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Billions of Euros are spent each year on the highly contested subject of development cooperation. Is it the right thing to do, and is it doing any good? It is assumed that carefully crafted policies from donors will be implemented worldwide, regardless of the cultural setting. There is an assumed flow from rational aid policies, to financing aid pr...
Citations
... In 2004-2018, participant observation which was carried out during meetings, workshops and field trips in Russia constitute the source of the autoethnography materials. Autoethnography implies a critical look at various social beliefs and management practices based on personal experience, self-observation and reflexive exploration, which are used in various research fields (Mosse 2005;Anderson 2006;White 2020). The limitation of the autoethnography approach is that the researcher is not a 'neutral observer' but rather an 'activist insider', a role which might impact the research process. ...
With 20% of the world’s forests, Russia has global potential in bioeconomy development, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. However, unsustainable forest management based on ‘wood mining’ reduces this potential. Based on document analysis, participant observations and interviews, this article shows how non-state actors—environmental NGOs and forest companies—address forest resource depletion and primary forest loss in Russia. We analyse two key interrelated forest discourses driven by non-state actors in Russia: (1) intensive forest management in secondary forests as a pathway towards sustained yield and primary forest conservation; (2) intact forest landscapes as a priority in primary forest conservation. We illustrate how these discourses have been integrated into policy debates, institutions and practices and discuss their relation to relevant global discourses. The article concludes that despite successful cases in conserving intact forest landscapes, there is still a frontier between sustainable forest management discourses and forestry practice in Russia.
