Directora Regional CIAT

1. Implementation in a
frontier region: the case
of deforestation in the
Amazon
Carolina Navarrete Frías
Directora de América Latina y el Caribe
CIAT
c.navarrete@cgiar.org
Palmira, 13 de Agosto de 2019

2. What are the limitations to implementing forest policies
to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in the
forest agriculture interface?

3. Research Gap
 Critical obstacles for policy implementation or implementation gaps, yet
most of this literature has focused on North America and Western Europe,
which diminishes its applicability to other contexts for policy implementation
 The current literature does not sufficiently explain the limits of
environmental policy implementation in frontier economies
 Multi-level governance mostly applied in the European context. It was
developed for advanced industrial democracies and assumes rule of law
(Marks, 1992, Hooghe and Marks 2003)
 The analytical potential of linking policy networks, network governance and
multi-level governance remains undeveloped (Rhodes, 2017)
 An issue across the study of policy process is that the majority of the theory
describes rather than explains (Hill and Varone 2017)

4. These are various perspectives on frontier
economies
Growth and infrastructure,
frontier societies, markets,
economic, the agricultural-
forest interface and
development and covert
networks
Politically manipulated
markets, weak legal systems,
corruption and the arbitrary
enforcement of rules and
regulations (Musacchio and
Werker 2016)

5. Case study site: economic drivers and deforestation
in the Peruvian Amazon

6. Case Study Site

7. Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon
Between 2004 and 2012 the trend of annual vegetation loss in the Peruvian
Amazon has been increasing from 43,750 ha to 188,656 ha

8. Deforestación en Ucayali
Deforestation shows two main trends: large scale deforestation (red geometrical areas) for oil palm
plantations and for other purposes and shifting agriculture or selective extraction (red dots). Source:
Terra-i

9. Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon
• Ucayali is one of
the four
departments in the
Peruvian Amazon
where
deforestation has
concentrated
between 2000 and
2013.
• The most
vulnerable areas
for deforestation is
the land without
categorization and
the permanent
forests reserved
Proximate causes and underlying driving forces: Geist and Lambin (2002)
Source: SERFOR, GGGI, German Development Institute, 2015

10. Changes in Deforestation in Ucayali
The trends of forest loss between 2013 and 2018 presented puzzling changes,
which include a drastic drop in 2015 to 8,381 hectares, followed by a gradual
increase in 2016 (22,843 hectares) and 2017 (35,512 hectares), to plummet
again in 2018 (13,475 hectares).
Source: Terra-i

11. Preliminary Results

12. Multilevel Governance: Key dimensions of state
capacity for policy implementation
Resources
Control of
corruption
State capacity for policy implementation
Decentralization aimed to transfer more power and autonomy to the regions. The power dependence
dynamics taking place are leading to an erosion of State Capacity in Ucayali. This ultimately affects
natural resources governance. The underlying conundrum then is, how much the redistribution of
authority and competences has a real “impact on the redistribution of power”
- Budget allocation is a main bureaucratic (hierarchical) strategy used by the
national government to restrict regional and local government’s capacity in
Ucayali.
- Limited resources restrict the alignment of policies across levels of
Government
- Despite attempts to ‘transform’ the State capacity at the regional and local
levels, there are severe administrative and resource limitations coupled with
corruption and the unclear distribution of authority and competences
- There is evidence of significant change in Forest Policy (for example a
progression from licenses to forest concessions and from large forest
concessions to local forests), weak state capacity and corruption limit progress
at the regional and local levels towards achieving a better forest management
and fair distribution of benefits.

13. Multilevel Governance: Key dimensions for policy
implementation
Distribution of
authority and
competences
Coordination
accross policy
sectors
State capacity for policy implementation
• Co-decision making takes place in a context where competences
are not clearly defined. Regional authorities report that they are
not participating in a critical step which is intervention planning
• How to allocate competences to improve forest governance. In a
buffer zone of a communal reserve the competent authorities
are national.
• The coordination dilemma in MLG goes beyond policy spillovers

14. Multilevel Governance: Key dimensions of state
capacity for policy implementation
Interdependence
Policy options are important and finding the ‘best bet’ policy options matters as well. But
it is as relevant to establish the proper entanglement and arrangement with other policies
and institutions. This applies not only across levels of governance, but also across themes
• The implementation of policies within a context of multi-level governance
relies on a complex network of actors at the different tiers of government
and on the interdependence between state actors and non-state actors
(Committee for Forest Management).
• If non-state actors are properly articulated they can be key allies to improve
cross-sector and cross-level coordination. A growing interdependence
between governments and nongovernmental actors at the regional and local
levels is an indicator of a burgeoning MLG (management of regional
communal reserves).
• It can also be conducive to different approaches used by the State to
implement policies, where the involvement of non-State actors can become
more relevant to fulfil policy’s goals. Yet, it will require more coordination to
prevent the duplication of actions
• This growing interdependence also underscores the ways in which multi-level
governance is interrelated with network governance.

