On the human impacts and governance of large-scale tree plantations

Because of the pace and magnitude of land cover change, terrestrial ecosystems across the globe are under unprecedented pressure. Industrial production of wood in large-scale tree plantations is one of the drivers of this change. The development of funds of natural capital on private lands for marketable commodities, however, often comes at the expense of other non-marketable benefits that people derive from ecosystems. The disturbances to existing ecosystems and social systems caused by the establishment of plantations can be drastic. Identifying factors that foster and impede actors and institutions to solve problems and address injustices thus becomes crucial for advancing sustainability through changes in policies and practices. This dissertation synthesises findings from four articles. It takes on the task of filling two gaps in the previous scholarly literature: the first concerning the human impacts of large-scale tree plantations (articles I and II); the second concerning the different institutions that shape their governance (articles III and IV). It also brings these contributions together under a framework for empirical analysis, which combines and structures key concepts of environmental social sciences ranging from systems ecology to sociology. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods have been used in the four articles. Article I presents the findings from a systematic review of the impacts of large-scale tree plantations for local communities. The review shows that impacts are frequently grounded in the process of land acquisition for plantations and the subsequent loss of livelihoods. Plantations have often caused more losses of livelihoods than created jobs. Article I also identifies gaps in the evidence base. Article II applies the concept of resilience and qualitative content analysis to analyse the Uruguayan beekeepers’ experiences of and responses to land cover change to plantations. The results show that the community faces this change as multiple interlinked challenges (e.g., lower honey yields and higher costs), to which they generally have a limited capacity to adapt. Both articles III and IV use data from the domain of South African tree plantation policy. Based on an analysis of policy beliefs, the former identifies two competing coalitions: a dominant business-as-usual coalition, of which ideas a minority justice and change coalition challenges. Article III also clarifies the role that beliefs concerning specific policy instruments play in coalition formation. Article IV focuses on policy learning – the acquisition and dissemination of information between actors with diverse knowledge. It tests hypotheses concerning actors’ information exchange behaviour and finds that actors tend to exchange information and build trust with those who think alike. However, its findings support the idea that co-participation in policy forums enables policy learning. Large-scale tree plantations have often caused negative impacts for local communities. The unfolding of impacts, however, also depends on the context (e.g., land use rights). The impacts are in many ways rooted in the governance of plantations, the dynamics of which can be better understood through coalition formation and policy learning

On the human impacts and governance of large-scale tree plantations

Because of the pace and magnitude of land cover change, terrestrial ecosystems across the globe are under unprecedented pressure. Industrial production of wood in large-scale tree plantations is one of the drivers of this change. The development of funds of natural capital on private lands for marketable commodities, however, often comes at the expense of other non-marketable benefits that people derive from ecosystems. The disturbances to existing ecosystems and social systems caused by the establishment of plantations can be drastic. Identifying factors that foster and impede actors and institutions to solve problems and address injustices thus becomes crucial for advancing sustainability through changes in policies and practices. This dissertation synthesises findings from four articles. It takes on the task of filling two gaps in the previous scholarly literature: the first concerning the human impacts of large-scale tree plantations (articles I and II); the second concerning the different institutions that shape their governance (articles III and IV). It also brings these contributions together under a framework for empirical analysis, which combines and structures key concepts of environmental social sciences ranging from systems ecology to sociology. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods have been used in the four articles. Article I presents the findings from a systematic review of the impacts of large-scale tree plantations for local communities. The review shows that impacts are frequently grounded in the process of land acquisition for plantations and the subsequent loss of livelihoods. Plantations have often caused more losses of livelihoods than created jobs. Article I also identifies gaps in the evidence base. Article II applies the concept of resilience and qualitative content analysis to analyse the Uruguayan beekeepers’ experiences of and responses to land cover change to plantations. The results show that the community faces this change as multiple interlinked challenges (e.g., lower honey yields and higher costs), to which they generally have a limited capacity to adapt. Both articles III and IV use data from the domain of South African tree plantation policy. Based on an analysis of policy beliefs, the former identifies two competing coalitions: a dominant business-as-usual coalition, of which ideas a minority justice and change coalition challenges. Article III also clarifies the role that beliefs concerning specific policy instruments play in coalition formation. Article IV focuses on policy learning – the acquisition and dissemination of information between actors with diverse knowledge. It tests hypotheses concerning actors’ information exchange behaviour and finds that actors tend to exchange information and build trust with those who think alike. However, its findings support the idea that co-participation in policy forums enables policy learning. Large-scale tree plantations have often caused negative impacts for local communities. The unfolding of impacts, however, also depends on the context (e.g., land use rights). The impacts are in many ways rooted in the governance of plantations, the dynamics of which can be better understood through coalition formation and policy learning

