighting important limitations. These limitations are particularly significant in terms of interpretive traceability and reproducibility, and caution should be exercised when using the approach for exploratory frame mapping.
This study examines landholders' preferences for conservation contracts in the conflict-affected Colombian Amazon, focusing on how contract attributes influence negotiation priorities and potential participation in Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs. Using a mixed-methods approach integrating a survey experiment based on stated-preference principles and semi-structured interviews, we analyzed responses from 103 local landholders in La Macarena, Meta. Results from multinomial logit models indicate that commitment to fixed, predictable incentives and higher PES payment levels is associated with shifts in landholders' negotiation priorities, particularly toward contract duration and the area of land included in conservation agreements. Performance-based and tax-related incentives showed weaker practical relevance, reflecting local institutional constraints, monitoring uncertainty, and tenure informality. Medium-term contracts were perceived by participants as offering a workable balance between stability and flexibility, while negotiable contract terms were consistently emphasized as important for participation and sustained commitment. These findings highlight the need for locally adaptive PES contract designs that account for tenure informality, livelihood risk, institutional credibility, and conflict-sensitive governance conditions.
Globally, around 28% of forests are managed under community-based forest management (CBFM), reflecting its growing dual role in both biodiversity conservation and livelihood enhancement. CBFM models are widely recognized for their contribution to community resilience, although their effectiveness varies depending on the management objectives, governance arrangements and resource conditions. However, how these different models shape community resilience has not been documented so far. This study, therefore, determines the resilience-building dimensions and compares the pathways of models, namely Community Forestry (CF), Buffer Zone Community Forestry (BZCF) and Leasehold Forestry (LHF) in the Barandabhar landscape of Nepal. Using household-level data collected from 483 households, along with 15 focus group discussions and 15 key informant interviews, this study applies Structural Equation Modeling to analyze the perceived contributions of social, economic and ecological dimensions to community resilience. The results reveal three distinct resilience dimensions in each model with integrated primary pathways. CF primarily shapes resilience through a pathway involving strongly perceived local institutions, social cohesion and consensus-oriented decision making (0.84) with robust indicator factor loadings (>0.64); BZCF by participatory governance, equitable benefit sharing, and awareness pathway (0.83) with indicator factor loadings >0.53; and LHF focuses on socio-economic pathways (primary pathway loading: 0.84), with indicators loaded with >0.51. Besides the primary pathway, secondary and tertiary pathways are also explored. Across all models, social and institutional factors exert a stronger influence on resilience than ecological factors. The findings suggest that a mixed approach at the landscape level offers an effective strategy for strengthening community resilience.
Extreme wildfire events are increasing worldwide, threatening livelihoods, ecosystems, and climate mitigation efforts and exposing social conflicts as a hidden risk in global forest fire management. Although such conflicts are widely documented in case studies, their cross-regional patterns, underlying drivers, and stakeholder constellations remain poorly understood. This study examines what aspects of fire use and fuel treatments are contested, why conflicts arise, and who is involved. We use a mixed-methods design, including systematic literature review, text analysis with large language models, BERTopic, and qualitative content analysis. Then we develop and apply a conflict category scheme with three components: fire landscape management, governance, and communities. Our results show that conflicts over forest fire management are diverse, and their root causes lie in interactions between community and governance factors, where ecological, economic, cultural, and institutional priorities collide. Disputes are concentrated among governments, local residents, professional fire managers, and Indigenous groups. In turn, these contested forest fire management practices and their root causes varied across countries and global ecological zones as well. Key sources of complexity include contrasting worldviews of fire (e.g., anthropocentric vs. ecocentric), hidden heterogeneity within stakeholder groups (e.g., generational divides), top-down management approaches, and shifting responsibility for wildfire risk. This study clarifies why forest fire management is contested by identifying recurring conflict drivers and stakeholder configurations across cases.
