Monograph Abstracts

The Challenge of Sustainable Forests: Forest Resource Policy in Malaysia, 1970-1995

Abstract

The Challenge of Sustainable Forests is an innovative piece of work that provides a range of insights into forest resource use in Malaysia and the power relations behind the working of forest policy at the local level. It explores the rich debate on 'development' and 'environment' to cast new light on the social and ecological dimension of forest degradation. Taking politics seriously, the book draws on the micropolitics of scientific knowledge production, sustained yield technology in particular, to examine the institutionalisation of scientific forestry in forest resource management. With insights derived from fieldwork in Pahang and Sarawak, the book argues that sustainable forest management as a movement and a scientific discipline is in danger of speaking a techno-bureaucratic language similar to sustained yield, unless fundamental questions about livelihood protection and access rights to environmental and forest resources are sufficiently addressed. This process is not helped by the greater importance accorded biological and economic imperatives in conservation discourse and practice. By way of exploring this issue, The Challenge of Sustainable Forests takes a detour to the Philippines where issues of livelihood, access rights and social justice have affected management practices more seriously than in Malaysia.

Contents

1. Introduction: Forest Conservation and Policy in Malaysia
2. Domination and Resistance in Forest Resource Policy
3. Sustained Yield Forest Management: History and Power
4. Contesting Sustained Yield Knowledge Claims: Sustainable Forest Management as Counter-Discourse
5. Policy and Local Powers
6. The Politics of Regulation: Enforcing Forestry Rules in Pahang
7. Activism and the Reworking of 'Sustainablility' in Forest Management: The Sarawak Case
8. A Regional Perspective: The Philippines as Comparison
9. Conclusion: Sustainable Forest Management: Sustained Yield in New Clothes?