Forests, development and the globalisation of justice

Forests, development and the globalisationof justice

TIM FORSYTH* AND THOMAS SIKOR†*Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science,

Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AEE-mail: [email protected]

†School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJE-mail: [email protected]

This paper was accepted for publication in October 2012

Norms of justice are often invoked to justify the globalisation of forest policies but are rarelycritically analysed. This paper reviews elements of justice in the values, knowledge, access andproperty rights relating to forests, especially in developing countries. Rather than defining justice ingeneral terms of distribution of benefits and recognition of stakeholders, we argue that theseprocesses are mutually defining, and can foreclose what is distributed, and to whom. Much recentforest policy, for example, emphasises forest carbon stocks and the benefits to indigenous peoples;but these terms de-emphasise livelihood outcomes for forests, and non-indigenous smallholders.Accordingly, we argue that current operationalisations of justice in forest policy based on JohnRawls’ principles of fair allocation to known actors need to be replaced by Amartya Sen’s moredeliberative and inclusive vision of justice that focuses instead on how different users experiencedifferent benefits, and seek to achieve multiple objectives together.

KEYWORDS: forests, justice, REDD, development, indigenous people, deliberative politics

Introduction

Forest policy – for years the domain of localisedmanagement interventions, national capacitybuilding and international campaigning – is

increasingly the target of global rules and regulation.Many of the new rules invoke concerns about justicein distribution – or allocating forests’ benefits fairly –and recognition – acknowledging greater diversityamong stakeholders (Fraser 2001). Most prominently,Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forestDegradation (REDD or REDD+) has been conceivedas a global mechanism to distribute rewards for con-serving forest carbon stocks (Okereke and Dooley2009). In addition, the trade-related measures insti-tuted by the European Union under Forest LawEnforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT), the USAthrough the Lacey Act, and various kinds of non-governmental certification schemes originate, at leastin parts, from efforts to create just regulatory frame-works of a global reach (Cashore et al. 2004). At thesame time, a number of procedures and approacheshave been proposed to ensure a greater recognition ofstakeholders involved in forest benefits. The CancunClimate Accords make explicit reference to the UnitedNations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous

Peoples. The 2010 Nagoya Protocol under the Con-vention on Biological Diversity (CBD) enshrines uni-versal principles of Access and Benefit-Sharing. Theprinciple of Free, Prior and Informed Consenthas increasingly become recognised as good practicein forestry and been made obligatory for UNorganisations.

This paper does not challenge the need for urgentaction on forests. Yet, this paper argues that emerginguniversal definitions of forest justice carry embeddednotions of value, knowledge, property, access andgovernance that need to be interrogated more fully.Our key point is that the urgency to apply forestjustice through current approaches to redistributionand recognition do not acknowledge the diversity ofconcerns about which aspects of forest benefits are tobe allocated. At the same time, there is also a need tosee how universal definitions of forest benefits in turndefine who is to be recognised.

We also relate this argument to theoretical debatesabout justice and governance. First, we claim thatthese problems with forest justice arise from anuncritical adoption of a Rawlsian approach to justicebased on distribution without sufficient deliberationabout what is to be allocated, and who is consideredin allocations (Sen 2009; Finlayson and Freyenhagen

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The Geographical Journal, Vol. 179, No. 2, June 2013, pp. 114–121, doi: 10.1111/geoj.12006

The Geographical Journal Vol. 179 No. 2, pp. 114–121, 2013 © 2013 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2013 Royal Geographical Society(with the Institute of British Geographers)

2011). Second, in terms of governance, we argue thatnew global forest policies still need more deliberationabout policy objectives at the sub-state level, and abroader understanding of forest users beyond currentconcerns about indigenous people.

