The meanings of forest governance in Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Participatory forestry has become the most accepted way of exploiting timber resources in tropical rain forests. This paper shows the links between participatory forestry, sustainable forest management and the continuing objective of reconciling conservation with commercial development in the province of Esmeraldas, one of the poorest and most rapidly deforested regions of South America. I describe and contextualize the evolving logging programme of a leading Ecuadorian wood-processing group to show that the decentralization of the development process, the recognition of local communities as legal entities in the management of natural resources, and the active involvement of profit-oriented firms in biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation all contribute to the emergence of new alliances between the Ecuadorian government, the logging companies, conservation and human rights organizations, and local Black and indigenous communities. My central argument is that devolution in this context leads to conflictive interpretations of regulation. I end with a discussion of the multi-scalar nature of “forest governance”, and highlight the contribution it makes to our understanding of control, regulation and management in new contexts of privatization and decentralization.