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This thesis explores the likely outcome of implementing REDD+ initiative in two Amerindian villages in Guyana. The dissertation is based on eighteen months fieldwork in Wakokoa and Isseruru villages. The aim is to understand how they conceptualise their landscape amidst global pressure to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. An ethnographic perspective is provided on the villagers' perception of their land use practices and inter/intra group relationships. Specifically, I highlight the socio-economic transformations of the villages; showing how mining has come to replace traditional farming as their main source of income and the extent to which this contributes to their ‘development'. In Isseruru, I discuss how women's access to the mines via kinship networks has allowed them to assert their autonomy in both social and economic spheres and this serves as an avenue for a transformation of traditional gender ideals. I suggest that forging ties with spiritual forces in the landscape continues to play a significant role in settling land disputes and regularising land use practices. I argue that rapid changes in Isseruru are somewhat in contrast to the situation in Wakokoa which does not have mines on its titled land but is involved in selective logging. Local perceptions and practice are in a number of ways at odds with international plans to transform forest use towards carbon neutrality and, in their current form, do not fit well under the Guyana/Norway payment for ecosystems service agreement. However, I argue that when this agreement became part of the nation-state development agenda it failed to consider the actual importance of the landscape to forest-dependent communities. By documenting actual forest-use in the villages and its relation to local cultural ideas, the dissertation contributes to anthropological understandings of Guyanese Amerindians and their land use practices vis-à-vis the expectation of REDD+ in Guyana.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation plus enhancement of forest carbon stock (REDD+) was designed and negotiated at the post-Kyoto climate conventions as an efficient and cost-effective climate change mitigation policy. The primary focus is to introduce incentive-based forest conservation initiatives for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation in forest-rich countries in order to achieve ‘win-win’ conservation and development objectives. Within the REDD+ governance framework, carbon is to be captured, commodified, measured, and traded on the market by a diverse set of actors under various bilateral and multilateral arrangements. This thesis contributes to the environmental governance literature by making complexities embedded in REDD+ design and implementation legible. This is achieved by drawing on critical institutionalism theory and geographical concept of place to examine how place-based values, motivations, emotions and institutional bricolage practices are shaping REDD+ implementation and forest governance in Cross River State, Nigeria. It also contributes to the debates about mainstream institutionalists’ assumptions that human behaviour is rational, self-seeking and so collective action can be influenced by crafting institutions in order to direct policy outcomes. Multi-method approach to data collection and analysis consisting of interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, manual coding, social network analysis, and Q-methodology were used for the study. Results show that the REDD+ process in Nigeria is characterised by unequal power relationships among the stakeholders which is causing legitimacy, equity and justice concerns. It was discovered that the forest communities in the study areas are complex entities that are responding to REDD+ and other bureaucratic forest related policies such as the proposed superhighway project differently through institutional bricolage practices. It is argued that applying uniform forest governance policies for all the communities would continue to produce unexpected outcomes in the study areas. This is because the communities have different motivations for collective action. Such motivations consist of an intricate blend of economic, emotional and moral rationalities and values which are embedded in communities’ distinct histories and social interactions. It is suggested that institutions of forest governance should be place-based and could be pieced together through formal and informal bricolage practices rather than introduced externally. This approach is particularly relevant for development interventions involving communities that still hold intrinsic motivations for environmental conservation.

Most of Nepal's rural population use timber, fuel wood, fodder, and non-timber forest products for their subsistence. However, the state and ruling elites have been exploiting forests in order to generate funds and resources to maintain their power by distributing them to royal relatives, high-ranking officials, political supporters and hill migrants throughout Nepal's Tarai. The growing population and rate of migration from the hills to the Tarai have put considerable pressure on the Tarai forests, resulting in the conversion of forest into agricultural land and causing environmental degradation. This thesis presents detailed qualitative and quantitative research findings from an empirical study in Bara district in the Tarai to develop clear understanding of the complexities of the social situation and the dynamics of how different groups' livelihood use of forests has been affected by rapid forest conversion. It also examines the diversity of responses of both socio-economic and institutional adaptation in the wake of forest decline and scarcity of forest products, with a specific focus on the coping strategies of the Tarai's indigenous people. A critical analysis is presented of how the poorest, who are most dependent on forest resources, have been most negatively affected by access restrictions to government managed forests, community forests, collaborative forest management and private forests. The varying impacts of access regimes on households located at different distances from the forest are presented to show the current limitations of both 'community forestry' and 'collaborative forestry' policies. This thesis illustrates how community forestry and collaborative forest management are not unproblematic when mediated by Nepal's complex caste, class and power relations. The evidence presented shows how the existing systems fall short of this. The study contributes to the growing body of literature that examines the ways in which local populations have been excluded from their traditional use-rights to forest resources, and explains how state-led policies and practices are biased in favour of elites. The roots of the problem are found to be government policies that lack a propoor orientation and local elites who create opportunities for themselves at the expense of the poor.

