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This chapter characterizes sustainability as a central and traditional concern within the science and management practices of forestry. It summarizes the historical evolution of sustainability in forest management and the concept of a “regulated forest”. It then examines the means by which natural resource policy developed in the United States, the influence of the European concept of sustained yield, and the promotion of forest conservation practices, and additional possibilities for policy development to achieve sustainable forest management both on local levels and in a global context.

This chapter examines the origins of the Empire Forestry Conferences, and in particular the role of the imperial forestry community and its allies in the United Kingdom in bringing the conferences about. It then examines the agendas of the first two conferences, as they pertain to forest policy.

This introductory chapter focuses on the application of ecological techniques in forest conservation and management. It presents a brief overview of recent developments in international forest policy. It also includes a summary of recent initiatives aimed at providing conservation assessments of forests.

Tropical forests play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle and have consequently moved to the forefront of the discussion about how to effectively reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and mitigate climate change. At the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 13th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Bali in December 2007, governments from around the world agreed to consider, over the next two years, ‘policy approaches and positive incentives’ for reducing emissions from tropical deforestation that might become part of an agreement that would follow on after the current commitments under the Kyoto Protocol expire. UNFCCC member states are currently undertaking a work program to consider different policy approaches to address emissions from tropical deforestation in the post-2012 agreement, to be finalized at COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009. One of the policy options under consideration is a mechanism that would create positive incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). This chapter provides background on international forest carbon policies, making the case that market-based mechanisms are the most appropriate ways to provide the bulk of finance needed to address REDD. In this context it assesses challenges related to REDD and the recognition of credits for REDD in global carbon markets.

Commercial exploitation of the forests products became the predominant agenda of the colonial forest policy during the 1870s. During this period, forestry was seen as profit-generating machine where the Imperial Forest Department depended on for its financial profit. This chapter discusses the ways through which the Assam Forest Department became a self-sustaining department and how the department contributed to the colonial revenue earnings. Through codification and valuation survey, the Forest Department paved the way for the commercialization of the forests. This was furthered by the various ways of governmentality such as surveys, working plans, and improved communication which transformed the nature of the forests into commercial hotspots. Timber trade proliferated, minor forest produces were exploited, and forest industrialization emerged increasing the department's revenue. This commercial mechanism retained after the Independence. However, after 1980, the forest production was changed with preservation paradigm as the policy discourse of the Forest Department.

The shift in scale, from local to national, which accompagnied the building of modern nation-state and the triumph of governmentality conditioned the adoption of new conceptions of the mountain and new modes of intervention. Within a few decades, Western nation-states readily made the mountain a major natural resource, a remarkable scenic landscape, a wild component of their territory, an ecological asset, even a preserve for unusual species. A special focus is made on the aggressive policies conducted by the modern state in forest management from France to the other countries of Western and Southern Europe and to the US. A symmetric movement is followed for nature protection, from the US to other former British colonies and Western Europe. Through these policies, mountain communities experienced a dramatic disqualification of their knowledge and modes of environmental management.

This chapter discusses forest and forest conservation in South and South-East Asia within a comparative perspective. It also discusses the future of political forests wherein reforestation movements will be in constant conflict with commerce and agriculture. Compared to the history of colonial forestry, the making of the forest policy in the post-colonial period was defined by the complexities of the political matrix and political machinery. Although forests nowadays are more politically influenced, the Assam forests in the colonial period were not entirely free from political negotiation and machinery. It was also under the commercial and profit-generating interests of the imperial rule and the powerful political class. Apart from discussing the history of the Assam forests, its difference and similarities in other forests, the chapter also evaluates how the present day ecological conflicts are intricately woven in the colonial era when forests, land and resource-based conflicts began to take shape.

The chapter characterizes forest as a resource and describes its centrality for the supply of a huge range of eco-services to human society. It classifies forests according to density and quality and forest types depending on the forest product-mix. It also discusses the causes and the extent of deforestation and forest degradation in India. The chapter further discusses the issues of forest management for forest resource conservation giving a historical view since the British colonial days and pointing out how the Joint Forest Management emerged as a consequence of long struggle of the local forest people for ascertaining their rights against the legal position of the state both in the colonial and the post colonial period. It concludes the discussion by outlining the National Forest Policy for the conservation as well as the relaxation of the ecological constraints and better sharing of the benefits of the forest ecosystem among people

The idea of participatory forest management was accepted as an integral component of India’s forest policy in 1988 and implemented through the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, which now covers lakhs of villages across all major states. Perceptions about this programme, however, differ widely. Some assessments term it as largely successful with some room for improvement, while others are highly critical of the programme. This chapter presents a meta-analysis of JFM success. It first examines the normative lens through which JFM success might be defined, and seeks to identify a minimum common expectation regarding what JFM is about. It then reviews key studies of JFM that come from divergent perspectives, and shows that, once the differences in norms are sorted out, the JFM programme has by and large failed to meet the basic criteria of a joint planning and management exercise. The chapter ends by providing an institutional analysis of why JFM has failed, and a political economic analysis of why the programme is still be supported by the forestry establishment.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 also meant the disintegration of East Germany and forced the Socialist Unity Party of Germany to abandon its war on the countryside. After the reunification of the East and West one year later, lawyers and foresters from West Germany embarked on a campaign to revise forest policy and reorganize the forestry bureaucracy. Some East German foresters, including Robert Hinz and Alexander Riedel, also helped manage the transition to democratic institutions. The People's Chamber adopted the West German Federal Forest Law in summer 1990, and each of the five new states had passed individual forest legislation by mid-1991. The Forest Service was also reorganized and close-to-nature forestry became a reality for East Germany. One of the many unaccounted-for costs of reunification was land reform, whose distortion of the central German landscape and rural society persists.

