Forest Governance
Contemporary understanding of governance is mainly related to non-hierarchical governing involving stakeholders and actors from different levels in formal and informal processes of cooperation and interactions form local to global level, towards resolving societal problems and creating opportunities. Governance in forest sector is not an exception. The changes in forest governance are associated to the emergence of new institutional arrangements to cope with increasingly complex challenges in the forest sector. Some examples of these new institutional arrangements are forest certification, national forest programmes, forest self-organisations etc.
New modes of governance involve participative approaches, engaging state and non-state actors in collaboration and new forms of policy learning. The role of formal institutions and state actors in the new forest governance is not being reduced, but it is undergoing change.
Both the traditional and new governance pose some limitations and challenges and therefore the costs and benefits in each situation need to be carefully analysed.
The main issues to be further addressed are, on the one hand, the roles, interrelations and interactions among the involved actors. On the other hand, also the potentials of new forms of governance to address the forest challenges in an accountable and legitimate way should be further addressed.
EFI Activities on Forest Governance
Challenges related to the new governance in forest sector and its elements, such as institutions, instruments and their effectiveness, processes, rules of law and capacity building are addressed especially in the following activities:
The EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) support Action aims to facilitate the Action Plan by the EU members states and European Commission aimed at combating illegal logging and associate trade between EU and wood-producing developing countries, and strengthen forest sector governance. The Action provides technical assistance contributing to partner countries to enter into and implement voluntary partnership agreements (vpas) with the EU. Related analytical work will focus on governance issues and policy reforms, market analyses, trade patterns and flows as well as socio-economic impacts.
Forest Policy and Economics Education and Research, FOPER-project , aims at strengthened capacities for modern forest policy and economics education, training and research in six countries in South-East Europe. In addition to enhancing the contribution of forest sector to poverty reduction and economic development in the region, positive impacts in overall forest policy development and good governance are evident. Improved future capacities for policy-making are created through international MSc. Degree Programme on forest policy and economics, professional training and workshops for better science-policy interaction, as well as methodological training of researchers.
EFI has recently published a Policy Brief No 1: 'Making European Forests Work for People and Nature', which is linked to this topic.
New governance is one of the potential focus areas of EFI’s Policy and Governance Programme when selecting e.g. scholars. In 2007 EFI Member Scholarship was assigned to the study of the evolution and development processes of Alpine and Carpathian Conventions with an aim to evaluate the governance concepts and specific governance principles in these processes. Furthermore, the objective is to identify appropriate Alpine and Carpathian experiences to be considered in future Balkan Mountain Process.
EFI is also providing a platform and expertise network for forest policy dialogue between science community, forest-related stakeholders and policy processes, such as Ministerial Conference on Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE).