Forest governance and sustainability pathways in the absence of a comprehensive national forest policy — The case of New Zealand

A ‘pathways’ and ‘framings’ approach derived from Leach et al. (2010) is used to examine forest sustainability policy in New Zealand. The country has had no comprehensive forest policy since the 1990s and indeed no longer a forest service or its equivalent. Instead ‘forest’ preservation, policy, and monitoring functions are carried out by the Department of Conservation, Ministry of Primary Industry and Ministry of Environment. Exotic plantation forests have themselves been sold off to the private sector and some aspects of planting and harvesting are regulated by the Resource Management Act. Even in this Neo-Liberal setting, and similar to Leach et al.'s work in completely different contexts, policy responses have tended to be oriented towards ‘stability’ and ‘resilience’ types of forest sustainability. Three forest sustainability pathways are evident, directed towards preservation of indigenous biodiversity, economic development without adverse environmental impacts, and monitoring of environmental quality. In some ways the current ‘New Zealand forest governance model’ is an improvement on its predecessor but it seems unlikely to be mobile in a policy sense, resting as it does on the existence a relatively large area of indigenous forest and a large exotic plantation resource where the latter provides all timber needs.