NEOLIBERAL FOREST PROTECTION

A number of international initiatives linking forest certification with PES have emerged. By the early 1990s, the Rainforest Alliance began their ‘SmartWood’ certification, and later the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification emerged (e.g. Klooster Reference Klooster2010). Shortly after the turn of the millennium, Forest Law Enforcement and Governance and Trade (FLEGT) aimed to mobilize international commitment from governments that profit from forest conservation to increase efforts to combat illegal logging and corruption (The World Bank 2013). FLEGT included voluntary partnership agreements between countries in order to ensure that only legal timber could be traded as part of the larger effort to provide timber certification (Brown et al. Reference Brown, Schreckenberg, Bird, Cerutti, Del Gatto and Diaw2008). One such initiative is Forest Certification for Ecosystem Services (ForCES) in Indonesia, where PES was extended in FSC certification, with more than 1 million hectares of forest attaining FSC certification (FSC 2015).

Similar PES deals have emerged wherever corporate partners, public sector agencies and not-for-profit organizations have taken an active interest in a new source of income for land management, restoration, conservation and sustainable use activities, purportedly aimed at simultaneously contributing to economic development and reducing the rate of biodiversity loss (UNEP 2008). PES allows users who benefit from a certain ecosystem service to pay those who have to sacrifice their own resources to maintain such services. One of the central ideas is that ‘resource management’, both in the original (old-growth) forests and land cleared for agricultural development, is contingent on profitable exploitation of ecological services, for which providers (i.e. farmers and other land owners) are compensated (Neef Reference Neef, Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet2015).

Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez (Reference Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez2011) have argued that ecosystems services can be classified into two main approaches. The first approach involves interventions through state taxes and subsidies. The second approach is through private transactions, often in markets where ecosystem services can be freely sold and bought. These approaches have been implemented via two main mechanisms: ‘markets for ecosystem services’ and PES. ‘Thus the ‘polluter pays principle’ which underlies the former is complemented by the ‘steward earns principle’ which underlies the latter’ (Gómez-Baggethun & Ruiz-Pérez Reference Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez2011:6). According to Jax et al. (Reference Jax, Barton, Chan, de Groot, Doyle and Eser2013), a major strength of the ecosystem services concept is that it enables a succinct description of how human well-being depends on nature, showing that the neglect of this dependency has negative consequences for human well-being and the economy.

Similarly to PES, identifying and managing optimal areas and strategies of forest conservation has been integral to REDD. REDD supports those strategies that prevent deforestation by putting a price on the carbon produced by the forest – one of the key strategies for addressing global greenhouse emissions that cause climate change (UN-REDD 2015). REDD attempts to financially motivate sustainable agriculture and use systems that provide food security and resilience, all linked to ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (Harvey et al. Reference Harvey, Chacón, Donatti, Garen, Hannah and Andrade2013).

Despite the rhetoric of sustainable development that tends to underlie the congruity of social, economic and ecological objectives (WCED 1987), the impacts of top-down forest management have not always been harmonious or balanced. According to critics, certification agencies, for example, have normalized the idea of ‘sustainable forestry’, and these critics question whether any commercially used plantations can be environmentally benign because they are normally planted where original forest stood (Brosius Reference Brosius1999). Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez (Reference Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez2011) have argued that economic valuation is potentially counterproductive for biodiversity conservation and equity of access to ecosystem services benefits.

Additionally, timber verification schemes are difficult to implement and have had limited success (Brown et al. Reference Brown, Schreckenberg, Bird, Cerutti, Del Gatto and Diaw2008). Hiedanpaa and Bromley (Reference Hiedanpaa and Bromley2014) argue that PES schemes face a daunting challenge if they are to bring about sustainable practices and that such schemes have yet to empirically demonstrate their efficacy and financial sustainability. Until now, critics described conservation as a (global) subsidy system that redistributes resources under the assurance that this is ‘short-term support for the effort to generate self-sustaining markets’ (Büscher & Fletcher Reference Büscher and Fletcher2014:20).