Indonesia holds the world's largest mangrove area and one of its most consequential blue carbon endowments, yet the investability of mangrove carbon depends less on gross carbon volume than on the capacity to produce credible, auditable, and non-duplicative claims. This Policy Forum argues that measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) should be treated as an institutional design problem that shapes three outcomes: credit credibility, coordination across project, jurisdictional, and national scales, and the distribution of costs and benefits. Drawing on recent literature on mangrove restoration trajectories, remote-sensing-based carbon estimation, registry integrity, and forest‑carbon governance, we show why inventory-led approaches are insufficient for high-integrity mangrove finance. The main risks are over-crediting from optimistic baselines, exclusion of smaller or community-based initiatives due to high MRV costs, and benefit-sharing conflicts when safeguards are treated as external to carbon accounting. Indonesia's regulatory architecture, including PP 27/2025, Perpres 110/2025, the National Registry System for Climate Change Control (SRN-PPI), Financial Services Authority Regulation (POJK) 14/2023, and the Indonesia Carbon Exchange (IDXCarbon), provides an enabling foundation but not yet a fully nested accounting system. We therefore propose an integrity-first pathway based on shared baselines, uncertainty reporting, interoperable registries, independent verification, and safeguards embedded within MRV. For forest policy and economics, the implication is direct: MRV is not a technical afterthought. It is the institutional foundation that determines whether mangrove carbon finance can lower transaction costs and support long-term coastal governance, or instead reproduce low-credibility, high-conflict carbon claims.
Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) are widely promoted as scalable mechanisms for meeting global climate commitments. Yet their institutional pathways remain insufficiently examined: whether they represent new governance arrangements or build on existing institutional foundations. To address this gap, this paper draws on a scoping review of 85 peer-reviewed studies to examine how the NCS literature positions institutions in forest-based climate mitigation governance — specifically the policy instruments, actors, and socio-ecological outcomes associated with forest-based NCS. We make three contributions. First, we demonstrate that forest-based NCS interventions frequently operate outside formal carbon market and REDD+ frameworks, with community-based forest management and regulatory instruments appearing in over half of reviewed cases. Second, we develop a path-dependence lens to explain how NCS builds upon longstanding regulatory and market regimes, tenure arrangements, and co-management systems. These inherited institutions generate both constraining and enabling effects: they can reproduce socio-ecological injustices where tenure insecurity and unequal power relations persist, but they can also support more inclusive and biodiversity-centered pathways when rooted in locally embedded governance systems. Third, building on these findings, we advance a conceptual reframing of NCS as Natural Climate Co-Solutions—institutionally embedded arrangements in which biodiversity conservation and livelihood priorities function as foundational entry points, generating IPCC-aligned mitigation outcomes alongside other socio-ecological objectives. Advancing more equitable and durable forest-based NCS therefore depends less on creating entirely new institutional arrangements than on strengthening the enabling conditions through which incremental pathways may align climate mitigation with biodiversity conservation, livelihood security, and locally grounded governance.
The Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) is a newly established financing instrument. With projected annual disbursements of USD 3–4 billion, it represents an unprecedented mechanism for tropical forest conservation. Fundraising is currently underway.The envisaged fund will provide annual payments for standing forests, with deductions for deforestation and forest degradation. This paper argues, however, that these payments are not fully results-based. Any country with decreasing deforestation rates below 0.5% per year would qualify for payments simply by possessing such forests. Financial incentives to encourage further reductions in deforestation would remain comparatively limited.A ratcheting-down mechanism, already envisaged in the operations manual, is therefore essential, although it still needs to be specified. It would establish clear requirements for future reductions in deforestation rates. This mechanism could become the only robust conditionality criterion, as it determines whether participating countries remain eligible for funding or are disqualified entirely. For reasons of equity, this commentary recommends country-specific deforestation benchmarks, even though developing and negotiating these would be complex. An alternative approach to strengthening conditionality could build on input-based financing criteria: technical accountability mechanisms could be introduced to verify how funds are used.The TFFF's current design benefits from strong country ownership and political commitment, and these features should be preserved. However, the greater the flexibility granted to domestic decision-making, the more important it becomes to establish robust conditionality. The additional measures proposed here would provide important safeguards, particularly in countries where forest conservation is not a political priority and governance challenges remain.