Forest values and knowledge

Much discussion about justice in global environmen-tal policy does not consider how justice itself can becontested. One of the most common approaches tojustice reflects the classic discussion by John Rawls,which analysed justice at the start of the 1970s (Rawls1971). Rawls argued that justice is fairness – or asystem of allocation that offers equality of opportuni-ties for participants; something that is now consideredan important tenet of liberal democracy. Rawls opera-tionalised this approach through a thought experimentcalled the ‘veil of ignorance’, which described a situ-ation where benefits are distributed among stakehold-ers who do not know about their own currentadvantages, and where no party can influence theprocess of distribution. Accordingly, a Rawlsianapproach to distribution seeks to build trust in theallocation process rather than in deciding what shouldbe allocated. Elements of this approach are seen inglobal forest policies such as REDD+ where theemphasis is on seeking equitable access to tradedcarbon for different stakeholders.

Yet, the Rawlsian approach to justice is also widelydebated within political philosophy. According to Fin-layson and Freyenhagen (2011, 3) Rawls’ concept ofjustice works only in a ‘narrow, distributive sense’,and needs to be distinguished from ‘a moral theory’ or‘a general theory of right conduct’. Forest policiesindicate this challenge because policies are oftendriven by prominent concerns that might not beshared by all stakeholders. Indeed, the later work ofAmartya Sen on justice (Sen 2009) argued that moreattention needs to be given to ‘what’ is being allo-cated, and whose values and agendas are representedin this. More generally, this later analysis of justicereflects a wider shift in social theory towards acknowl-edging social influences on how physical factors suchas forests are defined and understood.

Environmental values influence the generation ofknowledge. The difference between knowledge,values, and notions of justice are sometimes hard tosee in relation to forests. The juxtaposition of valuesand knowledge is not surprising because ‘forests’ –and their constituent trees – are so disparate. Forestsare not just an extraordinarily diverse range of ecosys-tems, but also a social imaginary, or a vision of appro-priate life. In the UK, for example, since 2005 theTrees for Cities organisation has held so-called‘treeathlons’ – public events involving a 5 km run; achance to plant a sapling at home; and – somewhatvaguely – ‘making a tree wish’1. This organisation isworking to enhance the roles of trees in food, play and

scenery in large cities in developed countries. Yet, thesame values concerning ‘trees’ in the context ofcarbon-offset forestry in developing countries mightinvoke questions of justice that these ‘treeathlon’events do not discuss. Carbon offset forestry, particu-larly when involving plantation forestry, has ignitedfierce debates between those who claim it is an effi-cient and low-cost solution to a shared problem; or animposition on countries that did not create theproblem (Gerber 2011). For some environmentalists,tree planting in developing countries is presented as achance to restore and improve ecosystems and land-scapes (Brown 2001, 82). For some critics, imposingforest carbon plantations is a form of CO2lonialism,that mean ‘every time you turn an ignition key, flip aswitch, take a holiday, or cook some food, you willnot only be using up fossil fuels but also planting treeson someone else’s land’ (Lohmann 1999, 6).

Throughout discussions of forests are implicitclaims about values, and references to knowledgeconnected to those values. ‘When they thrive, we allthrive’ is the comment at the top of the website of theUS-based Forest Justice campaign2. In this statement,‘they’ refers to forests. The ‘we’ includes everybody,apparently, although the site also refers specifically tothe need to protect forest-dependent communitiesand indigenous peoples’ rights under internationalforest programs. Protecting these people’s rights,however, might not include their access to agriculturaldevelopment, as the site also declares ‘agriculture’ tobe the ‘primary driver of deforestation for 20 years’3,and provides statistics of how agricultural expansionis linked to forest loss.

Lansing (2011) notes how carbon offset forestry inCosta Rica carries embedded values about desirablelandscapes and land uses. Forest projects here usedcalculations that weighed expected carbon revenuesagainst ‘opportunity costs’. The initial calculationsfound that customary practices of land managementwere not profitable and had to be improved in order tobecome profitable. Similar calculations later onyielded the insight that shifting cultivation was not aprofitable way to use land, and that forest manage-ment maximising carbon stocks would increase therevenues local people could make from the land. Thecalculations caused the project to shift away from theinitial attempt to add new carbon value to local agro-forestry practices to proposing that shifting cultivationfields be converted into forest regeneration. In projectmanagers’ opportunity cost calculations, all othervalues attributed to forests, such as their role in pro-viding subsistence to local people, were considered‘costs’. Carbon content was seen as the primarysource of value and made commensurable with othervalues on the basis of monetary income.