Particularly in anthropology, the critique of ‘neo-colonial’ or ‘elitist’ approaches to conservation in general and to forest management in particular has become prominent (Brockington Reference Brockington2002; Igoe & Brockington Reference Igoe and Brockington2007; Bose et al. Reference Bose, Arts and van Dijk2012; West & Brockington Reference West and Brockington2012). Some of these critics argue against climate change mitigation through REDD, referring to it as a ‘menace’ imposed by the corporate or political elites on disadvantaged communities (Beymer-Farris & Bassett Reference Beymer-Farris and Bassett2012).

Critique of forest conservation as a commodity also draws attention to power relations and the politics of resistance as one of the key practices in contemporary community forestry (Li Reference Li2007). Escobar's (Reference Escobar, Peet and Watts1996) exploration of the link between neo-colonialism and the contemporary institutionalization of conservation includes the role of economic inequality and trade policy, as well as the conflicts over natural resources in response to neoliberal globalization. There is a broader process of making populations and landscapes in the developing world continuously subordinated to neoliberalism, allowing localities and populations to be operationalized, managed and exploited more effectively (Escobar Reference Escobar, Peet and Watts1996). Through the three inter-related rubrics of economic, ecological and cultural factors, including global trade networks, many post-colonial nature reserves have been said to retain the top-down status of a protected area with the rights of community access heavily curtailed (e.g. Escobar Reference Escobar2006; Igoe & Brockington Reference Igoe and Brockington2007).

DEBATING CORRUPTION AND ILLEGALITY

Top-down governance was criticized for reinforcing unequal power relations between those that own the resources (large international organizations and local government officials) and marginal communities (local people, small farmers, etc.), rendering certain traditional practices corrupt or illegal (Brockington Reference Brockington2002; Büscher & Fletcher Reference Büscher and Fletcher2014). Some have even argued that criminalizing practices like poaching is counterproductive (e.g. Duffy et al. Reference Duffy, St John, Büscher and Brockington2015) or exaggerated by ‘hysterical’ environmentalists (Büscher Reference Büscher2015).

It has been argued that the real ‘crime’ is not committed by local communities, but by large agricultural projects set up by international organizations that result in industrial logging, causing far greater devastation than small-scale farming driven by poverty and despair, as well as corruption (e.g. German et al. Reference German, Karsenty and Tiani2010; Klooster Reference Klooster2010; Milne & Adams Reference Milne and Adams2012). In the case of forest conservation, one concern is what is meant by corruption.

In Nigeria, many cocoa and plantain farms are indeed ‘illegal’, with the plantain farms (largely unknown by higher-up forest officers) transporting thousands of tons of plantain to Lagos every week (von Hellermann Reference von Hellermann, Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet2016). The fact that these plantations provide livelihoods for small-scale farmers and traders is seen as a moderating factor, since illegal plantations enable marginal communities to reap some benefits from much larger profit-seeking activities (von Hellermann Reference von Hellermann, Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet2016).

COMMUNITIES AND FORESTS: ETHICAL DISPUTES

For REDD in Mozambique, the difficulties of linking mitigation objectives through tree planting, conservation and carbon trading with the promotion of sustainable livelihoods and climate adaptation highlight the problems of there being different coalitions with conflicting agendas (Quan et al. Reference Quan, Naess, Newsham, Sitoe and Fernandez2014). These agendas range from private control of forests linked to external carbon markets to national NGOs that reject REDD as a means of alleviating poverty.

