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Changing Perspectives on Forests: Science/Policy Processes in Wider Society

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journal contribution
posted on 2025-01-29, 11:45 authored by Melissa Leach, James Fairhead

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 Studies

Citation

Leach, M. and Fairhead, J. (2025) 'Changing Perspectives on Forests: Science/Policy Processes in Wider Society', IDS Bulletin 56.1A: 50–61, DOI: 10.19088/1968-2025.108

Editors

Melissa Leach Ian Scoones

Series

IDS Bulletin

Volume

56

Issue

1A

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

IDS Item Types

Article

Copyright holder

Institute of Development Studies

Language

en

IDS team

Rural Futures

Pagination

50–61

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    Volume 56. Issue 1A: Environmental Change, Development Challenges – Revisited

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