From food to fire, forests are vital to our existence and the survival of the 8.7 million species known to inhabit the Earth. Forest policy, aimed at governing the forest for specific uses, reflects the objectives and ambitions of particular interests at particular times in history. Forests are inherently political, and so is the process through which knowledge is produced and filtered into policymaking. In this process, some possibilities are excluded, effectively silenced. To err is human but to persist in error is diabolical. At a time where some of our anthropogenic ambitions of resource consumption seem to have ignited the forests across the globe, it is crucial – if not ethical – to examine the underlying assumptions of these policies more closely. As ways of doing are embedded in ways of knowing, understanding and moving away from past mistakes requires an ontological shift. Motivating this thesis, therefore, is an interest in how Western scientific and political practices, by privileging speech and voice (the Logos) have subdued various forms of silences, thereby subjugating different perspectives and hindering alternative pathways for change.
This thesis adopts the following design. It explores the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of environmental knowledge politics, through an examination of forest policy in Sweden, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It looks at forest governance and timber trade, through the theoretical lens of a New Materialism approach to knowledge, an Extractivism and governmentality approach to governance, and a Foucauldian approach to discourse and subjugation. It combines archival research, fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and critical discourse analysis to uncover the underlying assumptions and power dynamics influencing forest policy.
This work examines the embeddedness of policy discourse with the knowledge on which it draws its legitimacy. My first step is to analyze how problem representations affect policy formulation in the forest sector across Sweden, Cameroon, and the DRC, as policy often initially ‘creates’ the problems it attempts to solve. I then critically examine the knowledge underlying these problematizations, focusing on how the selection of dominant forms of knowing and the marginalization of others have shaped and maintained existing policy formulations.
Silences speak volumes – both in the problematizations in policy and in the knowledge which informs them. Key findings reveal that gender inequality in Sweden’s forest sector is framed as a problem of representation, with policies focusing on increasing female participation without addressing deeper systemic issues, and equating the forest sector to the timber industry. In the Congo Basin, the notion of ‘idle and masterless lands’ has historically justified the appropriation of forest resources, marginalizing indigenous knowledge and practices. Amidst mounting speculative pressures on the carbon market, this thesis introduces the concept of ‘intraction’ to describe the immobilization of natural resources for carbon credits, highlighting parallels between historical extraction practices and contemporary conservation efforts – all the while, silencing local uses. Finally, this thesis critically examines how transparency– understood as the opposite of opacity – is problematized in timber commodity chains. This illustrates how construing transparency as data to be made visible may obscure underlying resistances and data sovereignty, all the while benefiting pre-existing data-brokers and entrenching power dynamics.
Through an exploration of forest policy discourse and its underlying knowledge, this thesis demonstrates how policy often sees through a glass darkly. By expanding the work on silences, I show that these may act as subjugation or acceptance, but also as resistance or liberation. I advance theoretical and methodological approaches to the understanding of silences, diffracted through the prism of the workings of power, the construction of knowledge and the limits to perception. Understanding these silences requires a shift in both epistemological and ontological perspectives, to develop more inclusive and effective governance frameworks. This thesis concludes that lending a curious ear to silences might bring more voice to what policy has been missing.