There is an increasing consensus that access to forests and forest resources can contribute positively to the reduction of poverty among rural households in developing countries. Furthermore, forests contribute global environmental services such as mitigation of climate change through carbon sequestration. Therefore, sustainable management of forest resources is paramount to ensuring that these resources and services are available for current and future generations of nearby rural populations as well as more distant stakeholders. For most governments and their partners one of the key challenges to achieving sustainable forest resources is identifying a forest management approach that reconciles community interests and forest conservation goals. Currently forest co-management approaches receive support from governments and the donor community because they are hypothesised to have the potential to simultaneously advance community livelihood goals and forest conservation. However, there is limited evidence to support this hypothesis. Therefore this study uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to provide empirical evidence on the extent to which co-management programmes achieve sustainable forest management and reconcile multiple stakeholders’ interest in forests and forest conservation goals. The study uses the case study of the Improved Forest Management for Sustainable Livelihoods Programme (IFMSLP) in Malawi, which is funded by the European Union. The study was conducted in with Zomba district (Zomba-Malosa forest reserve) and Ntchisi district (Ntchisi forest reserve). Household interviews and forest inventory were used to: explore what local actors perceive as criteria for measuring the success of a co-management programme; assess whether co-management can achieved true devolution of powers and responsibilities to local institutions; assess the impact of co-management on forest condition, and; estimate the current livelihood and welfare impacts of the programme. The study shows that, other aspects of co-management and sustainable forest management such as: community participation in decision making; access to and availability of forest resources; and infrastructure development (which are usually not included in forest management impact assessment studies), are also important criteria for assessing a co-management programme from local actor’s perspective. The study also reveals that it is difficult for co-management programmes to realize true devolution because governments retain ownership of the forest and there is limited political will among state authorities to devolve rights and responsibilities to local institutions. The findings of this study suggest that the impact of a co-management programme on forest conditions may vary depending on pre-existing forest conditions as well as on how participating communities understand and interpret the programme. Therefore, due to lack of information on forest condition before the programme, it is difficult to determine the effect of co-management on forest conditions from one-time study data, even with method triangulation. 63% of respondents perceive that co-management has had no impact on their livelihoods. However, 80% are willing to pay) annual membership fees (mean = 812 Malawi kwacha ≈ $2) to participate in the programme, because of perceived possible future benefits. This shows that local people are investing their time and labour in co-management based on optimistic expectations, which puts them at a risk of being taken advantage of by programme initiators as there is no guarantee of a future benefit. Therefore, the opportunity cost of communities’ participation in co-management activities which provide global environmental benefits, is an important reason for governments to consider inclusion of Payment of Ecosystems Services (PES) in the programmes. Finally, the finding of this study suggest that forest co-management has the potential to reconcile community interests and forest conservation, however local actors’ attitudes; unaccountable institutions; tenure systems and; limited knowledge and skill development among local actors may limit its effectiveness.

