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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how power, decision-making and knowledge intersect with climate justice in forest governance. Using governmentality and decolonial frameworks, it examines top-down approaches and colonial legacies, while exploring co-production’s potential to foster just governance models.

Paper long abstract:

Forests play a crucial role in mitigating and adapting to climate change, and modern applications of woodfuels are also increasingly used as a source of renewable energy. However, the governance of forests, from community to global frameworks and mechanisms, has been plagued by challenges, including power inequities both within and across national contexts.

This conceptual paper explores power dynamics in forest governance, focusing specifically on decision-making and knowledge, drawing on structural models rooted in governmentality and decolonial theory. The first section situates the discussion within co-production frameworks, highlighting their transformative potential. By synthesising insights from environmental governance and development studies, the paper examines the potential of co-production to challenge entrenched knowledge hierarchies, integrate diverse knowledge systems, and promote equitable decision-making.

The second section examines structural critiques of forest and environmental governance, particularly through Foucault's concept of governmentality and its application to forest management. Here, knowledge is framed as a discursive practice that extends power, categorising and ordering complex realities in ways that often reinforce hegemonic systems. Drawing on Scott’s critique of high modernism, this section underscores the limitations of top-down planning and the role of informal processes in shaping governance outcomes. Further, decolonial perspectives that draw on governmentality expose how post-colonial power structures perpetuate inequities in forest governance.

By integrating these frameworks, the paper interrogates the intersections between equity, knowledge, and power. It argues that locally led and co-produced forest governance models hold potential for transformative justice, provided they actively challenge colonial legacies and prioritise procedural, distributive, and cultural equity.