This is where the critique of both top-down (neoliberal governance) and bottom-up (CBC) forest conservation bifurcates. One group of scholars, who include anthropologists, political ecologists, human ecologists and those supporting economic development, human and indigenous rights and social justice, criticizes commodification as a process that dispossesses local communities. Another group, mostly made up of conservationists, ecologists, biologists and ecologically inclined social scientists, point out that commodification essentially serves anthropocentric interests. This division becomes particularly salient in the context of protected areas, where proponents of social justice argue that local communities are disadvantaged by their creation (Brockington Reference Brockington2002; Igoe & Brockington Reference Igoe and Brockington2007; Bose et al. Reference Bose, Arts and van Dijk2012; West & Brockington Reference West and Brockington2012; Duffy et al. Reference Duffy, St John, Büscher and Brockington2015). Favouring conservation that was not intended to be for the benefit of the people has even gained the label of misanthropy (Kareiva & Marvier Reference Kareiva and Marvier2007; Marvier Reference Marvier2014; Büscher Reference Büscher2015).

In contrast, supporters of strict conservation measures have argued that even partial human use of fragile forest habitats is likely to exacerbate biodiversity crises and thus further disadvantage vulnerable communities whose livelihoods depend on that biodiversity (e.g. Miller et al. Reference Miller, Soulé and Terborgh2014; Sinclair Reference Sinclair2014; Doak et al. Reference Doak, Bakker, Goldstein, Hale, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015). In this way, it is not so much the anthropocentrism but the ‘industrocentrism’ or capitalist development that disadvantages both human and non-human interests (Kidner Reference Kidner2014).

While resource management brings much-needed funding into the realm of conservation, PES is criticized for subsuming biological diversity under a homogenous category of carbon credits, reducing complex natural and social phenomena to tradable commodities and ignoring the inherent value of non-human species (e.g. Vucetich et al. Reference Vucetich, Bruskotter and Nelson2015). The underlying critique of commodification is that it is ‘time to recognize that nature is the largest company on Earth working for the benefit of 100 percent of humankind – and it's doing it for free’ (Sullivan Reference Sullivan2009:2).

At present, however, as Vira (Reference Vira2015:763) has noted, for many, the industrial development logic demands for maintaining stable economic growth and redistributing the benefits to ensure wider prosperity appear to have the highest priority and are unconnected to sustainability concerns, especially in cases related to the protection of rare and endangered species. Thus, the position of ecological justice (Baxter Reference Baxter2005) and the intrinsic value of nature become secondary to social and economic distribution issues.

THE QUESTION OF THE EFFICACY OF FOREST PROTECTION

The evidence for the efficacy of top-down management approaches as well as CBC in achieving both social justice and forest protection has been mixed (e.g. Temudo Reference Temudo2012; Hiedanpaa & Bromley Reference Hiedanpaa and Bromley2014; Sinclair Reference Sinclair, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015). Some anthropologists have argued that indigenous populations employ their traditional ecological knowledge and often manage their environments well, as exemplified by case studies of agroecology (e.g. Anderson Reference Anderson and Kopnina2012). Agroecology, which studies the entire human food system from production and processing to nutrition, has recently emphasized traditional production systems as inherently sustainable and able to provide nutrition to the most vulnerable social groups, guaranteeing food security and other indirect benefits of income generation, nutrition and ecosystem services (Hoffman Reference Hoffman2013).

However, historically, agroforestry was created and maintained by institutions that were radically different from today's global capitalist system. Attention to today's global institutions, including REDD, PES and TEEB, makes it difficult to imagine the alternative forms of production that would have to accompany post-industrial agro-ecosystems (Fraser et al. Reference Fraser, Frausin and Jarvis2015). Forest protection combined with supposedly benign types of traditional swidden farming has been criticized as a romantic ideal, obscuring the fundamental incompatibility of agriculture with nature conservation (Henley Reference Henley2011). Local participation and traditional activities, including small-scale farming, have proven to be less clearly ecologically harmless or socially equitable than previously thought (Henley Reference Henley2011). The idealized community (Mehta et al. Reference Mehta, Leach and Scoones2001) is similar to the much-criticized idea of the ‘noble savage’ (e.g. Sivaramakrishnan Reference Sivaramakrishnan1999). Indigenous people are not necessarily the best custodians of their land, as exemplified by the ‘myth of indigenous stewardship’ (Fennell Reference Fennell2008). Even at the small scale, when used too often and too intensely by an increasing number of people, soil tends to degrade (Sinclair Reference Sinclair2014). Indigenous societies may have once lived in a state of ecological equilibrium with the environment, but such a state may now be disrupted (Sponsel Reference Sponsel and Levin2014). According to Balee (Reference Balee1994:116), disequilibrium with the environment typically manifests itself in high population densities, dependence on global market economies, fossil fuel-based technologies, reduction in exposure to the natural environment and a huge negative effect on biological diversity. Even if the ecological impact of indigenous cultures was often low, this was not necessarily because of their inherent natural wisdom, but because of a low population density, the absence of a market and poor technology (Fennell Reference Fennell2008).

