Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2002. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-110). Also available on the World Wide Web.

In northern Thailand, legal and social change creates dilemmas for forest conservation. On the one hand, Thailand suffers from severe deforestation and biodiversity degradation mainly as a result of human activities that overuse and encroach on forest areas. On the other hand, forestry law has, in turn, intruded on traditional communities that lived in and relied on the forest before modern state law diminished their lands and community rights. One of the potential solutions to this dilemma is community forest management (CFM), which acknowledges the forest stewardship of the communities who rely on the forest and helps them to become better forest protectors. CFM refers to people’s participation in forest conservation in the form of collective community action. The right to practise CFM is guaranteed in the Thai Constitution as a community right. However, state forestry law provides direct authority to government agencies and dominates forest management without reference to the Constitution. My hypothesis is that the Thai legal system is not compatible with CFM because the legal culture is based on written law and not on living law, which comes from the legal consciousness of the villagers and government officers who practise CFM. I use interviews as a research method to investigate the legal consciousness of three groups of people involved in implementation of CFM: members of three selected northern lowland and hill tribe communities/villages; government officers; and legal professionals. I apply green legal theory to analyze the two types of law governing CFM: state law and the law of the commons. People in the selected forest communities apply their own CFM regulations and use state forestry law for support only when their regulations cannot handle extreme situations. The villagers’ own CFM – the law of the commons – together with state law, creates their “living law”. Government officers cooperate with CFM, knowing that it will help them fulfill their mission of forest conservation. In contrast, legal professionals rely only on state forestry law rather than the Constitution, despite its supremacy, and ignore the law of the commons. To explain this phenomenon, I “decode” Thai legal culture by investigating its historical and social contexts. I also examine the legal education system, law making processes, legal commentaries and court decisions, to understand what shapes Thai legal culture. In my view, the narrow focus on statute law in Thai legal culture, and the focus on law as a profession rather than as a justice-based discipline, can be explained by the “modernization” of Thai administration and laws, and by the encroachment of globalization and capitalism, both of which have resulted in moving away from traditional land management based on the commons. I conclude by suggesting that the acceptance of CFM in Thai legal culture can be improved by encouraging socio-legal study, increasing understanding of CFM, implementing constitutional legal principles – and by reclaiming the law of the commons. / Graduate

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International efforts to promote REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest-carbon stocks) have enjoyed widespread support in climate negotiations. While proponents of this ‘payments for ecosystem services’ approach proclaim win-win benefits, others critique this commodification of forest carbon for contributing to social and environmental injustices that will undermine conservation and development in the longer-term. In this dissertation I respond to these concerns by critically examining how REDD+ initiatives emerge in the context of Lindi Region, Tanzania. I specifically investigate how REDD+ initiatives interact with local livelihood practices, local forest governance and the drivers of land use in order to interrogate the mechanism’s contribution to local development. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in two villages, both characterised by relatively large forest areas and ‘shifting cultivation’, where different REDD+ projects are underway. In total I stayed in Tanzania for 11 months and applied qualitative and quantitative methods that resulted in 116 recorded interviews, one focus group discussion, innumerable journal entries from ethnographic interviewing and participant observation, 118 household surveys and data from document analysis. Drawing on debates within international development and neoliberalisation of nature I conceptualise REDD+ initiatives as processes promoting ‘inclusive’ neoliberal conservation. In doing so I point at the inherent contradictions of this mechanism that aims to combine a neoliberal conservation logic with inclusive development objectives. I empirically examine local livelihood practices to question popular notions of land use and argue that REDD+ initiatives must grapple with poverty, intra-village inequality and villagers’ dependence on land for crop production to contribute to inclusive economic development. I follow up on this argument by discussing the importance of material and discursive effects of REDD+ initiatives to the livelihoods of poor, middle income and wealthy households and to forest conservation. I then link these effects to an examination of how power and politics shape the implementation of REDD+ initiatives on the ground, specifically discussing the technically complex and politically contested process of territorialisation and the local practices of community-based forest management. I illustrate how seemingly technical REDD+ initiatives are inherently political, which gives them the potential to contribute to local empowerment. At the same time I question naïve assumptions over community conservation and good governance reforms by showing in detail how community-based forest management institutions are practiced on the ground and how this affects benefit distribution within the villages. My last empirical chapter examines how Conservation Agriculture is introduced in the villages as the best way to reconcile agricultural development with forest protection. I specifically discuss the role of social relations in shaping the dissemination and adoption of this new technology in rural Tanzania. Throughout this thesis I argue that local livelihood practices, power struggles and politics over land and people shape how REDD+ initiatives, as inherently contradictory processes of ‘inclusive’ neoliberal conservation, emerge on the ground and I empirically show what this means to different forest stakeholders.

