Fostering International Ideas: Model Forests and Local Governance in Argentina

GABAY, MÓNICA; GUTIÉRREZ, RICARDO A.

Foz de Iguazú

Congreso; 2016 IUFRO International Conference - Between Tradition and Increasing Challenges: Future Development of Small-scale and Community Forestry in Times of Global Change; 2016

IUFRO

The concept of ?Model Forest? was born in Canada in 1991 as the brand name of a new national program aimed at promoting the building of local-level governance processes and arrangements for sustainable forest management. The idea soon started travelling worldwide thanks to the Canadian international cooperation agencies? initiatives and became a benchmark of UN programs. Argentina was an early adopter of the Model Forest idea: in 1996 the Argentine Secretariat for the Environment signed a letter of intent with the International Model Forest Network. As a result, six Model Forests formed throughout the country between 1998 and 2008. This paper examines the development of Model Forests in Argentina in order to answer the following questions: How did the Model Forest concept get to Argentina and how was it adapted by national actors? How and why were Model Forests created at the local level? To answer these questions, we proceed as follows. In the first section, we trace back the process that goes from the emergence of the idea in Canada in 1991 until its adoption in Argentina in 1996 to understand why the Argentine environmental secretariat decided to adopt the idea and how the idea was adapted by domestic actors. In the second section, we give an account of the development of the six Argentine Model Forests in order to pinpoint the main actors involved and their motivations to form a Model Forest. In the last section, we will take stock of the adoption process and summarize the main achievements and shortcomings of the six cases. Throughout the paper we will show that the adoption and development of the Model Forest concept in Argentina was not connected to international cooperation projects or the expectation of accessing them (as was the case in other Latin American countries). At the national level, Model Forests were regarded as a policy instrument contributing to the improvement of forest governance, rural communities? livelihoods and sustainable local development. At the local level, the actors and motivations varied: some sites were the result of local communities? need for improved livelihoods; others were fostered by municipal agents; still others were promoted by provincial forest authorities. Twenty years after the adoption of the concept, the core structuring concepts of Argentine Model Forests are forest landscapes, territorial development, social inclusion and participatory governance.