This Policy Forum examines Indonesia's shifting regulatory approaches toward oil palm cultivation within forest zones, from early tolerance and administrative accommodation (2012-2019) to more recent enforcementoriented approaches introduced under Presidential Regulation No. 5/2025. Drawing on field observations in Central Kalimantan and West Sulawesi, alongside analysis of policy and legal documents through early 2025, the article argues that this policy shift reflects enduring tensions among economic productivity, social inclusion, ecological restoration, and territorial control within Indonesia's forest governance system. The article shows that Strategi Jangka Benah/ SJB (rehabilitation period) sought to manage existing oil palm cultivation through phased rehabilitation and agroforestry integration under social forestry frameworks, while attempting to avoid abrupt livelihood disruption among smallholders. However, implementation was frequently constrained by regulatory ambiguity, uneven institutional capacity, uncertain market incentives, and differing interpretations regarding the long-term status of oil palm within restored forest landscapes. In contrast, Presidential Regulation No. 5/2025 emphasizes enforcement authority through administrative sanctions, land reclamation mechanisms, and state-directed restoration arrangements. While formally framed as law enforcement and ecological recovery, the regulation also raises broader governance concerns regarding territorial reappropriation, unequal access to future land-control arrangements, and the potential marginalization of vulnerable smallholders within emerging restoration regimes. Rather than interpreting these policy shifts as isolated regulatory changes, the article conceptualizes them as part of a broader governance trilemma in which economic returns, ecological integrity, social justice, and state territorial authority remain difficult to reconcile simultaneously within commodity frontier governance.
Protected area governance has evolved from exclusionary fortress conservation toward participatory approaches, yet historical patterns of Indigenous displacement continue shaping present-day human-wildlife conflicts. Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park exemplifies this tension: while mountain gorilla recovery represents a celebrated conservation success, expanding wildlife populations intensify conflicts with adjacent communities bearing disproportionate costs. This paper examines how Uganda's Wildlife Compensation Scheme shapes relationships between communities and conservation institutions at Bwindi, asking whether the scheme delivers on its justice objectives. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with Bakiga and Batwa communities and integrating political ecology with environmental justice frameworks, the study traces how the conservation legacy that produced human-wildlife conflict shapes the scheme's institutional barriers and, in turn, the deterioration of community-park relationships. The findings show that the scheme's limitations are not implementation failures, but structurally inherited features of a colonial governance architecture reproduced through institutional stickiness. Baboon exclusion from eligibility reflects a state valuation logic organised around conservation value rather than community harm, while verification procedures systematically disadvantage the most exposed households. Bakiga and Batwa communities hold structurally distinct justice claims that the scheme calibrations cannot register. In that sense, the scheme performs justice without redistributing power, deepening resignation rather than repairing the community-park relationship.
Reminiscent of Erysichthon-condemned to an insatiable hunger that ultimately consumed him-economies may pursue higher income with a similar hunger, depleting the natural capital on which they depend without delivering gains sufficient to escape middle-income status and risking large and irreversible losses. This paper terms this pattern Erysichthon's Curse and examines how it manifests in Brazil. The analysis identifies a structural imbalance, marked by weak productivity growth in manufacturing and services, so that growth fails to generate broad-based income gains while continuing to place pressure on expansion into natural forests, particularly in the country's nine Amazonian states. To explore these dynamics, the paper uses a spatial computable general equilibrium model of Brazil with land-use change and greenhouse gas emissions. The results show that productivity gains in land-intensive sectors in the Amazonian states increase deforestation and emissions, with more nuanced effects at the national level. By contrast, productivity gains in manufacturing and services generate substantial, economy-wide increases in real wages, reduce land rents, curb deforestation, and lower net emissions. Breaking Erysichthon's Curse requires not less growth, but a rebalancing of growth toward patterns that sustain income gains without depleting natural capital. Productivity-enhancing policies can complement environmental and agricultural measures by reducing incentives for land conversion, enabling sustainable intensification, and supporting higher real wages through stronger productivity in urban sectors that are central to Brazil's largely urban population.