The physical category of ‘forest’ is also beingdefined by global concerns. Before 2000, some 130definitions of ‘forest’ were mentioned at the UnitedNations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Forests, development and the globalisation of justice 115

The Geographical Journal Vol. 179 No. 2, pp. 114–121, 2013© 2013 The Authors. The Geographical Journal © 2013 Royal Geographical Society(with the Institute of British Geographers)

(UNFCCC) conferences of the parties (COPs) before aworking definition was agreed at COP6 in 2000 (Fogel2003). The resulting definition4 is important because itprovides a standard for implementing carbon offsets. Itdid not, however, include savanna forest formations.Critics have also pointed out that remote sensing tech-niques can capture changes in forest cover, but mightunderexpose the second D (degradation) within forestchange and REDD+ actions themselves (Qureshi et al.2012). Extending forest cover alone does not enhanceforest quality, or the numbers and usefulness ofspecies, and appropriateness of habitats (Bumpus andLiverman 2011).

These debates continue 10 years on in relation toREDD – and specifically REDD+ (which includes con-servation of forest, sustainable forest management,afforestation and reforestation). Statistics from the UNFood and Agriculture Organization (FAO) includemonoculture plantations. The Uruguay-based WorldRainforest Movement (WRM) instead argues ‘Planta-tions are not forests!’ ‘Do something serious for theclimate and stop monoculture tree plantations!’5.Here, the WRM appears to represent a perspective offorest justice framed by local rights to land use, ratherthan the global claims of the Forest Justice networkabove. The WRM also criticises the non-governmentalForest Stewardship Scheme (FSC) for providing eco-labels for sustainably harvested timber, without con-sidering the problems of plantations.

These examples give an indication of how nominalforest justice can be based on the distribution of ben-efits that are not as inclusive as thought (Brosius 1999;Fairhead and Leach 2003). Popular forms of justicecan also make similar assumptions about recognition– or who should receive benefits. There is an increas-ing trend to define forests and users simultaneously.Some new rules of forest governance, such as the2010 Nagoya Protocol, refer to local stakeholders ingeneral terms. Commonly, however, ‘indigeneity’ is amarker for appropriate users (e.g. IAS-UNU 2009).Does this category include other, smallholder, forestusers or agriculturalists on the margins of forests? TheBretton Woods Project (2009, 1), for example, writes:‘Indigenous Peoples are particularly vulnerable toclimate change and might also be affected by mitiga-tion programmes such as large palm oil plantations.’‘Local communities’ is another marker, such as in the2010 Cancun agreement.

But do these terms, ‘indigenous’ and ‘community’echo previous experience of the familiar phrase,‘community forestry’? Community forestry involvinglocal participation in forest management and landuse is an important and still evolving approach toenvironment and development (McDermott 2009;Dressler et al. 2010). But the phrase ‘community’ isoften used in diverse and unexamined ways. In Thai-land, for example, proposed community forestry leg-islation defines ‘community’ as ‘the group of peoplethat live together as a society in the same area and

pass down their culture together’ and which demon-strates a ‘culture of coexistence [with forests] thatfavours forest protection’ (Forsyth and Walker 2008,54). This statement co-defines appropriate visions ofcommunity simultaneously with appropriate forms offorest. Many villages in fact contain diverse ethnicgroups with different spatial origins rather than a dis-tinct, coherent and permanently settled identity. Thedefinition of ‘culture of coexistence’ can also excludeforms of agriculture or agroforestry that might stillrepresent appropriate forms of landscape. Definingforest benefits and users, or the distribution and rec-ognition aspects of forest, simultaneously are whatJasanoff (2006) calls ‘coproductionist moments’where implicit norms define apparently neutral butconnected categories. It is therefore difficult toachieve ‘justice’ based on distributing specified ben-efits of forests to specified forest users, if both thedefinition of benefits and users are restricted and con-tested. Does discussing local farmers as ‘indigenous’or as ‘communities’ really emphasise questions oflocal justice such as food security, land rights,= andoverall development? Or does it imply that commu-nities are acceptable as long as they adopt ‘traditional’land use?