Accommodation of the growing human population and the expansion of often illegally appropriated agricultural lands have resulted in further escalation of biodiversity crises (Sinclair Reference Sinclair, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015). Many formerly ‘traditional’ communities that live in proximity to protected areas have reached populations exceeding the carrying capacity of their natural environment, unintentionally depleting resources (Sponsel Reference Sponsel and Levin2014). Today, agricultural development exists where indigenous laws would previously have prohibited them; for example, close to rivers or on steep hillsides, all places that are prone to erosion and less likely to be resilient (Shoreman-Ouimet & Kopnina Reference Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina2016). Tropical forest soil's nutrient-holding capacity is limited, and when cleared, the thin layer of fertile topsoil washes away, causing the area to be more vulnerable to fires and making it very difficult for native flora and fauna to become re-established afterwards (Henley Reference Henley2011). Multiple instances of over-hunting and habitat destruction in community-managed regions have demonstrated that, in some instances, fortress conservation-type protection is more successful than ‘permissive’ conservation or CBC (e.g. Sinclair Reference Sinclair2014; Doak et al. Reference Doak, Bakker, Goldstein, Hale, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015).

Both industrial agricultural projects and small-scale, top-down methods of management can have devastating effects on the environment. In order to understand the complex relationship between exploitation of the forest and environmental degradation, a more nuanced understanding of the agencies and actors that harm forests and benefit from forest protection is required. As Crist (Reference Crist, Cafaro and Crist2012:145) has argued, the planet-wide abuse of the environment is driven by the Faustian economic partnerships and the life-ways of both the world's rich and poor.

While traditional agroforestry seems to strike a compromise between top-down and local-level control of resources, agroforestry is not without its critics. Agroforestry is often supported by regimes instituted by REDD, PES and TEEB, which set a clear political agenda of protecting forests as property, promoting the participation of civil society and the private sector (von Hellermann Reference von Hellermann, Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet2016). Because forests are treated as property, marginalized communities are officially ‘allowed’ to reap its benefits by paternalistic and neo-colonial land owners who continue to profit from it (von Hellermann Reference von Hellermann, Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet2016).

In the ethnography of the Gimi-speaking peoples in Papua New Guinea, the congruity of market valuation with indigenous notions has been questioned (West Reference West2006). The integrated conservation and development project attempting to tie a local valuation of nature to economic markets through the creation of ‘eco-enterprises’ failed to consider the Gimi worldview and practice (West Reference West2006). Based on ethnographic material, the Gimi understand their forests to be part of a series of dialectical relationships rather than commodities, complicating neoliberal conservation efforts (West Reference West2006).

Another complication in relationships between local governments, communities and conservation organizations exists in the context of the conservation of the Malaysian rainforest, where a number of pitfalls have occurred in alliances between NGOs and local people, as well as between grassroots and Western environmentalists (Brosius Reference Brosius1999). The indigenous protest movement in Malaysia teamed up with environmentalists to fight for a common cause, but this alliance eventually fell apart because they had ultimately incompatible agendas (Brosius Reference Brosius1999).