Scale is a crucial factor influencing how woodland managers experience and engage with their forests, especially amongst those managing smaller, private woodlands. Managers of these small woods often display both a remarkably detailed and granular knowledge of their property, but also a deeply emotional connection to woodlands which can become laced with deep personal meaning. These intertwined threads of exceptionally detailed knowledge, and personal and historical meaning can be significantly affective in shaping woodland management decision-making, and indeed, we argue here that this combination not only influences decision making but often actually enhances it for the overall betterment of the woodland. However, smaller (particularly amateur-owned) woodlands can find themselves ill-fitting into an administrative system which often remains tailored towards larger, professionally managed forests. This is especially reported with regard to accessing grant monies, but the perception that small woods are ‘under-managed’ still looms large in much of the discourse. Drawing on qualitative interviews with woodland managers in the UK, many of whom managed 10 ha or less, we argue that in fact this cohort can be highly effective in their management, and have enormous under-utilised potential for combating the spread of arboreal pests and diseases, especially in the context of complex decline conditions such as acute oak decline. Indeed, we argue that centring the knowledge, perspectives, and objectives of those managing smaller scale woodlands must increasingly become a critical facet of scholarship and governance connected to the management of UK woodland landscapes.
Despite decades of debates around multifunctional forestry (MFF), the definition of MFF is not agreed upon and the basic contention remains between those who support forests for timber, and those who give precedence to biodiversity and socio-cultural benefits of woodlands. These perspectives are deeply polarised. The contradictions between them are difficult to resolve, while many thought-provoking nuances in human values and attitudes towards forests remain hidden behind these basic polarizations. To advance knowledge of stakeholder values, attitudes, perceptions and preferences, important for informing the planning and implementation of MFF in mountain regions of Europe, we develop and apply an innovative combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including literature surveys, interviews, workshops and Q-methodology. We use this approach in the Ukraine's Carpathians, the Scottish Highlands and Swiss Alps. It has enabled us to reveal both diversity and overlaps in-between and to develop a more nuanced understanding of MFF than is the general perception of basic polarised positions of Productivists vs Nature Protectionists. The achievement of this goal, with five groups of subjective perceptions identified and explained in this paper, is important for advancing the state-of-the-art in forest social science, as well as for bridging a knowledge gap between the multifunctional forestry concept and its operationalisation.
The combination of standardised management practices, such as clear-cutting and planting, together with a strong forest industry, has contributed to the dominance of Norway spruce and Scots pine monocultures in Swedish forestry. Despite growing concerns in research and policy about their ecological and social implications, efforts to promote more diversified forest management have had limited impact. Drawing on interviews with forest professionals at different organizational levels, this study examines how variation is constructed, negotiated, and translated into practice through advisory services and forest management. The results show that variation is shaped through competing discourses within forestry organizations and sectoral logics, and is primarily constructed in relation to dominant production-oriented practices. It is understood through structural conditions, including ownership patterns and site characteristics, as well as forest owners' decision-making and engagement with professional advice.At the same time, variation is associated with both opportunity and risk. While linked to biodiversity, resilience, and climate adaptation, it is also framed in terms of epistemic and economic uncertainty, constraining its practical implementation. These tensions reflect an ongoing discursive struggle, where variation remains marginal within established operational logics. The findings suggest that variation functions as a floating signifier, whose meaning is only partially stabilized through its articulation with other valued concepts and its association with forest professionals. This openness enables variation to support diverse and potentially conflicting practices while reinforcing business-as-usual. Promoting diversified forest management therefore requires not only technical change, but also shifts in advisory/service practices, professional identities, risk perceptions, and institutional logics.
