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Seeking to generate a deeper methodological and theoretical dialogue between botanical science and anthropology, this paper summarizes interdisciplinary approaches to human–plant interactions we have described as "sensory ecology" and "phytoethnography", applying these concepts to vital questions about human–plant relations in Amazonia. Building on this work, we broaden the scope of our investigations by considering their relevance to the field of historical ecology. In particular, we discuss Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's concept of "multinaturalism" and explore how it can be applied to understanding management and domestication of forest landscapes in Amazonia by Indigenous Peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and advocates have long argued that on-going engagement by broad segments of the public can help make forests and forest-based communities more sustainable and decisions more enduring. In Canada, public engagement in sustainable forest management has primarily taken one of two approaches: advisory forums through forest-sector advisory committees (FACs) and direct decision-making authority through community forest boards (CFBs). The purpose of this paper is to compare these two approaches by focusing on who participates and the values that participants bring to their deliberations. We conducted a national survey of FACs and CFBs involving 402 participants. Results showed that both models favoured well-educated, Caucasian men and fell short on the representation of women and Indigenous peoples. Additionally, despite different levels of authority in relation to forest management decisions, participants in CFBs and FACs shared similar forest values. Hence, we conclude that neither model of forest governance encourages participation from a diverse public. Our findings suggest the need to find new ways of recruiting diverse participants and to investigate more deeply whether local and extra-local pressures and power dynamics shape these processes. Such information can inform the establishment of more robust institutions for decision-making in support of sustainable forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Government of British Columbia (BC) introduced the Community Forest Agreement Program in 1998, it permitted a range of governance structures to allow flexibility and to learn which structures might be most appropriate for this new form of forest tenure. One structure that became fairly common was collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. This paper characterizes and analyzes the advantages of this collaborative governance model in three ways, identifying (1) what benefits this model entails, (2) how these are illustrated in three different community forests, and (3) how these forms of collaboration fit into a co-management spectrum. Because some of these benefits involve communities having greater degrees of power in forest governance, the model invites a consideration of the types of decision-making power experienced by Indigenous communities partnering or collaborating in BC community forests, as well as the types and range of benefits for all parties emerging from these collaborations. Fourteen indicators of the benefits of collaboration are identified, building on the discovery of five new benefits heretofore unrecognized in the literature. These understandings permit a more nuanced assessment of this particular type of co-management, leading to the generation of three new, broader hypotheses regarding the conditions that support co-management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]