Abstract

Recently, the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group (FNP) of Wageningen University in the Netherlands developed the so-called ‘practice based approach’ to analyse forest governance issues. This approach is a response to the – in our view – shortcomings of the most dominant schools in our field, particularly rational choice and neo-institutionalism. Both are largely flawed, because each is unable to capture both human capacities and creativities and collective action and regularities that together constitute social fields. The practice based approach claims to offer that broader perspective. In this seminar, the approach will be shortly explained and applied to some cases of participatory forest management (PFM) in India and Ethiopia. Although PFM seems to be pushed into the background of the global forest agenda, probably due to more recent initiatives like REDD + and FLEGT , the movement is as important and alive on the ground in various countries around the world as let’s say 10 years ago. The practice based approach will offer a fresh perspective on PFM and its (perceived) successes and failures, as will be shown by confronting the practice based findings from India and Ethiopia with the broader PFM literature.