There is a remarkable convergence between a diverse range of actors and voices supporting the principles of good governance in forest conservation, including those of development economists, NGOs and human rights activists (von Hellermann Reference von Hellermann, Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet2016). These historically adversarial groups all largely agree that it is the underlying causes of deforestation that need to be tackled and that local people should have more control over their own resources. In this sense, everyone speaks more or less the same language of participation, accountability, transparency and sustainability and against corruption, with the last allowing both illegal logging and poaching.

DISPUTING CORRUPTION

While obstacles to forest protection and successful conservation have been identified, and corruption has been singled out as one of the key areas of concern, a counter-reaction to combatting corruption came from the same ‘camp’ of human rights defenders. Far from considering this an impediment to forest protection, some social scientists have argued that corruption and even illegal poaching should be seen through a cultural interpretative lens. Instead of evoking a ‘culture of corruption’ (Smith Reference Smith2007), they called for a more nuanced, differentiated and sector-specific understanding of corruption (Fortmann Reference Fortmann, Brosius, Tsing and Zerner2005). In Benin, von Hellermann (Reference von Hellermann, Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet2016) notes that logging allocations are strengthened by the regular exchange of greeting cards and calendars, which are prominently displayed in the offices of loggers and forest staff alike, as well as the less overt but even more important flow of ‘gifts’ from loggers to forest staff, and the allocations are generally shaped by and an integral part of patrimonial relations. Fortmann (Reference Fortmann, Brosius, Tsing and Zerner2005) argues that the assumptions that African officials are corrupt are often informed by underlying dismissive attitudes that warn against putting natural resources, especially wild animals, under village control. In fact, it was argued that categories such as illegality, corruption and poaching are constructed by the ruling elites (Büscher Reference Büscher2015), and criminalizing poaching militarizes conservation (Duffy Reference Duffy2014). There are some ethical issues with this approach.

There is a danger in excusing activities that lead to environmental degradation on the grounds of social justice, as well as in conflating neo-colonial practices, which are indeed ethically problematic, and any strict policies of forest protection (Shoreman-Ouimet & Kopnina Reference Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina2015). By criticizing all types of forest policies designed for biodiversity conservation, those that oppose criminalizing poaching might be overlooking the existential threat to forests’ non-human inhabitants. In equating wild animals with natural resources, Fortmann (Reference Fortmann, Brosius, Tsing and Zerner2005) and other critics of strict conservation in fact replicate the anthropocentric instrumental attitudes towards nature of the very neoliberal elites they profess to criticize.

REVISITING ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE

While the criticism of top-down approaches to conservation as disadvantaging marginal communities is well placed in some cases, the ethical judgement that condemns conservation is often hinged upon a robust anthropocentric bias (Kopnina Reference Kopnina2012; Kopnina Reference Kopnina2016a; Kopnina Reference Kopnina2016b). The insistence on the moral primacy of social equality leaves open the question of the non-instrumental value of biodiversity (Vucetich et al. Reference Vucetich, Bruskotter and Nelson2015). Some points of the social justice critique are very pertinent to the aim of successful biodiversity conservation, namely the need to understand contemporary practices in a historical context. Yet other points can lead to ecological myopia and ethical double-standards. Vayda and Walters (Reference Vayda and Walters1999) argue that human ecologists and political ecologists often refuse to privilege the ecological over the political or economic forces, exposing a typical storyline of capitalist forces usurping control of local resources. This storyline avoids the discussion of responsibility for interspecies genocide (Cafaro Reference Cafaro2015). This requires a different moral sensitivity, without which the ‘cultural interpretation’ of poaching excuses severe violations of nature in the name of social justice. The proponents of exclusive social justice do not perceive the disappearance of old-growth forests and the termination of multiple species as problematic as long as the people themselves are not harmed (Cafaro & Primack Reference Cafaro and Primack2014). Instead, strictly protected areas take the fall for the purported moral aim of social equality, while exploitation of nature remains unchallenged (Crist Reference Crist, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015:93).

