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Halting forest loss and achieving sustainable development in an equitable manner require state, non-state actors, and entire societies in the Global North and South to tackle deeply established patterns of inequality and power relations embedded in forest frontiers. Forest and climate governance in the Global South can provide an avenue for the transformational change needed—yet, does it? We analyse the politics and power in four cases of mitigation, adaptation, and development arenas. We use a political economy lens to explore the transformations taking place when climate policy meets specific forest frontiers in the Global South, where international, national and local institutions, interests, ideas, and information are at play. We argue that lasting and equitable outcomes will require a strong discursive shift within dominant institutions and among policy actors to redress policies that place responsibilities and burdens on local people in the Global South, while benefits from deforestation and maladaptation are taken elsewhere. What is missing is a shared transformational objective and priority to keep forests standing among all those involved from afar in the major forest frontiers in the tropics.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is a priority issue for forest and climate policy in Indonesia, and REDD+ policy-making activity has been characterized by considerable public consultation. Despite this engagement, discussions on REDD+ in Indonesia are reported to have remained top-down, a disconcerting pattern when adaptive governance and transformational change require cross-scale and cross-sectoral communication. Explicitly modeling the patterns of information exchange related to REDD+ can clarify these claims and help identify potential barriers to the transformational change needed to implement REDD+. We used data obtained through semistructured and structured interviews held in 2011 with representatives from a broad range of organizations (N = 64), formally or informally involved in the national REDD+ policy processes in Indonesia, to study REDD-related information exchange. Adopting a social network analysis approach, we found that (1) organizations perceived as most influential in REDD+ policy formulation, often, but not exclusively, those with institutional authority over particular aspects of REDD+, tend not to seek information from other actors and (2) organizations exchange information primarily within three clusters of similar organizations, with weak connections between clusters. This evidence suggests weak information exchange between the national government, national civil society, and transnational actors. We contend that the emergence of brokers able to connect these different clusters will be crucial for effective and inclusive REDD+ governance in Indonesia.

Studies found that rapid decline of biodiversity and ecosystems globally have adversely affected an estimated 1.6 billion rural people whose livelihoods both directly and indirectly depend on forests. To halt the loss of forests and other natural ecosystems that simultaneously support rural livelihoods, various external programmes have been developed and applied, including market‐based and rights‐based approaches. However, rapid biodiversity and ecosystem decline continues, and better incentives or more secure rights have not always led to local community participation and improved livelihoods. This suggests the need to better explain local communities' motivations in nature stewardship. We conducted a study of local communities in two villages in Sulawesi who voluntarily maintain forests but showed resistance to participation in formal Social Forestry programmes. The study aimed to identify motivations and underlying reasons of community preferences, guided by two research questions: (i) how did local people value forest landscapes? and (ii) how did those values interact with externally driven Social Forestry programmes? We applied the Relational Values concept to understand a community's relations with the forest (or its elements) and land and identified points of value divergence. Data collection involved in‐depth semi‐structured interviews, focus group discussions framed by the principles of Appreciative Inquiry, participant observation and land use/land cover change analysis. Our findings show that people value their forests in relation to their identity, ancestral heritage, sense of place and spiritual values. We also identified the points of value divergence and their underlying reasons of resistance towards externally driven forestry programmes. This study thus contributes to the broader conceptualisation of values in conservation and community participation by providing empirical evidence on the importance of the Relational Values framework in understanding the motivation and behaviour of nature stewardship and in the evaluation of value conflicts. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

PurposesThis study aims to investigate what consumer’s preference, as group members, to participate in boycott movement in Indonesia.Design/methodology/approachA mix method, qualitative (the first phase) and quantitative (the second phase), approach is used. The first phase used secondary data from media reporting interconnected themes on boycott, and the result of which was analyzed using content analysis method. Based on the results of the first phase, the authors continue with the second phase. The second phase used primary data from survey. The data were analyzed using analytical hierarchy process method.FindingsThe results showed that the primary target of boycott is the firm. The primary objective of boycott is the changing in firms’ behavior (instrumental), and the primary root cause of boycott is economy.Originality ValueThe study contributes to improve the authors’ knowledge about consumers’ preference, as group members, in their attempt to get involved in boycott movement. From the perspective of reference group theory, the study shows that consumers always compare what they do to what their groups do. Consumers also tend to be willingly persuaded if an opinion has been adopted by a group of preferred people or when they are the members. From the perspective of expectancy-value theory, the decision to present particular behaviors is the results of rational process directed to a particular objective. Behavior chosen is considered, consequences and results of an action are evaluated, and the decision is made whether or not to take any action.