Governance of global commodity chains : Case of Uruguayan Beekeeping and Sustainable Livelihoods

This thesis aims to assess the state and development of beekeeping in Uruguay. Uruguay exports more than 90% of its honey and supplies regularly to the demanding markets in the EU and the US. As marginalized actors in the global honey chain, the beekeepers' livelihoods are largely dependent on the shifts of globalization, predominantly on the patterns of global economy. Proliferation of voluntary certification schemes such as Fairtrade International and European Union Organic Farming have become evident features of these patterns. Adoption of voluntary certification schemes has impacted particularly the development trajectories of smallholders, which is why particular attention in this thesis was laid on them. It was, however, quickly understood the development is dependent on several factors on different levels. To conceptualize these levels, value chain governance and voluntary certification schemes in them were seen shaping the livelihood outcomes of the smallholders. Combining governance and horizontal livelihood approaches, which represents the main innovation of this thesis, was used to identify action points and upgrading strategies feasible for the beekeepers as actors engaged in the global honey chain. In addition, this thesis further highlights the context of beekeeping as a livelihood, honey as a commodity with certain features and market dynamics, as well as Uruguay as the main geographical scope. Research methods were qualitative. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2014 with four different respondent groups along the global honey chain: importers of honey in the EU; representatives of local institutions and export agencies in Uruguay; and the beekeepers themselves, which of some were organized in cooperatives. From the collected data, the development trajectories were analyzed deductively to identify the viable strategies to improve sustainable livelihood outcomes. Based on results, the global honey chain was found buyer-driven since the buyers bear the most powerful role. The structure replicates features of market and captive types of governance, suggesting there is a high degree of power asymmetry and coordination. Higher coordination, however, favors successful upgrading. By identifying the activities performed by actors in the chain, the action point was found in the production node due to the recent increase in activities. High costs of inputs and low margins throughout the chain were observed, particularly in the export node. Beekeepers' baseline conditions were determined as access to livelihood assets, which were found generally weak. State of the fundamental aspect of beekeeping, access to natural assets, was found alarming. The decreased floral resources in Uruguay are due to the rapid proliferation of changes in land use, accelerated by the main vulnerability causing shocks in production and with implications on prices: the climate variability. A key finding, however, was that the proliferation of Eucalyptus grandis in Uruguay has created a dependency by compensating the losses in production based on other flowerings. Furthermore, the emergence of pests has brought risk of losing colonies and increasing costs in treatment and prevention. Natural assets set the main constraint over sustainability of beekeeping in Uruguay, but possibilities to compensate smallholders was found among social assets, which clearly were not optimized at their current levels. This notion largely represents the main conclusion in this thesis: horizontal contractualization of the beekeepers through collective action is the only strategy with a reasonable balance between revenues and risks. In all other scenarios, the risks are likely to become unbearable, unless an external agent would be willing to guarantee the risks up to some point to initiate the process. Collective action was found as a precondition of vertical contractualization, which could include affiliation in voluntary certification schemes. Fairtrade International was predominantly found as a more attractive scheme, but could in this context benefit only a large cooperative with already good resources. Affiliation in a certification scheme, however, would not remove the main constraints faced by the sector in Uruguay, which are the decreasing production per hive and the costs running relatively faster than the prices received, resulting in a decreasing profitability. Whereas more beekeepers are excluded from the chain, the ones remaining practice beekeeping largely based on love and tradition. Future research is suggested to take a more sophisticated approach to cost-benefit analyses to support further decision-making on the level of the beekeepers, as well as on the level of policy-makers. In addition, prospective approaches to develop and assess the potential of systems such as payments for ecosystem services in the context of beekeeping are highly recommended

