Forrest D Fleischman

University of Minnesota | UMN · forest resources

Tree planting is widely promoted as a cost-effective natural climate solution, yet there are few evaluations of the implementation of tree planting. Our analysis of a unique dataset on tree planting in the Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh shows that over half of the state’s budget for tree planting is wasted on plantations that are unlike...

In this article, we respond to a critique of our earlier work examining the USDA Forest Service’s (USFS’s) planning processes. We appreciate that our critics introduce new data to the discussion of USFS planning. Further data integration is a promising path to developing a deeper understanding of agency activities. Our critics’ analysis largely sup...

Many countries have adopted large-scale tree planting programmes as a climate mitigation strategy and to support local livelihoods. We evaluate a series of large-scale tree planting programmes using data collected from historical Landsat imagery in the state of Himachal Pradesh in Northern India. Using this panel dataset, we use an event study desi...

While the science-policy interface has been a major focus of recent climate policy research, the role of agency practices and bureaucratic behavior has been largely overlooked. With a focus on U.S. federal agencies and similar bureaucratic contexts, we review the literature on how administrative decision-making influences the acquisition and applic...

Research on political control over government bureaucracy has primarily focused on direct exercises of power such as appointments, funding, agency design, and procedural rules. In this analysis we extend this literature to consider politicians who leverage their institutional standing to influence the decisions of local field officials over whom th...

There are frequently calls to increase local government control over forests in the US. Minnesota’s county forests contain approximately 30% of all local-government-managed forests in the United States. These forests are managed in ways that protect public access while providing a stable timber supply to mills. This happens because of the intersect...

The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption to lives and livelihoods around the world. These disruptions have brought into sharp focus experiences of vulnerability but also, at times, evidence of resilience as people and institutions gear up to respond to the crisis. Drawing on intensive qualitative enquiry in 16 villages of H...

Myriad scholars, policymakers, and practitioners advocate tree planting as a climate mitigation strategy and to support local livelihoods. But, is the broad appeal of tree planting supported by evidence? We report estimated impacts from decades of tree planting in Northern India. We find that tree plantings have not, on average, increased the propo...

Interest in forest-based carbon storage has led to growth in financing for carbon forestry. Most financial strategies rest on strong assumptions which are not valid in many parts of the world. We use cases drawn from tribal forestry in the US and government forestry in India to illustrate how carbon finance relies on the presence of enforceable rig...

Global policies to mitigate climate change and protect forests are increasingly incentivizing the large-scale planting of trees. Yet tree planting poses a potential threat to the well-being of migratory pastoralists who depend on fodder across landscapes. With this research we seek to understand the impact of decades of afforestation activities in...

Scientists, corporations, mystics, and movie stars have convinced policymakers around the world that a massive campaign to plant trees should be an essential element of global climate policy. Public dialogue has emphasized potential benefits of tree planting while downplaying pitfalls and limitations that are well established by social and ecologic...

A central challenge facing the study the environmental governance is the lack of commonunderstanding of important concepts. Critical concepts such as social boundaries, property rights, and resource dependence are selected and measured inconsistently across research projects and field settings, producing results that are difficult to compare. This...

This paper draws on systematic data from the US Forest Service’s (USFS) Planning, Appeals and Litigation System to analyze how the agency conducts environmental impact assessments under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). We find that only 1.9 percent of the 33,976 USFS decisions between 2005 and 2018 were processed as Environmental Impac...

Scientists, corporations, mystics, and movie stars have convinced policymakers around the world that a massive campaign to plant trees should be an essential element of global climate policy. Public dialogue has emphasized potential benefits of tree planting while downplaying pitfalls and limitations that are well established by social and ecologic...

Bastin et al .’s estimate (Reports, 5 July 2019, p. 76) that tree planting for climate change mitigation could sequester 205 gigatonnes of carbon is approximately five times too large. Their analysis inflated soil organic carbon gains, failed to safeguard against warming from trees at high latitudes and elevations, and considered afforestation of s...

Bastin et al.’s estimate (Reports, 5 July 2019, p. 76) that tree planting for climate change mitigation could sequester 205 gigatonnes of carbon is approximately five times too large. Their analysis inflated soil organic carbon gains, failed to safeguard against warming from trees at high latitudes and elevations, and considered afforestation of sa...