Leggett and Lovell (2012) illustrate this trend in theApril-Salomei REDD+ pilot project in Papua NewGuinea. They point out that remote sensing tech-niques were used to indicate forest cover and esti-mates of total carbon stored, rather than more subtlechanges in forest quality or benefits to local people.Indeed, from the project’s preoccupation with carbonand forest cover, shifting cultivation is undesirablebecause it reduces the amount of carbon credits. Thisselectiveness of measurement has direct implicationsfor the kinds of underlying processes and types ofactors recognised to contribute to REDD+. Forexample, logging companies can help a country accu-mulate credited emissions reductions if they changefrom clear-cut extraction to selective logging. Shiftingcultivators reducing the intensity of cultivation byexpanding rotation cycles and retaining large trees inthe landscape would not be recognised in carbonmeasurement. Indeed, earlier works have also framedanalyses of shifting cultivation in terms of global emis-sions rather than questions of local livelihoods (e.g.Palm et al. 2005).

Development-oriented NGOs such as WRM andthe Forest Peoples Programme propose that local landrights and consultation can reduce restrictive forestpolicies. Can property rights help?

Property and access

Property rights are important means of distributing thebenefits of forest. They are a set of institutionsintended to give people the ability to benefit from landand resources, including a broad range of rightsextending all the way from use and access rights to

116 Forests, development and the globalisation of justice


full-blown ownership (Ribot and Peluso 2003). Alongthe lines of a Rawlsian approach, property rightscould help to realise justice through four steps: iden-tifying the valuable objects at stake; defining theactors considered to possess legitimate claims on theobjects; employing fair procedures to derive a justdistribution; and using property rights to put the justdistribution in practice.

Global conventions and politics often invoke prop-erty rights as a means to achieve justice, that is, facili-tate an equitable distribution of benefits. This findsillustration in the Access and Benefit-Sharing princi-ples enshrined in the 2010 Nagoya Protocol under theCBD. It is also highlighted by the frequent referencesto forest tenure and carbon rights in current debatesabout REDD+.

Yet defining just distributions on the basis of prop-erty rights encounters immediate problems. First,property rights can take many forms, calling for diffi-cult decisions about the kind(s) of rights to be grantedin the pursuit of just distribution. As soon as one thinksbeyond the abstract notion of a right to forest, oneimmediately encounters difficulties in concretisingthe object to which such a right may refer, the actorsentitled to assert such a right, and the concrete rela-tionships constituting the right (Sikor and Stahl 2011).Forest rights may refer to a comprehensive bundle ofresources making up a forest, or particular forestresources, such as the timber. They may be held byvarious sorts of actors, including individual people orcollective entities, local communities, national socie-ties or global humanity. Forest rights may also includedifferent kinds of rights, extending from various typesof uses to different forms of control over use rights.Finally, property rights always require sanctioning byauthority, which may come from a large variety ofpolitico-legal institutions through diverse procedures(Sikor and Lund 2009).

This problem encountered in attempts of defining auniversal right to forest finds illustration in the trajec-tory of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), anambitious coalition seeking to extend advocacy forforest people’s rights from the local and national tothe global level. In its initial years, RRI expendedsignificant effort on assessing global trends in forestrights. The organisation heavily relied on a definitionof forest rights as ownership, even though its ownpublications reflected the problems encountered bysuch a universal operationalisation (e.g. White andMartin 2002). The underlying vision, it appeared, wasa society of small forest owners, ignoring the multi-plicity and context specificity of forest people’s actualclaims on forests. Over time, however, RRI came toacknowledge the heterogeneity of forest people’sassertions by moving away from an emphasis on own-ership and a sole focus on property rights (e.g. Col-chester 2008). The new vision apparently seeks toaccommodate diversity and open up space for multi-ple kinds of claims. The focus shifted from defining

universal forest rights to the process of acknowledg-ing, deliberating and enabling multiple definitions (cf.Doherty and Schroeder 2011).

