Forest Governance Performances of Regional Regimes. A Comprehensive Comperarative Analysis

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Daniela Kleinschmit; Professorin Dr. Diana Panke
• Subject Area: Forestry
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 503235669

Globalization, internationalization and an increasing number of crossborder environmental challenges like climate change and biodiversityhave led political actors to recognize the need of forest policy beyondthe domestic level. This has also been mirrored in research with anincreasing number of studies on the international forest regime. Thisbody of work revealed that the international regime is fragmented andcontributes to forest governance, but does so only with limitedeffectiveness. While the international level is often under scrutiny, weknow less about the governance performances of regional regimesdealing with forest policy despite the fact that there are a total of 76different regimes on the regional level of which the European Union orthe Congo Basin Forest Partnership are prominent examples. Giventhat the international forest regime’s effectiveness is limited, thecomparative and comprehensive study of different regional forestgovernance regimes and their differences and similarities inperformance becomes all the more important. By adopting acomparative approach, this project contributes towards closing gapsin our knowledge about regional regimes. To this end, it examinesthree research questions on three dimensions of performance, output(words), outcome (deeds) and impact (effects), of forest governancein regional regimes. These are: Do regional regimes differ concerningthe type and extend of forest governance output they produce(number of policies, decisions, declarations etc. a regional regimepasses) and how can observed variation be explained? Do someregional regimes perform better concerning forest governanceoutcomes (activities based on regional regime output) and why?When do regional regimes reach a high impact of forest governance(problem-solving ability) and how

• DFG Programme: Research Grants