Global climate change is one of the defining issues of the 21st century. The phenomenon of natural climate variation being pushed beyond normal ranges has been fueled largely by industrial activities and those which support them (i.e. land-use change and the over-exploitation of natural resources). The urgency is well established with reports demonstrating an increased occurrence of rare, highly damaging weather events, and shifts in the natural range of species. The necessity of action on climate change has resulted in the development of novel global initiatives designed to address the problem across global and regional scales. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) is emblematic of this new wave of conservation strategy. It brings together parties which are often seen as opposed on environmental issues in collaborative environmental practise. This thesis explores the development of REDD+ as an effective and equitable solutions to this problem. REDD+ is a policy architecture designed for global deployment, the success of which will depend largely upon the engagement and involvement of local community groups. Community forest management (CFM) may inform the REDD+ design process, and enhance both land-use strategies by way of synergy. The pathway to that point is, however, uncertain and marred with potential pitfalls. This thesis uses the instructive and critical lens of political ecology to assess the potential for integrating greater CFM elements into the REDD+ policy structure. It explores how the narratives of CFM and REDD+ clash at discursive levels, while also identifying elements of each which may make them mutually beneficial. The thesis finds that much of the conflict between positions on REDD+ are the result of contrasting environmental understandings, some of which are informed by negative experiences with past environmental conservation initiatives. Greater community-centric attributes may assist in improving the local and regional acceptability of REDD+ projects by appealing to the “alternative” values of forest-dependent peoples. Some suggested policy modifications are made to improve the overall design of REDD+ to be inclusive of the concerns of forest user groups, and potential areas for future research projects are discussed. / Thesis (Master, Environmental Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-28 14:57:55.951

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Sous l’injonction internationale à la participation, de nouvelles modalités de gouvernance sont apparues, invitant de nouveaux acteurs dans la gestion des aires naturelles protégées et remodelant les politiques de conservation à l’échelle internationale comme nationale.Le Mexique n’est pas exempt de ces remises en question et ses nouvelles orientations stratégiques pour la gestion des aires naturelles protégées se concentrent désormais sur la «gouvernance ». De nouveaux programmes d’appui aux communautés ont ainsi été développés pour les inciter à participer à la gestion des ressources naturelles communes. Pour contourner les restrictions liées au statut de Parc National, une vingtaine d’aires naturelles protégées ont ou vont ainsi changer de statut d’ici 2018. Le Parc National Nevado de Toluca représente l’un des premiers espaces protégés à avoir été déclassifié au statut d’Aire de Protection de la Faune et de la Flore, afin de permettre aux 54 communautés agraires réparties sur le territoire de mettre en place des projets productifs et participer in fine à la conservation de l’espace protégé. Mêlant action publique, modèles de gestion locale et dynamiques écologiques, le Nevado de Toluca constitue ainsi un laboratoire in situ qui permet de comprendre comment les notions de gouvernance environnementale et de participation mises en avant dans les programmes gouvernementaux se traduisent sur le terrain. Ce laboratoire permet d’évaluer plus spécifiquement comment les instruments de gestion participative, tels que la gestion forestière communautaire et les paiements pour services environnementaux ont modifié les pratiques locales de gestion et in fine, les dynamiques écologiques forestières. Puis, l’analyse des processus participatifs établis dans le cadre du changement de catégorie et de l’élaboration du plan de gestion permet de mieux comprendre l’appropriation de l’injonction internationale à la participation par le gouvernement mexicain ainsi que ses effets, attendus ou non, sur la gouvernance de l’aire naturelle protégée. Les paiements pour services environnementaux présentés généralement comme une stratégie de conservation plus efficiente que les projets intégrés, semblent être, sur le Nevado de Toluca, des instruments moins performants socialement et écologiquement que la gestion forestière communautaire. Les instruments de gestion participative ont néanmoins en commun de reproduire les injustices sociales du système agraire mexicain. Par ailleurs, malgré des processus participatifs limités, la recatégorisation a conduit à des controverses, alliances et innovations sociotechniques, qui reconfigurent les modalités de gouvernance du territoire. Si le gouvernement ne cède pas pour autant son pouvoir de décision, des arrangements informels viennent s’insérer dans cette nouvelle configuration et constituent des formes de contre-pouvoirs. L’institutionnalisation de la participation ne conduit pas à l’éradication des conflits et à la production d’un consensus. Au contraire, elle met en lumière la dimension agonistique des politiques de conservation. / Under the international context of supporting participation for the co-management of natural resources, new governance arrangements have emerged, inviting new actors in the management of natural protected areas and reshaping conservation policies. Mexico has not been exempted from this process with the new strategic directions for protected natural areas having focused on "governance". New community support programs have been developed to encourage local forest communities to participate in the management of their natural resources. To bypass the restrictions related to the status of a National Park, twenty Mexican natural protected areas have changed or are going to change of status by 2018. The Nevado de Toluca National Park is one of the first protected areas to have been declassified to the status of Wildlife and Flora Area Protection, to allow the 54 agrarian communities established in the territory to implement productive projects and ultimately participate in the conservation of the protected area.Combining public action, local management models and ecological dynamics, the Nevado de Toluca constitutes a laboratory for understanding how the concepts of environmental governance and participation, promoted in government programs, are being applied on the field. This empirical laboratory allows for the evaluation of how participatory management instruments, such as community forest management and payment for environmental services, have modified local management practices and, ultimately, forest ecosystems. Moreover, the analysis of participatory processes, a key part in the process of change in the protection category of the protected natural area, allows us to better understand the appropriation of international premises into effective participation by mechanisms held by the Mexican government. These mechanisms will, in turn, potentially have an effect on the governance of the protected natural area. Payments for environmental services, generally presented as a more efficient conservation strategy than integrated conservation and development projects, seem to be on the Nevado de Toluca, less socially and environmentally efficient than community forest management. However, these two participatory management instruments have reproduced the social injustices of the Mexican agrarian system. Besides, despite limited participatory processes, the reclassification resulted in controversies, alliances and socio-technical innovations that are reshaping the governance of the territory. As a response to the non-transfer of decision-making power by the government, informal arrangements are appearing as a new governance configuration and as a form of countervailing-power. The institutionalization of participation has not led to the eradication of conflict or to a consensus. Instead, it highlights the agonistic dimension of conservation policies.