New trends in forest policy and management: an emerging postmodern approach?

Abstract

This paper uses examples from the USA and Costa Rica to evaluate the claim that a new postmodern conservation has emerged in the practice of natural resource management and policy. Natural resource management and policy will be evaluated across four general trends, all of which reflect to some extent the attention to multiple perspectives that is characteristic of postmodernism, i.e. shifts from: (1) simple to multiple interests in natural resources; (2) simple ownership to bundles of rights; (3) deterministic science to multiple knowledge systems; and (4) public interest to stakeholder groups.

One hundred faces of sustainable forest management

“…15-19) succinctly summarize recent developments into a list of transitions: (i) from silviculture toward ecoculture; (ii) from volume toward quality; (iii) from stands toward landscapes; (iv) from ownerships toward councils and communities; (v) from the forest as product toward the forest as capital; (vi) from current income toward natural capital and green finance; and (vii) from blind consumption toward consumer awareness. Schelhas (2003) provides a rather similar synthesis of the new trends in forest policy and management.…”

Equitable regulation of private forests

“…When regulating private forests, a public asserts a right to expect particular outcomes from private landowners (Singer 2000;Schelhas 2003). Relevant public and private rights, however, are often poorly defined and integrated (Ostermeier and Keele 2003).…”

Eliciting Forest Values for Community Plantations and Nature Conservation

“…Schelhas (2003) Typically, however many elite institutions have adopted post-modem rhetoric while operating under the constitution of 'modernity' (Studley, 2005). Joint Forest Management & participation have become the new tyrannies (Cooke and Kothari, 2001) and while the IUCN (Coffman, 1998) and many ENGOs (Abraham, 1990) have seemingly adopted a post-modem "biocentric" approach (Kitossa, 2000 page 23) to natural resources, they have continued to base management on elite knowledge systems, 'ecological imperialism' (Driessen, 2003) and a new 'enclosure' movement (McMaken, 2001).…”

“…The topocosm is not only the actual and present living community but also that continuous entity of which the present community is but the current manifestation. are being considered as integral parts of multiple use forestry and biodiversity (Posey 1999) and are being incorporated into planning (Schelhas 2003).…”

“…Based on this literature, a typology of potential/likely forest values in Yunnan was developed in Kunming, 18 including a range of forest values based on various local ethnic circumstances and practices (SeeTable 2below).Although no internationally agreed typology of forest values exists, coalescing under the aegis of a 'post-modem' forestry paradigm(McCay, 2000, Schelhas 2003) there appears to be a set of at least thirteen forest values which are important to many indigenous peoples and local communities(Brown and Reed, ROWCROFf, STUDLEY AND WARD …”