Inter-sectoral and multilevel coordination alone do not reduce deforestation and advance environmental justice: Why bold contestation works when collaboration fails

Abstract

Policy makers, academics, and conservationists often posit that poor coordination between different land use sectors, and between levels of governance, as an underlying challenge for reducing deforestation and forest degradation. This paper analyzes this argument using data from interviews with over 500 respondents from government, nongovernmental organizations, private companies, local and indigenous communities, activists, and individuals involved in 35 diverse land use initiatives in three countries: Peru, Indonesia, and Mexico. We find that while there is strong evidence of widespread coordination failures between sectors and levels, more fundamental political issues preclude effective coordination. We argue that political coalitions act to oppose environmental objectives and to impede their opponents from participating in land use governance. Moreover, we find that where coordination between actors does occur, it does not necessarily produce environmentally sustainable and socially just land use outcomes. Where we do find successful initiatives to reduce deforestation and benefit local people, effective coordination between well-informed actors is often present, but it does not occur spontaneously, and is instead driven by political organizing over time by activists, local people, nongovernmental organizations, and international donors. We suggest that the global environmental community must recognize explicitly these political dimensions of land use governance in order to successfully collaborate with local people to reduce deforestation.

The Importance of Being Political: Emergence of a Multi-stakeholder Forum at the Lake Malili Complex, South Sulawesi

“…These initiatives follow in the global trend of conservation management practices around sustainable and equitable development and conservation towards decentralized or polycentric governance efforts, which are presumed to require multi-stakeholder platforms for involving diverse types of knowledge and objectives (Ostrom 2010;Kusters et. al., 2017;Ravikumar et al, 2018; Sarmiento Barletti and Larson, 2019).…”

“…Studies of multi-stakeholder platforms emerged from a wide range of fields, from integrative governance (Ravikumar et al, 2018), natural resource management (Reed et al 2009), political ecology (Sarmiento Barletti and Larson, 2019), as well as institutional analysis and development (Ostrom 2010), to integrated landscape initiatives (Sayer et. al., 2014;Kusters et al, 2018).…”

“…However, as multi-stakeholder forums for integrated landscape governance is always political (Ravikumar et al 2018), it is never a simple venue for advocacy. Once the Forum was established, more diverse interests and needs began to be raised, and a series of meetings and consultations ensued.…”

“…In this respect the importance of politics is often overlooked. The failure of multi-stakeholder forums for instance, are regularly interpreted as stemming from the lack of "coordination" among the parties involved, as participating actors are assumed to be equal in terms of power (Kohne, 2014;Ravikumar et al, 2018; Sarmiento Barletti and Larson, 2019). The asymmetries of power are often overlooked.…”

Diseño para la participación: Aprendizajes para foros multiactor más equitativos y resilientes

“…Los enfoques más comunes -a menudo denominados "lo mismo de siempre" (business as usual)-suelen ser descendentes (top-down), centrados en un solo sector, y están dirigidos por expertos técnicos. Además, la investigación realizada por el Centro para la Investigación Forestal Internacional (CIFOR) sobre gobernanza multinivel 5 encontró una tendencia, en particular entre las ONG y los donantes, a considerar a los FMA como una pieza fundamental de la solución a problemas como la degradación de la tierra (Ravikumar et al 2018). Además, nuevos trabajos académicos apoyan la implementación de tales enfoques (Kusters et al 2018).…”