TY - JOUR

T1 - Pitfalls for the sustainability of forest transitions

T2 - evidence from Southeast Asia

AU - Kull, Christian A

AU - Bartmess, Jennifer

AU - Dressler, Wolfram

AU - Gingrich, Simone

AU - Grodzicki, Maciej

AU - Jasikowska, Katarzyna

AU - Łapniewska, Zofia

AU - Mansourian, Stephanie

AU - Nguyen, Van Thi Hai

AU - Persson, Joel

AU - Pichler, Melanie

AU - Rajaonarivelo, Herimino Manoa

AU - Robert, Amélie

AU - Tran, Thang Nam

AU - Woods, Kevin

PY - 2024/4/23

Y1 - 2024/4/23

N2 - The concept of a forest transition – a regional shift from deforestation to forest recovery – tends to equate forest area expansion with sustainability, assuming that more forest is good for people and the environment. To promote debate and more just and ecologically sustainable outcomes during this period of intense focus on forests (such as the United Nations’ Decade on Ecological Restoration, the Trillion Trees initiative and at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conferences), we synthesize recent nuanced and integrated research to inform forest management and restoration in the future. Our results reveal nine pitfalls to assuming forest transitions and sustainability are automatically linked. The pitfalls are as follows: (1) fixating on forest quantity instead of quality; (2) masking local diversity with large-scale trends; (3) expecting U-shaped temporal trends of forest change; (4) failing to account for irreversibility; (5) framing categories and concepts as universal/neutral; (6) diverting attention from the simplification of forestlands into single-purpose conservation forests or intensive production lands; (7) neglecting social power transitions and dispossessions; (8) neglecting productivism as the hidden driving force; and (9) ignoring local agency and sentiments. We develop and illustrate these pitfalls with local- and national-level evidence from Southeast Asia and outline forward-looking recommendations for research and policy to address them. Forest transition research that neglects these pitfalls risks legitimizing unsustainable and unjust policies and programmes of forest restoration or tree planting.

AB - The concept of a forest transition – a regional shift from deforestation to forest recovery – tends to equate forest area expansion with sustainability, assuming that more forest is good for people and the environment. To promote debate and more just and ecologically sustainable outcomes during this period of intense focus on forests (such as the United Nations’ Decade on Ecological Restoration, the Trillion Trees initiative and at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conferences), we synthesize recent nuanced and integrated research to inform forest management and restoration in the future. Our results reveal nine pitfalls to assuming forest transitions and sustainability are automatically linked. The pitfalls are as follows: (1) fixating on forest quantity instead of quality; (2) masking local diversity with large-scale trends; (3) expecting U-shaped temporal trends of forest change; (4) failing to account for irreversibility; (5) framing categories and concepts as universal/neutral; (6) diverting attention from the simplification of forestlands into single-purpose conservation forests or intensive production lands; (7) neglecting social power transitions and dispossessions; (8) neglecting productivism as the hidden driving force; and (9) ignoring local agency and sentiments. We develop and illustrate these pitfalls with local- and national-level evidence from Southeast Asia and outline forward-looking recommendations for research and policy to address them. Forest transition research that neglects these pitfalls risks legitimizing unsustainable and unjust policies and programmes of forest restoration or tree planting.

U2 - 10.1017/S0376892924000079

DO - 10.1017/S0376892924000079

M3 - Journal article

JO - Environmental Conservation

JF - Environmental Conservation

SN - 0376-8929

ER -