Failures of governance underlay many problems in natural resource management. Insitu conservation strategies, such as forest protected areas (FPAs), are currently one of the main strategies for forest and terrestrial biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, there is no clear evidence in the current literature on the exact role of governance arrangements and cause-effect relationships between decision-making style and conservation outcomes of forest protected areas. Governance theory deals with the inquiry of how decisions are made and how decisions are implemented given the existing institutional frame and interactions of different actors. This work aims to clarify the role of governance, its diversity, quality and change, in the functioning of forest protected areas to deliver the desired social and ecological outcomes. Accordingly, the dissertation has three specific objectives: 1) to characterise and collate an evidence base on the role of governance in forest protected areas and their conservation outcomes globally; 2) to analyse potential for a shift from hierarchical to collaborative governance in a case example of tiger conservation; and 3) to evaluate inclusive policies and their implementation through state-driven decentralization programmes on the ground. This work applies a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including systematic review methodology, qualitative data analysis and quantitative impact assessment. The first part of the dissertation (Chapter 2) collates the evidence on conservation success of FPAs conditional on the type of their governance. This chapter explores protected areas globally and synthesizes the published literature up-to-today to create a global map of the evidence and knowledge base on the role of governance in the conservation effectiveness of protected areas with respect to social and ecological outcomes. The current evidence base is small and fragmented with the low explanatory power and methodological weaknesses. Conservation research often does not account for local governance elements while making judgement on conservation success. In case where it does, it measures conservation success through mainly one type of conservation outcome (ecological). However, social-related issues such as actors’ attitudes and behaviour (intermediate outcomes on the change pathway) might contribute to more complete picture of the protected area success. The second part of the dissertation (Chapters 3 and 4) uses tiger conservation in central India as a case example to analyse governance change and the gaps between socially-inclusive and collaborative policies and actual practices on the ground. Chapter 3 investigates, from an institutional perspective, enabling and disabling factors for a shift towards “landscape-level conservation” that implies collaboration between PA managers and different actors in central India. The results show how a mix of institutional and cognitive factors can constrain a shift to the collaboration. Organisational structure of the public management agency and its “fortress conservation” mentality is perceived to be a major constrain for a change. Chapter 4 examines the case of two participatory projects around Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh and evaluates the effects of project participation through local community’s attitudes towards biodiversity and trust and satisfaction with reserve authorities. The existing participatory approach seems to have only a small effect, mainly to people’s conservation knowledge but not to their biodiversity attitudes and institutional trust. The main findings of this dissertation calls attention to the understanding of the decision-making process, informal and formal institutions and interactions between conservation actors for more complete understanding and measurement of conservation success.

Before the First World War, various policy entrepreneurs unsuccessfully advocated productivist scientific afforestation in Britain. During the war, timber imports were constrained by submarine blockade. The Government set up the Forestry Commission to deliver coniferous afforestation for strategic self-sufficiency. This policy was resistant to changes in geopolitical, economic and social conditions. It produced forests ill-equipped to provide for the needs of later society. The research considers whether, in hindsight, the actors could have applied greater forethought, developed better foresight, and ended the programme earlier. Eclectic mixed methods were used to explore this policy inertia. Quantitative content analysis of newly digitised archival and parliamentary material provided statistical trends. Political responsibility was explored by interview and email including from former forestry ministers. Personal autoethnographic witness from a complete member researcher was brought to bear. A range of change conditions set within policy approaches, including the Advocacy Coalition Framework, were used to assess the conditions for policy change or inertia. The evidence suggests that previous actors were largely prisoners of the mindsets and frames of their times, and subject to powerful institutional inertia. There were few alternative voices or discourses which could challenge the power of the Forestry Commission as an institution. Former forestry policy-makers can therefore be largely absolved of blame for failure to better predict the future needs of society. If it is manifestly difficulty to develop foresight, then other strategies are required. The creation of adaptable forests is therefore a priority.

