International Forests Governance: A critical review of trends, drawbacks, and new approaches

In 2010, IUFRO published a GFEP report on the International Forest Regime. Since then, the complexity of forest governance has increased manifold. New programmes and arrangements have emerged at all scales, and the interactions among them, including synergies and trade-offs, are often unclear. At the same time, forest-related global discussions and negotiations continue, impacting the future of not only forests, but also the livelihoods and well-being of people.

In light of this, a thorough scientific review of the current state of the international forest governance is a timely response to the ongoing global discussions. This new assessment, titled "International Forests Governance: A critical review of trends, drawbacks, and new approaches", revisits the questions examined in the 2010 assessment, and  examines the main aspects of the current landscape of international forest governance, analysing and synthesizing respective scientific information published since the publication of the global assessment report of 2010. Its scope includes an update on governance changes since 2010, including actors and instruments; an overview of the forest-related finance landscape; an identification and analysis of the relevant current discourses; and an analysis of the different governance designs, including deficits and alternatives.
 

Policy Brief

International Forest Governance: Trends, drawbacks, and new approaches. A critical review

The Policy Brief summarizes the key messages of the report "International Forest Governance: A critical review of trends, drawbacks, and new approaches", and includes examples of forest governance alternatives for the future. The following key findings are highlighted:

• The former dominant concept of a centralized International Forest Governance (IFG) in the form of legally binding, or non-legally binding intergovernmental agreements has continued to shift towards a more pluralistic understanding to IFG.
• A major critique of IFG is its 'limited effectiveness', particularly in reference to its failure to adequately address deforestation, forest emissions, and biodiversity loss. Yet, IFG is still presented as the dominant solution to this problem, resulting in an 'Olympics' of pledges and targets.
• Forest-related finance for IFG has increased in complexity, with constantly emerging new policy instruments, incentives, standards, and targets in a wide variety of forms. This growing complexity is supported by actors and institutions with interests in short-term economic gain, rather than sustainability and a transition towards just forest governance. Alternative finance remains rare.
• In the past decade, a 'climatization' of the forest governance discourses has taken place, which becomes evident in the growing public and private forest carbon markets.
• Formerly, the critiques to IFG were focused on technical aspects, but a 'critical critique' point of view is gaining traction following approaches such as political ecology and critical policy analysis. This form of critique addresses social problems such as power asymmetries, justice, post-colonialism, or exclusion. Often, this critique focuses on uncovering underlying power relations rather than offering specific suggestions for political solutions.

One major conclusion from this assessment is that the complexity of international forest governance is steadily increasing, and further efforts to coordinate actors and arrangements at all levels are urgently needed.