This chapter examines shifting cultivation in Odisha from the perspective of land and forest rights of tribal communities. It describes the complex processes of Survey and Settlement and creation of legal forests through which hill slopes customarily used for shifting cultivation lands in Odisha were taken over by the state as forest lands or revenue wastelands. Shifting cultivation was thereby criminalized and customary claims to these lands were ignored by the state. Almost all the land in shifting cultivation area is now under state ownership, with the tribal communities having lost control of their ancestral lands. One of the main sources of livelihoods has been made illegal. The outcome is constant tension and conflicts, with immensely negative social and ecological outcomes. The solution to the current situation is implementing the constitutional provisions in Schedule V, Panchayati Raj (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act and the Forest Rights Act in their true spirit. This would imply recognizing the right of tribal communities over the shifting cultivation landscapes and to support them in governing these landscapes in ecologically sustainable and social just manner.

This chapter traces the intersection of land tenure, forest policies, and conservation efforts from precolonial to postcolonial times, showing how they created the conditions under which specific ideas and narratives about forests as well as political and social relations around their use and management emerged. It argues that it is critical to understand this history, as contemporary conservation approaches are reproducing prior conflicts over Madagascar's forests. By blaming shifting cultivators for deforestation and expropriating their resource rights while also facilitating domestic industrial and export-oriented exploitation, the chapter contends that they are reinforcing incentives to claim forested land by clearing it.

Deforestation and forest degradation have so dominated the discourses about forest trend that the evidence for natural forest regeneration has been limited by the fact that no one thought to collect it. Though international forest statistics have been compiled on the assumption of continuing deforestation, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the need for empirical study of forest resurgence has been recognized. This chapter informs our understanding of positive tropical forest change processes, including afforestation, reforestation, and agroforestry systems, by placing these changes within seven wider perspectives. It looks in turn at forest classification, scholarship, theory, institutions, measurement, evidence and policy, and concludes that the natural reforestation is probably happening on a considerable scale and deserves proper measurement.

In the former opium-growing region of the Golden Triangle a road inaugurated in April 2008 that cuts directly through the formerly isolated high mountain areas of the region is bound to change the social, economic and environmental fabric of the region forever. It is also is the site of competing development regimes. Shifting cultivation in the region shaped the landscape, land cover, and land use across this transect in similar ways up through the end of World War II, and most of the corridor's inhabitants were identified as ethnic “minorities.” Over the past five decades, however, these countries have been under vastly different economic and political regimes influencing land use and land cover in the region today. This chapter examines narratives and policy frameworks from Xishuangbanna Prefecture, the most southern prefecture in Yunnan Province, Northern Laos, and Northern Thailand on how different issues ranging from forest classification, opium eradication, stabilizing shifting cultivators, to promoting trade, and developing infrastructure and markets affected land use and land cover in different ways in each of the three countries where varying policy approaches to land use tenurial regimes and regional projects have profoundly affected the vegetational/institutional structures in a significant biodiversity hotspot.

Odisha is richly endowed with water and forest resources. However, inefficient use of such resources have left the state economy backward. This chapter is a attempt to analyse the existing resource scenario and the state policies with regard to water and forest. Increased demand for these resources along with competing needs call for a serious revisit of the state policy. Need for rational resource pricing taking all economic, social, and scarcity values of the resources is emphasized. As demand for water and forests are constructed through a complex social process—modes of uses, issues of access and control, issues of alternative uses and regulation frameworks, among others, are all important. Therefore, resource policies in Odisha should be assessed, analysed, reviewed, and resolved within an overall societal and development context with good governance and should be aimed at efficient use with fair and logical entitlements to each and all.

The chapter begins with a brief sketch of the region, economy and society. It reviews the colonial and post-colonial forest policies with particular reference to laws affecting the community forest management by van panchayats. These policies favoured centralization and alienated the forest dwellers from the forests. As an outcome of forest satyagrahas, the colonial government adopted a policy of decentralization as a measure for conflict resolution. This led to the formation of van panchayats. Most studies on decentralization assess the process, implementation and its immediate outcomes. This study takes nearly a century long look at decentralization of forest management in Uttarakhand in North India. With such a broad scope, the study is able to underline that decentralization is not a static concept; rather the term is subject to a continuous process of political negotiation, interpretation, and redefinition.