Deforestation has many negative effects on the environment. In North Africa the most dramatic are a loss of habitat for wildlife, desertification, soil erosion, and climate change. In the Jefara plain, Libya, tree planting was undertaken to combat desertification and stabilize sand dunes and by 1984, 248,000 ha had been planted. However, these forest now suffer from severe deforestation, leading to serious encroachment of sand dunes, which now puts at risk those areas converted to agriculture. The major objective of this thesis was to understand the real causes of deforestation focussing mainly on socio-economic and policy drivers in Algarabulli District. Interviewed respondents stated that deforestation commenced in 1986, the major direct causes being agricultural expansion, building and road construction, and land trading. However, the major indirect cause contributing to deforestation was reported to be the change of forest governance in 1986; this led to an increase in corruption and a decrease in law enforcement, resulting in many land allocation contracts being issued to officers and government officials who then cleared forestland for themselves and later by local people. They reported that deforestation increased dramatically in the study zone after the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, due to the total breakdown in governance. Interviews were also conducted with 20 government officials (in the Ministry of Agriculture and legal experts of in administrative and real estate law) Legislation, Forest Department records and policies were also reviewed. These findings agreed with those from research with local residents. Officials added that the former regime contributed to destruction of the forests indirectly by: giving orders to abolish the Ministry of Agriculture several times, encouraging burning of the Land Registry Centres, and distributing forest land to officials, all of which led to an increase the corruption and lack of law enforcement. This was despite the de jure adequacy of forest protection legislation. Remote sensing, using SPOT imagery was used to estimate the rate of land cover change. The results of supervised classification and ground truething showed a remarkable degree of agreement with other two methods (local residents’ estimates and Forest Department records): 27% of total forest area was cleared between 1986 and 2010, but after the fall of the Gaddafi regime another 35% was cleared between 2011 and 2013. Currently only 36% of the originally planted forest remains. Finally, a survey was conducted with 43 forest clearers. The results showed that population growth and density had not contributed to deforestation. Analysis of the characteristics of forest clearers found that 93% of respondents were educated, 100% were employed and their income was slightly higher than respondents who had not cleared forests. The main purpose of clearing forest after the 2011 uprising was to sell the land illegally, due to a tenfold increase in land prices, which incentivised land speculation and forest clearance as a means of money laundering. If deforestation continues at the current rate, all forests will be lost within three years. Due to the total breakdown in governance, deforestation in Libya nowadays is one of the biggest environmental challenges.

Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are increasingly used for ex-ante evaluations of environmental policies but their validity and reliability are largely untested in low-income settings. My thesis examines whether DCEs provide valid and reliable estimates of welfare impacts in these contexts and comprises a systematic review and three field tests of DCE in a new REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) project and national park in eastern Madagascar. I first conducted a systematic review of empirical evidence on the reliability and validity of DCEs when valuing non-market environmental goods from the past 13 years. I found limited and mixed evidence and mostly recommend the use of more qualitative, interdisciplinary and deliberative approaches. The review informed the design of my empirical DCE survey, which elicited local people’s preferences for the right to clear forests for swidden agriculture, cash payments, and support for improved rice farming. I used this survey and rigorous qualitative debriefings to investigate three aspects of reliability and validity of DCEs. I first surveyed households who have varying experience of restrictions on swidden agriculture to explore the validity of DCE in estimating the costs of conservation restrictions ex-ante. I found that experience of forest protection matters; households who have been exposed to forest protection for a comparatively longer period had significantly higher welfare costs for restricting forest clearance than those who are less experienced. I conclude that although DCE can elicit current preferences in my study context, DCE is not a valid ex-ante tool for estimating compensations for such a long-term and complex intervention. I then used a within-subject design to evaluate whether giving respondents more time to deliberate influences DCE responses. I found that deliberation significantly affected individual-level preference parameters and marginal willingness-to-accept (WTA) estimates, but the effect depended on their literacy. Illiterate respondents’ WTA significantly increased post-deliberation while literate respondents’ decreased. Although respondents’ decisions to revise their choices mostly stemmed from more reflection, I also found evidence of strategic behaviour among more literate respondents. Greater time to deliberate may improve welfare estimates with illiterate respondents, but may have risks when used with others. Finally, I compared responses to the WTA and willingness-to-pay (WTP) DCE formats. While it is well recognised that the choice of format can influence welfare estimates, I showed that it also influenced which attributes are significant. The WTA format is more appropriate in my study context based on three criteria; its content validity, its acceptability to respondents, and respondents’ ability to pay. I also found that local people were generally averse to state protection and strongly demand secure forest tenure. My thesis makes an important methodological contribution to the advancement of DCE techniques. It also has major implications for how forest conservation policy may be devised in low-income countries, including devolution of secure forestland tenure to local people and genuinely negotiating conservation with forest users.