A second, equally vexing issue encountered by uni-versal definitions of forest rights is that property rightsmay serve to include some actors but tend to simul-taneously exclude others who do not get such rights.Any distribution of property rights, as inclusive or justas it attains to be, involves dispossession and exclu-sion. This is an important insight from past definitionsand transfers of property rights, such as under com-munity forestry or devolution policies, as thoseworked to exclude some actors despite their inclusiveaims (Sikor and Tran 2007). Changes in statutory rightsmay obviously allow local people to gain actual rightsto forest from which they have been excluded histori-cally. Yet they tend to strengthen the positions of someactors and weaken others, thereby creating newboundaries of inclusion and exclusion.

Third, property rights may not help to bring aboutmore just distributions, as they may not give rightholders the ability to benefit from forests afterall (Ribot and Peluso 2003; Sikor and Nguyen2007). Right holders’ access may depend on theircommand over other productive resources, such ascapital or knowledge. The latter has become increas-ingly crucial as forests are valorised in new ways.Forest holders’ capture of price premiums on theglobal timber market, for example, depends on theirability to get their forests certified, which has provena significant feat for small forest owners and com-munities (Klooster 2003). Similarly, access to carbonmarkets is mediated by various kinds of projectdevelopers, carbon brokers and technical experts.Their expertise and networks becomes a lot morecritical than mere property rights to forest (Corberaet al. 2007)6.

The significance of command over complementaryproductive resources can undermine the ability ofcommunity-based carbon forestry projects to includemarginalised stakeholders despite their inclusiveaims. In the worst case, local elites may be able tocapture financial and other benefits available throughREDD+ actions as observed in a community-basedpilot REDD+ project in Cambodia (Sepehri and Cheand). Poorer villagers found themselves excluded fromforestland, particularly the possibility to cultivate theland with tree and agricultural crops. In addition, theywere excluded from participation in forest patrols dueto lack of physical strength, time, money and informa-tion. Yet, because active participation in forest man-agement was a prerequisite for involvement in benefit-sharing, they were also unable to receive the permitsrequired for the extraction of non-timber forest prod-ucts and timber. In addition, more powerful villagersexerted undue influence on the distribution ofemployment (patrols) and harvest permits, eventhough everyone enjoyed equal rights to participate inthe decisions of the community forestry committee.



A last but perhaps most profound difficulty of therelationship between property rights and justicebecomes apparent in the debate about carbon rightsin the context of REDD+. At the time of publication,carbon rights do not exist as a legal construct in mostcountries and localities. Very few countries haveissued legislation that defines carbon rights in thesense of legally recognised rights to carbon as a dis-tinct claim on forests (Cotula and Mayers 2009). Simi-larly, local people are unlikely to recognise distinctrights to forest carbon in more than a few project siteswhere carbon projects from the Clean DevelopmentMechanism or similar schemes have introduced theidea of separate carbon rights. Carbon rights are notonly a new concept but also legal innovation that hasyet to attain practical relevance, as illustrated by areview of 25 country readiness plans that found only‘few countries address[ing] the need to clarify carbonrights within existing tenure systems’ (Davis et al.2009, 2).