In this paper, we argue that, like a three-legged stool, participatory programs require three elements for stability: a supply of participatory institutions, a demand from citizens to participate, and citizens with capabilities for participation. We illustrate the importance of these three elements using case studies from forest management in centr...

The effectiveness of protected areas at achieving nature conservation goals varies widely, but the reasons for this variation are understudied. We argue that an important, but often neglected, factor is the history of institutional development that pre-dates protected area establishment. Through a comparative analysis of pathways of institutional d...

Abstract

Herbert Kaufman's The Forest Ranger is considered a landmark study of how organizations can be structured to elicit compliance from field officials, yet there have been few attempts to validate Kaufman's claims. The author argues that the outcomes observed by Kaufman resulted from interplay between organizational structure and political context—a v...

Successful natural resource management is dependent on effective knowledge exchange and utilization. Local/traditional/indigenous knowledge derived from place-based experience and scientific knowledge generated by systematic inquiry are the most commonly recognized knowledge domains. However, we propose that many natural resource decisions are not...

Forest administrators play a crucial role in translating conservation and development policies into action, yet policy reformers and scholars rarely examine how these administrators make decisions about the implementation of conservation and development policy in India. In this paper, I address this gap. I begin by developing a framework that draws...

There is growing awareness of the problems of applying blueprint approaches to public sector management in developing countries, however scholars lack tools for context-specific policy advice. This paper develops an organitoring focuses on the short-term sizing framework for theories of bureaucratic action, and applies this theory to Indian forest...

In this paper we use a case study of the Rhine River to examine the relevance of Common Pool Resource (CPR) Theory for two conditions in which it has not been extensively tested: large scale international water management and pollution problems. For that purpose, we link variation in pollution abatement to a set of explanatory variables proposed by...

This paper compares lessons drawn from five case studies of large scale governance of common-pool resources: management of forests in Indonesia, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Rhine River in western Europe, the Ozone layer (i.e. the Montreal Protocol), and the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (i.e. the International Convention on the Conservation of...

While Common Pool Resource (CPR) theory has been widely applied to forestry, there are few examples of using the theory to study large-scale governance. In this paper we test the applicability of CPR theory to understanding forest governance and outcomes in Indonesia between 1965 and 2012. Indonesia contains one of the world's largest tropical fore...

This paper compares lessons drawn from five case studies of large scale governance of common-pool resources: management of forests in Indonesia, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Rhine River in western Europe, the Ozone layer (i.e. the Montreal Protocol), and the Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (i.e. the International Convention on the Conservation of...

While Common Pool Resource (CPR) theory has been widely applied to forestry, there are few examples of using the theory to study large-scale governance. In this paper we test the applicability of CPR theory to understanding forest governance and outcomes in Indonesia between 1965 and 2012. Indonesia contains one of the world’s largest tropical fore...

This paper uses a case study of wetland regulation in the United States to develop elements of a theory about institutional stability and change in policy processes involving large public organizations. This theoretical approach draws on the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to understand events that are not well explained by other p...

Forestry is the oldest environmental public service profession, and has developed strong professional norms and close associations with scientific communities and other interests which influence the practice of forestry. This paper presents a proposal for a comparative study of forest managers and their decision-making behavior, both in the private...

In this paper we assess the institutional and environmental impacts of forest decentralization in Bolivia, Kenya, Mexico, and Uganda. We develop theories of institutional impacts based upon the specific content of decentralization reforms. We classify each country’s reforms in terms of the creation/change in local user group empowerment and accou...

We develop an analytic framework for the analysis of robustness in social-ecological systems (SESs) over time. We argue that social robustness is affected by the disturbances that communities face and the way they respond to them. Using Ostrom's ontological framework for SESs, we classify the major factors influencing the disturbances and responses...

"In this paper we utilize Ostrom's (2007) diagnostic framework for socio-ecological systems to examine the factors that contribute to social responses to disturbances in a set of five Indiana, USA intentional communities over a fifteen year time frame. We argue that the concept of robustness is useful in understanding designed aspects of socio-ecol...

"This paper examines the role of collaborative and coproductive processes in management of US national forests, utilizing a case study of the implementation of the policy of adaptive management by the U.S.D.A. Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. Adaptive management is widely prescribed by ecologists and conservation theorists...

"Common-pool resource (CPR) scholars who study the management of social-ecological systems (SESs) often closely examine the activities of communities and their local institutions. This scholarship could be enriched by an exploration of how the behaviors of higher-level government units contextualize and condition local activities. Government organi...