While the destructive reach of large landowners and corporations is certainly globally profound, local people cause deforestation by clearing the forest for subsistence agriculture and fuel or hunting for ‘bushmeat’ (wild animals), leading to the ‘empty forest syndrome’ (Peterson Reference Peterson and Bekoff2013). Conservation that restores depleted habitats can help break the vicious spiral in which the poor are forced to overuse natural resources, which in turn further impoverishes them (Elliott Reference Elliott2013).

In fact, biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation have been demonstrated to go hand in hand. As an example, the prominent primatologist Jane Goodall (Reference Goodall, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015:23–24) reports on the activities of the Roots & Shoots programme she helped to found over a decade ago in Tanzania. The programme started by selecting a team of local villagers in order to discuss their needs and priorities, which included increased food production. This need was addressed through the restoration of fertility to the overused farmland without the use of chemical fertilizers. Roots & Shoots has encouraged the establishment of wood lots close to the villages, enabling villagers to acquire fuel-efficient stoves and build more hygienic toilets. Another expressed set of needs was for improved financial security, health provision and better access to education. In response, the programme initiated micro-credit programmes for environmentally sustainable projects of the people's own choice, which included tree nurseries. In response to the need for better education, Roots & Shoots has provided scholarships for girls to stay in school. Addressing health concerns, with regards to population pressures, Roots & Shoots has trained volunteers to provide family planning information. These types of actions have led to positive community responses and volunteer action, and the villagers agreed to set aside a buffer zone – a designated village forest reserve – surrounding Gombe National Park. Within this forest regeneration zone, no hunting or tree felling is allowed, although limited access is granted for foraging for medicinal plants and mushrooms, beekeeping and dead wood collection. Simultaneously, the forest reserve protects the clean water supply to the villages. Over the past 10 years, the trees have reached heights of over 20 feet, allowing chimpanzees and other animals considerable freedom of movement (Goodall Reference Goodall, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015:23). It is this type of programme that illustrates the possibility of combining ecological and social objectives. Yet such successful programmes are rarely discussed by conservation critics.

Even less discussed is forest protection for the sake of non-humans, which is at present of low priority in policy agendas (e.g. Miller et al. Reference Miller, Soulé and Terborgh2014; Sinclair Reference Sinclair2014). The discussion of forest protection beyond the immediate social and economic agendas has apparently erased consideration of the intrinsic value of nature beyond its utility (Doak et al. Reference Doak, Bakker, Goldstein, Hale, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015). A focus on prudent forest use for people may serve to justify the destruction of non-human forest inhabitants that hold little or no economic or nutritional value to humans (Cafaro Reference Cafaro2015).

WAYS FORWARD: COMBINING CBC AND MARKET-BASED INSTRUMENTS

Where both ecological and environmental (i.e. social equality) ‘camps’ coincide in their assessment is their critique of the commodification of nature. In attributing the causes of ecological degradation to consumption and land acquisition practices associated with the consolidation of wealth and growing inequity globally, its critics are observing that commodification is not only impermissible in terms of social and economic justice, but that it is also detrimental to environmental purposes (Sullivan Reference Sullivan2009).

Both social and ecological justice supporters have been at pains to work with and support conservation activities and organizations, in part by highlighting the detrimental ecological outcomes of social injustices in conservation contexts (Duffy et al. Reference Duffy, Emslie and Knight2013; Shoreman-Ouimet & Kopnina Reference Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina2015; S. Sullivan, personal communication 2015). Continuing dichotomization of social and ecological justice, both intellectually and politically, may be the most pressing barrier to progressive change for multispecies flourishing (S. Sullivan, personal communication 2015). Critical social scientists who are highlighting the social and ecological inconsistencies associated with conservation alliances point out that policies and practices that entrench economic inequality require globally costly consumption practices (such as tourism and trophy hunting in order to generate conservation revenue) and seem to amplify rather than shift this barrier (S. Sullivan, personal communication 2015).