As carbon forestry has become a serious possibility,forest carbon rights have emerged as a new legalconstruct separate from rights to forest, timber rights,etc. An apparently technical innovation, the consid-eration of distinct rights to forest carbon carriestremendous justice implications. The separation ofcarbon rights from other forest rights creates the con-ditions for new appropriation of value from forest andaccumulation of such value through capitalist means,independent of the initial assignment of carbon rights.Legal designation of forest carbon rights in law andpractice would make them an object available forappropriation and speculation (Bumpus 2011). Evenwhere such accumulation by dispossession does notoccur, the invention of carbon rights would occur inlegal settings where forest rights are often highlydiverse, ambiguous, and dynamics. Local customaryrights may be different from statutory rights, may bemore dynamic than captured in codified law, or derivefrom multiple, overlapping legal systems (Unruh2008). These insights thus demonstrate that definitionsof property rights are not just ‘out there’, to be writteninto legal texts and enshrined in regulatory proce-dures. Instead, they emerge over time from the claimsmade by various differently positioned actors, resonat-ing with the claims made by some but in dissonancewith the understandings of other actors (Benda-Beckmann et al. 2006).

There is an urgent need, therefore, to make thehistorical context of property rights and their relation-ship with justice transparent. Just definitions of prop-erty are not only about the equitable distribution ofproperty rights but also their very definitions. In addi-tion, using property rights as a basis for the provisionof justice raises vexing questions about their suitabilityfor achieving justice. Or put simply, justice cannotsimply be delivered by applying apparently naturallyexisting rights and distributing them in an equitablemanner, but requires attention to whose understand-

ings and claims come to matter. Property definitionsalways favour some actors’ definitions over thoseasserted by others, and are never able to leave behindthe particular cultural notions and environmentalunderstandings which give meaning to them. In con-sequence, property rights can only serve justice if theyemerge from fair processes of deliberation that recog-nise the particular identities, histories and visions ofinvolved actors. The attention, thereby, shifts todecision-making procedures, or governance.

Governance

New forms of forest governance aim to reflect thegrowing urgency about forest protection. But theseinitiatives come after years of work to protect foreststhrough popular activism by NGOs; bilateral techni-cal assistance for specific countries and companies;and costly and long-term lobbying and capacity build-ing under the CBD and United Nations Forum ofForests (UNFF). Until very recently, forestry was one ofthe few remaining natural resource sectors lacking anysignificant kind of global regulations (Humphreys2006). In part, this situation arose because deforesta-tion has been an archetypally ‘cumulative’ form ofglobal environmental problem, occurring in manylocations simultaneously, which has required atten-tion at each of those locations (Marino and Ribot2012). National governments claimed primacy overdecision-making in many countries but were rarely inthe position to enforce their legal claims in practice.Moreover, nation states claim sovereignty overresources in the face of international agreements. Theshift towards REDD, and the increasing global regu-lation of timber trade and products, however, increas-ingly re-orients forest policies and regimes towards amore ‘systemic’ basis, where deforestation in variouslocations can be addressed by centralised and moreuniform policy approaches.

These universalised evaluations, of course, lendthemselves to a Rawlsian model of just allocation,than a Senian re-evaluation of what is to be distrib-uted. They also can predetermine how governanceregimes are evaluated. Sometimes, it is the sense ofinjustice that makes different evaluations visible. Dim-itrov (2005, 2), for example, berated the UNFF fordeliberating, rather than allocating, saying ‘Virtuallyno progress was made over fifteen years of debates,the differences appear irreconcilable, and key players[i.e. states] offer no indication they may change theirpositions in the foreseeable future.’ This style of criti-cism suggests that the nature and recipients of forestbenefits are already predefined.

A more Senian approach to justice (Sen 2009) mightsee the UNFF as a deliberative forum seeking to rep-resent more diverse uses of forest, and devolve forestgovernance to local governments.Yet, as noted earlier,devolution of ‘community forestry’ also needs assess-ing for who is allowed to participate; what kinds of



rules are implied by ‘community’ or ‘indigeneity’; andwhat kind of forest. The original proposals for REDDwere based on avoided deforestation alone. REDD+includes afforestation/reforestation; and more diverseforms of REDD+ with co-benefits can include addi-tional welfare and biodiversity benefits (Angelsen andBrockhaus 2009; Brown et al. 2009; Forsyth 2009).Commonly this hierarchy is mapped onto three furthercategories of conservation forest (old growth, or pro-tected land); production forest (plantations); and com-munity forests. But how are each defined, and whobenefits from each?