Themes of inclusion, empowerment, and participation are recurrent in development discourse and interventions, implying enablement of agency on the part of communities and individuals to inform and influence how policies that affect them are enacted. This article aims to contribute to debates on participation in rural development and environmental conservation, by applying a structure-agency lens to examine experiences of marginal farm households in three distinct systems of resource allocation in Lao PDR’s northern uplands—in other words, three institutional or (in)formal structures. These comprise livelihood development and poverty reduction projects, maize contract farming, and a national protected area. Drawing on qualitative data from focus group discussions and household surveys, the article explores the degree to which farmers may shape their engagement with the different systems, and ways in which agency may be enabled or disabled by this engagement. Our findings show that although some development interventions provide consultative channels for expressing needs, these are often within limited options set from afar. The market-based maize system, while in some ways agency-enabling, also entailed narrow choices and heavy dependence on external actors. The direct regulation of the protected area system meanwhile risked separating policy decisions from existing local knowledge. Our analytical approach moves beyond notions of agency commonly focused on decision-making and/or resistance, and instead revisits the structure-agency dichotomy to build a nuanced understanding of people’s lived experiences of interventions. This allows for fresh perspectives on the everyday enablement or disablement of agency, aiming to support policy that is better grounded in local realities.

Local people's preferences for how revenue from payments for environmental services (PES) schemes is distributed and used, and their ability to influence spending decisions, can shape the scheme's effectiveness in achieving forest management and poverty reduction goals. We examine how the interplay between institutions, norms, and decision-making processes influences the outcomes of PES in Son La Province, Vietnam. Using information gathered in focus group discussions and interviews, we find that decisions are shaped by the perceived trustworthiness and capability of village authorities and by local definitions of \"equity\". Our analysis also suggests that combining revenue-distribution options may be more likely to result in effective, efficient, and equitable outcomes while also supporting rural development. Our findings offer useful lessons for benefit sharing for REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation). PES and REDD+ revenues could be most effective when considered as supplements to budgets for social and economic development programs.

Students of social-ecological systems have emphasized the need for effective cross-scale governance. We theorized that discursive barriers, particularly between technical and traditional practices, can act as a barrier to cross-scale collaboration. We analyzed the effects of discursive divides on collaboration on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policy development in Central Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on the island of Borneo selected in 2010 to pilot subnational REDD+ policy. We argue that the complexities of bridging local land management practices and technical approaches to greenhouse gas emissions reduction and carbon offsetting create barriers to cross-scale collaboration. We tested these hypotheses using an exponential random graph model of collaboration among 36 organizations active in REDD+ policy in the province. We found that discursive divides were associated with a decreased probability of collaboration between organizations and that organizations headquartered outside the province were less likely to collaborate with organizations headquartered in the province. We conclude that bridging discursive communities presents a chicken-and-egg problem for cross-scale governance of social-ecological systems. In precisely the situations where it is most important, when bridging transnational standards with local knowledge and land management practices, it is the most difficult.

Swidden is often blamed for deforestation but research has shown that these traditional systems can have a role in maintaining and enhancing carbon stocks and therefore could be compatible with efforts such as payments for environmental services (PES) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) schemes in Vietnam. This would require that PES and REDD+ project developers build on existing local governance structures. In this paper we attempt to understand such structures though analysis of information and resource exchange in two communities in Vietnam, focusing on traditional local governance guiding swidden practices, and mass organisations. Results show a high diversity of formal (government-formed networks) and informal (traditional) swidden governance structures that can be embedded in REDD+ and PES schemes, where geographical accessibility, socio-cultural practices, and capacities of government will also determine which structure will work best for swidden communities to participate in REDD+/PES.

Adaptive management has become increasingly common where natural resource managers face complex and uncertain conditions. The collaboration required among managers and others to do adaptive management, however, is not always easy to achieve. We describe efforts to work with villagers and government officials in Malinau, East Kalimantan Indonesia, where a weak, uncertain institutional setting and complex shifting political landscape made formal cooperation among these groups for forest management problematic. Through successive trials, the team learned instead to work with and enhance a “spontaneous order” of cooperation using four tactics: (1) continuous physical presence, (2) regular contact with the people who advised and were close to major decision makers, (3) maintenance of multiple programs to fit the needs of different interest groups, and (4) hyperflexibility in resource allocation and schedules.