Investigating Forest Governance Through Environmental Discourses: An Amazonian Case Study.

This study investigates the interplay between different environmental governance discourses to assess to what extent each discourse finds ground for implementation. This study sheds light on the constituencies for broader transformational changes in global forest governance and, more emphatically, explores how different discourses built around forest and environmental governance employ different mechanisms (discursively and through policy instruments) within the operation of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) debate. The focus of the analysis is the case of the jurisdictional REDD+ program in the state of Acre, in Brazil's Western Amazon. The underlying assumption in this research rests in the belief that REDD+ operation is linked to coupled social-political and economic contexts, which tend to follow social contingencies, and historical dependencies. Through documental analysis and the assessment of local stakeholders´ narratives, the research highlights the overall dominance of discourses built on to concepts of efficiency in contrast to a minor presence of discourses of social justice. In more broader terms, this study suggests that path dependencies place barriers which condition the extent to which transformations are rendered possible (or desirable) through program design and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]