Forest and Society
Vol. 8 No. 1 (2024): JUNE

When Policies Problematize the Local: Social-Environmental Justice and Forest Policies in Burkina Faso and Vietnam

Wong, Grace Yee (Unknown)
Karambiri, Mawa (Unknown)
Thu Thuy, Pham (Unknown)
Ville, Alizée (Unknown)
Hoang, Tuan Long (Unknown)
Linh, Chi Dao Thi (Unknown)
Downing, Andrea (Unknown)
Jiménez-Aceituno, Amanda (Unknown)
Brockhaus, Maria (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
21 Jun 2024

Abstract

We examine social-environmental justice in forest governance by asking who is problematized as drivers of deforestation and forest degradation. We adapt Bacchi’s “What is the problem represented to be” approach to the community forest (CAF) model in Burkina Faso and the Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) in Vietnam and examine the implementation of these policies in specific sites through disaggregated focus group discussions (men, women, youth, ethnic minorities). We delve into the discursive, lived and subjectification effects of the policies’ problematizations, highlighting tensions and contestations relating to forest access and benefits. For both countries, what is left unproblematized in the implicit policy focus on the local is a “communal fix” of indigeneity tied to idealized and collective governance of fixed areas of land and exclusionary processes for those that do not fit the ideal. We argue that market-oriented approach in policies such as CAF and PFES absent of the wider underpinnings of the political and historical forest will only exacerbate social-environmental injustices.

Copyrights © 2024






Journal Info

Abbrev

fs

Publisher

Subject

Agriculture, Biological Sciences & Forestry Environmental Science Social Sciences

Description

Forest and Society is an international and interdisciplinary journal, which publishes peer-reviewed social, political and economic research relating to people, land, and forests. Forest and Society has main geographic focus on Southeast Asia but we do not limit research possibilities that compare ...