Land-use change conflict arising from plantation forestry expansion: Views across Australian fencelines

Social learning: A knowledge and capacity building approach for adaptive co-management of contested landscapes

“…This rapid expansion occurred in response to reduced logging access to natural forests, improvements in quality and consistency of wood and pulp products from plantation hardwood timbers (Schirmer, 2007) and provision of fiscal tax measures from the federal government for retail afforestation on agricultural land (Leys and Vanclay, 2010a). Gavran and Parsons (2010) estimated the total national plantation area to have increased by around 51% in the past ten years to a current estate of 2.02 million hectares (approximately half hardwood and half softwood, with an insignificant area of mixed plantings).…”

“…The innumerable socio-political, economic and ecological challenges have left the industry with a hard road to acceptability in the eyes of the public and disenchanted investors who lost money. Major policy transformations will be required that promote increased self-sufficiency and improved management performance if a sustainable hardwood industry is to be created (Leys and Vanclay, 2010a). With a current account deficit in Australia of $2.1 billion ($Aus) in timber and timber products (ABARE, 2009), and continued public pressure to lock up further areas of natural forests to logging, there remains considerable opportunity for innovation in this industry.…”

“…Techniques involved social surveys, semi-structured interviews with key informants and public meetings (Leys and Vanclay, 2010a). Public meetings provided opportunity for the community to raise issues of concern and vote on the ones they thought crucial for following up with a social learning study.…”

“…The experimental social learning study was undertaken with 12 community volunteers who represented a diversity of views towards plantation forestry, and included representatives from the private and public forestry industry, cattle and mixed farming, environmental, urban and tourism interests, governing authorities and a scientific and education group (further details in Leys and Vanclay, 2010a). Three research scientists facilitated the social learning exercise that held complementary multi-disciplinary skills in the areas of forest growth modelling, agricultural and forestry education and extension, social research and wood science.…”

“…Some stakeholder groups were combined earlier in the study due to findings on similar views and values from qualitative thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews (Leys and Vanclay, 2010a). Stakeholder analysis techniques were adapted and further developed from research by Varvasovszky and Brugha (2000), Chevalier (2001) and Lockie (2003) to gauge and map differences in attitudes between individuals and stakeholder groups towards the plantation forestry industry both prior to and after the social learning study.…”