A critical yet underexplored issue in REDD+ scholarship is how perceived distributive injustices translate into community trust, apathy, and willingness to participate in REDD+ initiatives, particularly in forest-dependent communities where conservation outcomes rely heavily on local support. This study examined how inequitable benefit-sharing, elite-driven forest exploitation, and weak enforcement mechanisms influence community trust, willingness to participate, and engagement in REDD+ and forest conservation initiatives in five districts of the Ashanti Region, Ghana. Using a qualitative research design, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 83 respondents, five focus group discussions, and key informant interviews with Forestry Commission officials. Secondary data were drawn from policy documents, REDD+ reports, and related literature. Findings revealed that repeated delays or non-payment of Social Responsibility Agreements (SRAs), favoritism in resource allocation, and destruction of crops and cocoa farms by contractors significantly eroded community trust and reduced willingness to participate in forest restoration or REDD+ activities. Elite capture, including the involvement of chiefs and influential actors in unauthorized logging and galamsey, combined with weak enforcement, fostered community apathy and disengagement. Structural and logistical barriers such as limited access to information, bureaucratic hurdles, insufficient resources, and ineffective grievance mechanisms further constrained participation. Conversely, transparent benefit-sharing, timely grievance redress, access to resources, and inclusive decision-making were identified as key incentives to enhance community engagement. The study highlight the importance of integrating distributive justice principles, strengthening governance mechanisms, and implementing context-specific incentives to foster sustained community participation. The findings have both national and global relevance, offering insights for policymakers, NGOs, and international REDD+ initiatives on designing equitable, accountable, and inclusive forest management programs that simultaneously advance environmental sustainability and social justice.
The expansion of projects to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and additional actions to enhance forest carbon stocks (REDD+) over the past two decades has brought scrutiny over their outcomes, including emissions reductions, engagement with local communities in project design, benefitsharing, and communication. These concerns are amplified by the absence of comprehensive and standardized project registries in most countries, leaving the scale, characteristics, and performance of REDD+ initiatives largely opaque. Fragmented information across regional platforms, carbon crediting programs, and private developers has restricted systematic evaluation and evidence-based policy reform. To mitigate this research gap, this paper provides, to the best of our knowledge, the first and only comprehensive assessment of REDD+ projects developed in Colombia - the country with the second-largest number of projects globally - between 2010 and 2022. We analyze the scope, design features, and institutional context of Colombian REDD+ initiatives, and assess their alignment with national deforestation-reduction and climate objectives. Recognizing REDD+'s potential to support Colombia's emerging bioeconomy, we also provide policy recommendations and offer insights directly relevant to scholars, regulators, and decisionmakers shaping the future of forest-based policies. To promote transparency and support future research, all data and analyses have been made publicly available at this link.
Forests play a central role in European climate policy due to the LULUCF Regulation which brings forestry as contributing to national climate change mitigation targets. In several European countries, declining carbon sinks are jeopardising climate commitments to the EU. This underscores the need to reassess national forest management practices and explore new approaches to climate action in forestry. Policy integration generally refers to the incorporation of aims and concerns from one domain into another-such as from climate policy into forestry-by bridging institutional silos and fostering coordinated governance. In practice, this involves integrating climate change mitigation and adaptation goals into national forest policies through targeted instruments. This study examines forest owners' acceptance of novel economic policy instruments aimed at enhancing carbon sequestration and storage in Finland, where ca. 60% of forests are privately owned and thus the outcome of policy integration depends heavily on policy acceptance among forest owners. Based on a nationwide 2023 survey (n = 2137), we identify groups of both critics and supporters of climate policy integration. Specific choices in the policy design, especially risk management for potential forest damage, could foster policy acceptance. In addition, general information guidance and negotiation of knowledge are key to building mutual trust and understanding. These findings emphasise the importance of considering policy acceptance to enable better policy integration outcomes and offer insights relevant for various policy contexts and domains governed via voluntary instruments.