Rawlsian notions of justice, moreover, are conven-ient for systems of governance based on nationalemissions targets and sovereignty. In specific agree-ments, the focus of REDD+ remains squarely on theconservation and enhancement of national forestcarbon stocks; other concerns are relegated to thestatus of ‘safeguards’. Not surprisingly, these safe-guards then ended up in the annex to the Decisionpassed in Cancun in December 2010. Moreover,these agreements reflect national, rather than sub-national interests, which might raise more diversedefinitions of benefits and allocations. The Cancuntext repeatedly confirms sovereignty of signatorynations, largely because of requests from Brazil andChina. Sovereignty is also asserted over how socialsafeguards are reported (paragraph 71d). Non- andsub-state actors, such as environmental NGOs andindigenous peoples’ associations, are not included inthe negotiating room.

But there is also a need to assess public debate forits assumptions. NGOs widely criticise palm oil plan-tations. The government of Malaysia, however, classi-fies palm oil as ‘forest’ and therefore a potentialcontributor to carbon sequestration. From a differentperspective, the UK Department of InternationalDevelopment (DFID) has also argued that palm oil –under the right institutional conditions – can be aneffective livelihood strategy for smallholders7. Allow-ing smallholders to trade in forests and their productsmight therefore make progress towards both carbonsequestration and development under some circum-stances. This outcome might be more just than thetendency of much discussion of forest policy thattends to emphasise the co-existence of ‘traditional’lifestyles with ‘conservation’ forest (Forsyth 2010;McCarthy 2010).

A wider approach to justice within forest policy,therefore, means addressing the concerns of morediverse actors – including non- and sub-state actors –in ways that provide a wider range of benefits, andwhich allows them to trust and participate in policy-making. The principle of Free and Prior InformedConsent is supposedly a means to secure agreementwithin new opportunities and investments rather thanconsultation alone (Forest People’s Programme 2007).The FLEGT initiative of the European Union has alsoshifted towards local engagement after its initial focus

on illegal logging. But, just as the US Lacey Act andnon-governmental timber certification schemes suchas the FSC discussed above, FLEGT reinforces univer-salising tendencies in international forest governance,creating new opportunities for some voices andclosing down possibilities for others. This might be aslow process. In Ecuador, for example, Krause et al.(under review) reported that while local people gen-erally supported participation in a REDD+ project,many did not know actually what it brought. Lessthan one out of five people knew the major termsof the conservation agreement and had participated inthe development of the community investment plan.The majority of people neither knew the amount ofbenefits received by the community nor had receivedany benefits themselves.

Achieving justice in global forest governance, there-fore, requires addressing two important challenges.There is a need to challenge universal conceptions offorest benefits that carry embedded notions of appro-priate governance. Yet, there is also a need to establisha more effective means of deliberation at the interna-tional scale that can satisfy wider ranges of forestbenefits and users. Much urgency about forest govern-ance at present focuses on seeking globally agreedtargets such as forest cover and carbon sequestration.Yet, many challenges to these universal framings aredominated by national interests from states seeking tomaximise income from plantations such as palm oil, orcarbon offsets from forestry. Despite the frustrations ofcritics such as Dimitrov (2005), current deliberativeforums are not sufficient to achieve these objectives.Yet the need for forest protection, and for diversifyinghow we achieve that protection, remains urgent.

Conclusion: norms of justice

This paper started by saying that emerging globalforest policies adopt principles of justice through thewell established means of redistribution of benefits,and recognition of rights (Fraser 2001). We concludeby agreeing with the principles of redistribution andrecognition, but urge greater attention to what is beingdistributed and recognised – and how current visionsof forest justice might reinforce preset approaches todistribution and recognition. The definitions of forestbenefits will become more diverse if more forest usersare included.Vice versa, forest policies become unjustif they predefine who benefits from which forest serv-ices, and by so doing exclude many de facto or otherpotential users and services.

