Changing Perspectives on Forests: Science/Policy Processes in Wider Society
This IDS Bulletin attempts to link two sets of pressing contemporary concerns. On the one hand, it addresses changing relationships between science, policy and society in the context of internationalisation and public challenges to formal expertise; concerns currently under hot debate in European settings as much as in developing countries. On the other hand, it engages with issues around rural landscape and livelihoods in low‑income countries, particularly in West Africa and the Caribbean. Tropical forests provide a linking focus, strongly implicated as they are both in local livelihoods and struggles for resource control, and in scientific and policy debates extending from local settings to highly charged global arenas – not least in the lead-up to the ‘Rio Plus 10’ Conference on Environment and Development in Johannesburg, 2002. The IDS Bulletin reviews important advances in the science of forest dynamics, which in turn suggest ways that forest policies could become more ‘pro-poor’. At the same time, it analyses the science/policy processes and power/knowledge relations, which must be addressed if such changes are to come about. We hope that this IDS Bulletin issue will be of interest not only to researchers, policymakers and practitioners working in the forestry, environment and development fields, but also to those interested in science and policy more broadly, illustrating how issues often examined in ‘Northern’, hi-tech industrial settings, could work out in very different contexts in the ‘South’.
History
Publisher
Institute of Development StudiesCitation
Leach, M. and Fairhead, J. (2025) 'Changing Perspectives on Forests: Science/Policy Processes in Wider Society', IDS Bulletin 56.1A: 50–61, DOI: 10.19088/1968-2025.108Editors
Melissa Leach Ian ScoonesSeries
IDS BulletinVolume
56Issue
1AVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)