The State in Private Forest Governance: A Comparative Analysis of Forest Certification in Canada, the USA and Russia

• Applicant: Dr. Olga Malets
• Subject Area: Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Policy, Agricultural Sociology ; Political Science
• Term: from 2014 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 260682640

The project's goal is to explain the variation of governments' responses to forest certification across three nations: Canada, USA and Russia.Forest certification is a procedure through which independent third parties assess the compliance of forest companies with a pre-specified standard and issue certificates if compliance is verified. In this case, forest companies can label their products as originating from well-managed forests. Forest certification associations, e.g. FSC and PEFC, were created in the 1990s by private actors, mostly nongovernmental organizations, companies and industry associations, in order to respond to the crisis of global forest governance. Many NGOs perceived domestic and international efforts to protect forests as inadequate. They sought to create incentives for sustainable forest management by distinguishing forest companies managing their forests responsibly with a globally-recognized sustainability label. Ethical consumers were expected to prefer certified products over non-certified ones.Initially, scholars focused on the role of markets and private actors (NGOs and companies) in the new forest governance systems, but over time they started paying more attention to the role of states in certification. Yet we still know relatively little about the interactions between state and nonstate actors. The project aims at deepening our understanding of these interactions in multi-level systems of nonstate governance of natural resources.The starting point is the observation that state actors can respond very differently to forest certification. Their reactions range across countries and regions within countries from no action to active involvement and from energetic support to outright rejection. The objectives of the project include, first, describing and systematizing these responses across three nations and, second, explaining them. The literature explains the differences as a result of the interaction of many factors, including industry expectations towards governments, environmental advocacy, alignment between public policy and certification standards, country dependence on trade in the global timber market, the structure of domestic forest sectors and expected costs and benefits. These findings are important, but do not grasp the impact of the structure of the state and the characteristics of the state forest governance systems on government responses to certification.Canada and USA represent developed industrialized countries with consolidated institutions and strong governance capacity in the forest sector. Russia represents less advanced countries with emerging market economies and weaker institutions and governance capacity. Their comparative analysis will generate insights into how the degree of (de)centralization of forest governance, regional governance capacity and the nature of state-NGO interactions shape state responses at the national and regional (sub-national) to certification.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. Benjamin William Cashore