Processes of foreclosure can happen in variousways if deliberative processes about forest usersand benefits are not sufficiently multi-stranded. Forexample, much popular discussion of forest justicetends to refer to the threats of agricultural expansionand the rights of indigenous peoples. But these termsand ideas foreclose the application of justice to non-indigenous smallholders, or forms of livelihoods that



involve agriculture. There needs to be more discussionabout what kinds of economic activities, which socialactors, and in turn, what kinds of forest landscapes areappropriate targets for just forest policies.

The implication for norms of justice is the need to seeforest benefits and users as evolving, rather than set instone. This is generally not a theme reflected in JohnRawls’ conception of justice, which is widely acceptedin western philosophy as a norm of defining justice(Freeman 2007). Rawls stated: ‘justice is fairness’, orthat ‘everyone is impartially situated as equals’ (1971,11). An ideally just situation, therefore, is where ben-efits are allocated between equals on the basis of noprior bias (the ‘veil of ignorance’ allocation).

But in the case of forest policy, knowledge andvalues about forests are historic and selective. Thedefinition of social actors is linked to wider norms ofappropriate behaviour and the voice and visibility ofactors themselves. Property rights are only one meansto consider justice, and actors have different abilities tonegotiate these or receive recognition from the state orvia international carbon markets. But there is a need toconsider how far current systems of property rightsreflect certain dominant ideas of appropriate forestsand forest users, rather than a broader idea of whatforest landscapes are for, from a wider range of users.

Instead, a more inclusive and critical approach toforest policy and claims about justice acknowledgesthe diversity of claims, and the political controls thatlimit the expression of claims. Amartya Sen’s alterna-tive, yet supportive, discussion of Rawls in The idea ofjustice (2009) argues that there is no uniform way toestablish norms of justice. Rather, justice is a processthat never becomes perfect. Under this perspective,the process of discussion, where social inclusion itselfis critically sought and predefined norms are notimposed, might lead to a more just outcome becauseit acknowledges that the definition of benefits is influ-enced by social inclusion and that facts and normsinfluence each other. Consequently there is a need toconsider how (and by whom) forest benefits and par-ticipants are defined rather than to allocate justiceaccording to existing understandings of each.

Building effective, and just, global forest policymight therefore depend on enhancing public debateabout what is appropriate forest policy for whom. TheUnited Nations Forum on Forests has been criticisedfor being dominated by entrenched national interests(Dimitrov 2005). Yet, the experience of REDD+ hasshown that various actors can still comment on andshape forest policies to demonstrate that global forestpolicy is not a competition between carbon storage,biodiversity, and livelihoods, but should include allthree. REDD+ is still negotiated under the UNFCCCby national governments, but it has become clearerthan ever in forestry that multiple objectives, usersand means must be considered alongside each otherin order to ensure that forest policies are consideredjust.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Adrian Martin andtwo anonymous referees for valuable comments.

Notes

1 www.treesforcities.org (accessed 24 October 2012).2 http://forestjustice.wordpress.com (accessed 24 October

2012).3 ‘Agriculture: primary driver of deforestation for 20 years’ –

posted to http://forestjustice.wordpress.com on 22 September2010, 10.15 pm.

4 ‘Forest’ is an area of land of 0.3–1.0 ha with tree crown cover (orequivalent stocking level) of more than 10–30% with trees withthe potential to reach a minimum height of 2–5 m at maturity insitu. A forest may consist either of closed forest formation wheretrees of various storeys and undergrowth cover a high propor-tion of the ground; or open forest formations over an area of0.3–1.0 ha with a continuous vegetation cover in which treecrown cover exceeds 10–20%. Young natural stands and allplantations which have yet to reach a crown density of 10–30%or tree height of 2–5 m are included under forest (UNFCCC/SBSTA/2000/CRP.11 November 2000, p. 7).

5 www.wrm.org.uy (accessed 24 October 2012).6 Here we connect with work on the neoliberalisation of

research governance and, more generally, the commodifica-tion of nature, which we cannot explore here further forreasons of space.

7 John Hudson, personal communication, 2007.

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Forests, development and the globalisation of justice