Yet ecological justice should not simply be considered after social and economic justice are fully addressed (as they might never be), nor considered as subordinate to anthropocentric interests (Kopnina Reference Kopnina2012a). The instrumental view of the environment is akin to the dominant rhetoric of sustainable development (Kopnina Reference Kopnina2012b), which centres on social equality and economic equity across human generations (WCED 1987). This anthropocentric view in relation to both top-down and CBC approaches renders the loss of biodiversity inconsequential as long as the ‘ecosystem services’ that benefit humanity remain intact (Cafaro & Primak Reference Cafaro and Primack2014). Many species are unlikely to have an economic value, and their extinction is unlikely to affect ecosystem services (Vucetich et al. Reference Vucetich, Bruskotter and Nelson2015).

Instead, many contend that ecological justice needs to be served simultaneously and in equal measure to social justice (Crist Reference Crist, Cafaro and Crist2012; Crist & Kopnina Reference Crist and Kopnina2014; Shoreman-Ouimet & Kopnina Reference Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina2015; Shoreman-Ouimet & Kopnina Reference Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina2016; Strang Reference Strang, Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet2016). This requires change in regarding human groups as the only beneficiaries of the exploitation of nature, as well as a recognition of the value of the forest, in which extinction is a great moral wrong (Cafaro & Primack Reference Cafaro and Primack2014). Otherwise, the prevailing assumption of human entitlement to the benefits of nature will facilitate the conversion of the last remaining wildernesses and traditional ways of living into ‘resources’, masked by the high moral grounds of serving justice (Crist Reference Crist, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015:93).

In this context, research in which forests and agroforestry systems can be managed as food provisioning systems presents forest as nothing more than exclusive feeding lots for one species only. The ways forward include reconciliation of social and ecological objectives that emphasize – and hopefully fairly weigh – the costs and benefits of forest conservation and the synergies between humanity's and nature's interests (Strang Reference Strang, Kopnina and Shoreman-Ouimet2016). Ideally, one does not need to sacrifice nature to benefit people; rather, people benefit from a nature that is conserved (Rolston Reference Rolston2016:279). Such synergies have the potential to engender a more helpful and ‘allied’ conversation regarding issues that are critical for both social and ecological justice. It is also crucial to recognize that such reconciliation should not support the ‘business as usual’ scenario, which hides strong economic agendas behind the rhetoric of sustainable development and the need to find a necessary balance while continuing exploitation.

Yet reconciliation will not always be easy. The problem is that, in some cases, synergies may either not be possible or will lead to bad compromises. We have yet to develop an ethical framework for dealing with situations in which difficult decisions need to be made. We need to have an open discussion – both at the public (involving local communities as key actors) and political (involving power-holders and policy-makers) levels – about how to weigh social justice against ecological justice. Yet another stakeholder in this debate is ourselves, academics, who could start by laying bare our own biases and ideas of what justice entails.

More points of conversion need to be developed between the proponents of ecological and social justice (e.g. Shoreman-Ouimet & Kopnina Reference Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina2015) for the use of landscapes that is truly sustainable in the long term. Practically, this requires the creation of more wildlife refuge areas and wildlife corridors, ensuring ecological connectivity (e.g. Poiani et al. Reference Poiani, Goldman, Hobson, Hoekstra and Nelson2011; Sinclair Reference Sinclair, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015) as well as rewilding (e.g. Crist Reference Crist, Wuerthner, Crist and Butler2015; Shoreman-Ouimet & Kopnina Reference Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina2016). The more ecocentric framework of forest protection promises to provide long-term benefits to both the human and non-human inhabitants of the forest, necessitating further exploration of what forms of governance or food production systems are more effective at preserving natural resources for future generations of both humans and non-humans.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT

This research has not received any specific grant from any funding agency or commercial or not-for-profit sectors.