Disturbance shapes the US forest governance frontier: A review and conceptual framework for understanding governance change

Forest environmental frontiers around the globe: Old patterns and new trends in forest governance

“…First, the traditional forest frontier characterized by deforestation, forest degradation, and land use change related to agricultural expansion (but also to urban development, as for instance discussed in Kanowski and Edwards (2021)) is still important and dominates forest environmental policy conflicts especially in the tropics (Pokorny et al 2021;Brockhaus et al 2021;Ramcilovic-Suominen et al 2021). This frontier is connected to a reverse land use change frontier-the restoration frontierthat is increasingly global by nature (DeJong et al 2021;Schultz et al 2021;Sotirov et al 2021).…”

“…Second, another key forest environmental frontier of global nature is characterized by the clashing world views and policy paradigms of nature/biodiversity conservation and forest use actors (Dobrynin et al 2021;Kanowski and Edwards 2021;Pokorny et al 2021;Sotirov et al 2021;Schultz et al 2021). Specifically, controversies between environmental/conservation and forest use (and in some regions broader land use) policy actors are characterizing the forest environmental frontier in many, if not all, world regions and are the dominant conflict pattern in several of them.…”

“…When the forest area reaches a context-dependent minimum, and re-afforestation begins to occur, the nature of the forest environmental frontier changes slowly, but still conflicts related to land use rights and livelihoods remain critical (De Jong et al 2021). The increasing share of managed forests in the restored forest landscape with usually more affluent societies and higher population densities is then connected to the dominance of the conservation versus forest use frontier, which is the central pattern along forest environmental frontiers in most industrialized countries and regions in the Global North (Australia, Europe, Japan, USA), including in large countries such as Russia (Kanowski and Edwards 2021;Sotirov et al 2021;Takahashi et al 2021;Schultz et al 2021;Dobrynin et al 2021).…”

“…Finally, the evolving climate change (adaptation and mitigation) frontier characterized by both the increasing physical impacts of climate change and related disturbances and the importance of forests as subjects of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies spans across all stages of the forest transition (Schultz et al 2021;Brockhaus et al 2021;De Jong et al 2021;Ramcilovic-Suominen et al 2021;Sotirov et al 2021). It partially reinforces other frontier conflicts, e.g., related to the polarization between conservation and forest use beliefs and interests, but may also challenge and transform existing governance arrangement and ideological constellations by the physical impacts (and related urgency to respond) of climate change on the world's forest (Schultz et al 2021).…”

“…Crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Schultz et al (2021) focus on the western United States and begin their paper with the observation that this region has moved into an era of mega disturbances. These forests have long been disturbance driven, but wildfires and insect outbreaks are growing far larger and increasingly shape not only the forests, but also how the forests are governed.…”