Mapping the Future Market Potential of Timber from Small-Scale Tree Farmers : Perspectives from the Southern Highlands in Tanzania

In the rapidly growing Tanzanian economy, increasing demand for timber and limited wood supply from industrial plantations and natural forests have opened a new livelihood opportunity for smallholder farmers in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, which is undergoing a tree-growing boom. In the absence of support services, research and statistics, the magnitude of the phenomena has remained unclear, along with the farmers’ capability to meet market demands, access the markets, and negotiate prices. Primary qualitative data were collected to clarify the role of smallholder tree growers in the forest transition process and wood value chain using 60 semi-structured tree farmer interviews in four villages, and through interviews of timber buyers and processors. The findings indicate that the strong market demand has created dual markets, where higher quality industrial plantations mainly supply larger industries, whereas micro and small enterprises source wood from lower quality smallholder plantations. While the markets’ quality criteria are expected to tighten, capacity building is needed to improve smallholder wood quality to ensure the long-run tree-growing livelihood and competitiveness of small-scale producers in the markets.Peer reviewe

Impacts of land use and land use changes on the resilience of beekeeping in Uruguay

Peer reviewe

Financial attractiveness of wood production in smallholder plantations of Central Vietnam in the context of developing carbon markets

In Vietnam, fast-growing Acacia hybrid dominates commercial smallholdings and is largely managed in short rotations for pulpwood. However, increasing demand for logwood implies growing Acacia hybrid in longer rotations. One way of encouraging smallholders to prolong the rotation would be payments for aboveground carbon storage. Thus, this study evaluated the financial attractiveness of shifting from pulpwood to logwood production, with and without hypothetical carbon payments of $5,$10 and $20 tCO(2)e ha(-1). The data were drawn from smallholder interviews, a plantation inventory and a market study. The growth models for a 5-year pulpwood regime and various logwood regimes used for financial modelling were developed in CO2FIX simulation software. With a financially optimal rotation length of 9-10 years, the study finds that growing Acacia hybrid for logwood is much more profitable than growing it for pulpwood. However, due to thinning in logwood regime, a financially optimal logwood regime stores only 15-16% more carbon than a 5-year pulpwood regime. Consequently, carbon payments at any of the three price levels would not shift the financially optimal rotation length. The study concluded that carbon payments alone are unlikely to be an effective means to encourage smallholders in central Vietnam to prolong the rotation.Peer reviewe

Risk perception and political leaning explain the preferences of non-industrial private landowners for alternative climate change mitigation strategies in Finnish forests

Understanding landowners' willingness to act on climate change is important for effective climate policy. This study investigates the determinants of Finnish non-industrial private forest owners' preferences for alternative climate change mitigation strategies related to forests and wood use. The study tests hypotheses concerning the role of risk perception and political leaning for the support of seven alternative strategies with varying degree of disruption to the current logic of commercial forestry in Finland, which further aligns with the temporal delay in the impact of climate change mitigation strategies that landowners are willing to accept. Based on 887 survey responses from three regions, the study finds that forest owners generally support all but one of the seven strategies: reduced harvest. Results from ordinal logistic regression models further indicate that along with socio-demographic determinants, higher perceived risk and left-wing leaning with a university degree explain support for more disruptive strategies with more immediate mitigation impact (increased conservation, reduced harvest), while lower perceived risk and right-wing leaning without a university degree tend to associate with support for the less disruptive strategies (intensified management, increased harvest), both of which arguably sideline the urgency of climate action. In the highly politicized matter of harvest levels in Finland, the study also finds that right-wing leaning may negate the effect of higher education, which otherwise predicts greater support for more disruptive strategies. Implications for policy at the climate-forest nexus are derived.Peer reviewe

The Russian invasion of Ukraine selectively depolarized the Finnish NATO discussion

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 dramatically reshaped the European security landscape. In Finland, public opinion on NATO had long been polarized along the left-right partisan axis, but the invasion led to a rapid convergence of the opinion toward joining NATO. We investigate whether and how this depolarization took place among polarized actors on Finnish Twitter. By analyzing retweeting patterns, we find three separated user groups before the invasion: a pro-NATO, a left-wing anti-NATO, and a conspiracy-charged anti-NATO group. After the invasion, the left-wing anti-NATO group members broke out of their retweeting bubble and connected with the pro-NATO group despite their difference in partisanship, while the conspiracy-charged anti-NATO group mostly remained a separate cluster. Our content analysis reveals that the left-wing anti-NATO group and the pro-NATO group were bridged by a shared condemnation of Russia's actions and shared democratic norms, while the other anti-NATO group, mainly built around conspiracy theories and disinformation, consistently demonstrated a clear anti-NATO attitude. We show that an external threat can bridge partisan divides in issues linked to the threat, but bubbles upheld by conspiracy theories and disinformation may persist even under dramatic external threats

A systematic review of the socio-economic impacts of large-scale tree plantations, worldwide

Corrigendum: The author regrets to inform readers about an error in the legend of Fig. 8. Currently the legend reads "Fig. 8. Associations between cate-gories." However, the correct version is "Fig. 8. Associations betweencategories. Yellow lines refer to both mutually-reinforcing and negatingassociations. Linewidth reflects the relative abundance of such asso-ciations in the evidence base."The author apologizes for this error and any consequent incon-venience to readers. (Global Environmental Change Volume 57, July 2019, 101931)Since their widespread introduction in the 1980s, large-scale tree plantations have seen contestations over their socio-economic impacts. With the establishment of new plantations on the rise, a review of the literature examining their impacts on local communities is needed to inform policies and practices. In this systematic review, we followed an a priori protocol to reduce the selection biases inherent to conventional literature reviews, and considered both grey and peer-reviewed literature. Of the 20,450 studies identified in our literature search, only 92 studies met our predefined inclusion criteria. However, only 22 studies presented a clear comparator and considered confounding factors in their analysis. Of the 251 impacts identified in this sample, most impacts across the nine categories were characterised as predominantly negative impacts attributed to large-scale tree plantations. Impacts on employment (22% of reported impacts/of which 41% predominantly negative), land (21%/81%), livelihoods (12%/48%) and the often intertwined social impacts (20%/69%) were the most commonly considered categories, within which a majority of studies agreed on the impact dynamics when in similar contexts, resembling the dynamics observed in other large-scale land-based investments. Most impacts were reported from Southeast Asia (34% of reported impacts), South America (29%), Africa (23%) and Australasia (12%). We corroborate that costs of large-scale tree plantations for residents tend to be front-loaded, especially when plantations have displaced customary land uses, and possible benefits to accrue over time, moderated by the emergence of local processing and complementary livelihood activities. However, given the methodological inconsistencies in our sample and the under-representation of areas known to have undergone plantation development, strong global evidence on the long-term socio-economic impacts of large-scale tree plantations remains limited.Peer reviewe

Unity in diversity? When advocacy coalitions and policy beliefs grow trees in South Africa

Competing coalitions can stabilise policymaking and hinder policy changes that are required to address the mounting pressures on land use systems across the globe. Thus, understanding the driving forces of coalition formation is important. This paper builds on the Advocacy Coalition Framework to determine the relative contributions of two sets of beliefs (more general policy core beliefs and more specific beliefs concerning policy instruments) to coalition formation in South African tree plantation politics and to identify coalitions therein. Discourse Network Analysis was used to code 656 statements regarding 40 beliefs to create network data from 55 interviews with organisational elites. Results from a network analysis of the twelve most salient beliefs indicate that dissimilar policy core beliefs about the validity of environmental regulation, social costs of tree plantations, and the conditionality of land reform in South Africa divide actors into two coalitions: the hegemonic “business-as-usual” coalition and the minority “justice and change” coalition. These boundaries were confirmed by comparing the network based on shared policy core beliefs with a co-ordination network. Dissimilar beliefs concerning policy instruments, including eco-certification and an indicative zoning, also divide actors, yet actors’ reasoning for or against these instruments differ to the degree that united fronts are unlikely to form. Hegemonic coalitions that combine selected state and business interests with labour arguments and prioritise short-term economic efficiency threaten to delay the necessary changes away from business-as-usual across land use systems in South Africa and beyond