15. Multilevel Governance: for policy implementation
Steering
• Lima remains in control of key steps of procedures related to
policy planning and implementation in the regions. Regional
stakeholders referred to the participation rather than the
governance (Bache 2007) in decision-making processes. In their
own words: “we need to see that the strength of the decisions
is not so dependent from the desk at the national level.”
• MLG requires engagement with greater influence in policy
outcomes (transition from participation to governance) to
promote ownership as an important element of effective
implementation
• The Central Government incorporated participatory processes
within national regulations. Relevant examples include the
National Regulation for Ecological Economic Zoning and
Regional Concerted Development Plan

16. Network governance and land use planning
• One of the main cornerstones in forest policy
implementation to be able to effectively reduce
deforestation is to offer mechanisms and guarantee to
support the transition to formality. The operationalization
of land use planning faces not only technical and
institutional complexity, but also political complexity. This
multidimensional understanding of complexity is crucial
for policy implementation.
• We should not underestimate the role of networks to
serve as control mechanisms to reduce deforestation. The
co-existence of various networks in the frontier requires a
more hierarchical (bureaucratic) intervention to deter
covert networks in action.
• The operationalization of land use planning faces not only
technical and institutional complexity, but also political
complexity. This multidimensional understanding of
complexity is crucial for policy implementation.

17. Network governance and land use planning
• Institutional complexity does affect policy
implementation and land use planning. This complexity
translates, for example, in excessive costs and time for
formalization. It can deter the transition from informal to
formal timber extraction (from illegality to legality).
Perhaps one of the main cornerstones in forest policy
implementation to be able to effectively reduce
deforestation is to offer mechanisms and guarantees to
support the transition to formality.
• Expanding the understanding of the ecological
complexities of the Amazon is a necessary step to
improve governance, but will be insufficient if the
underlying political complexities are not considered as
well.

18. Policy Innovation
Local Forests
Mechanism to
formalize the
small timber
extractors
• Illegal extraction that used to take place in
forest concessions has now moved to local
forests and other areas.
• Over 90% of the timber inspected by
OSINFOR from the local forests was illegal.
• It is demanding beyond the existing capacity
of local governments
• The implementation issues (infractions) in
local forests bring forth a relevant conclusion.
It shows that to reduce deforestation and
forest degradation in the context of the
frontier, MLG and new models of forest
governance are not sufficient. Is not
necessarily that local level governance does
not work, but that other conditions such as
traceability coupled with determent of
illegality and informality are also required.

19. Policy Innovation
• Ucayali is the second department
with most sanctions
• Failed to create a sustainable source
of income and to reduce illegal
timber extraction.
• Limitations for sustainable forest
management as actors lacked the
experience and budget to build and
implement management plans
(small foresters and communities).
• Commercialization of timber from
non-authorized areas with official
documents.
• Limited resources also affect the
monitoring and enforcement of
illegal extraction.
(Law no. 27308): for the
use and management of
forest resources in
primary natural forests
Forest Concessions

20. Policy Innovation • Can have a role to disincentivize
deforestation through the
establishment of crops to obtain
land titles
• There need to be strategies and
incentives, as well as training, for
example, on which agricultural
practices can improve their
productivity without affecting the
forest and linking them to value
chains.
• It is very important to consider the
‘entire package’, not only granting
the contracts and formalizing
beneficiaries, but also considering
all the other ‘ingredients’ that will
make this mechanism work.
• To date only 14 cessions in use
have been allocated, all in San
Martín
Cession in use
For agroforestry systems
in the areas of
agroforestry or animal
production and land
recovery
(Robiglio and Reyes 2016)

21. Policy Innovation • Integrated economic activities in the
conservation areas
• Natural resource management at the
landscape scale
• Integrates bargaining, communities,
ecology, different levels and policies
• It encompasses four ethnic communities,
three departments, the lower and upper
Amazon.
• For the validation of the management plan,
there has been participation from actors
from all sectors and native communities.
ARAU
The Regional Environmental
Authority aims to integrate
environmental management at the
regional level.
Communal Reserve: El Sira
• The challenge is to take that approach to
other areas of the productive side, energy,
mines, agriculture
• A bottleneck could be that from the Central
Government, it is not authorized to run the
enforcement at the regional level which will
leave them ‘without teeth’
• Weak funding

22. Policy Innovation
• There was a first attempt
launching a referendum to
consolidate some regions. It
failed because there was a
massive no vote
• There was fear that integration
could lead to losing resources of
productive activities or from the
royalties.
• Regional presidents and their
unwillingness to give up
power...obstacle to the
regionalization process
Macro-regions
The idea was to constitute
regions in the Amazon, go
beyond the departments

23. Final Thoughts
From the perspective of the policy maker a bundle of rules can be seen as the way to
go. Nevertheless, are they enablers of change? Or are they becoming more
obstacles? ‘Keep it simple’ should be a mantra at the core of policy design to really
become a useful policy tool for implementation.
In the frontier, one wonders, what does it mean to ‘keep it simple’?
 To have policies that include the right balance of prescriptions to guide the
sustainable use and conservation of forests
 To have policies that are operational on the ground (in praxis) through the various
institutional arrangements operating at various levels, with different capacities
and modus operandi.
 Simplicity should also involve the articulation of local and regional networks
through principles such as steering and collaboration around agreed ‘rules of the
game’ to facilitate policy implementation and reduce the interference of ‘dark
networks’

24. Gracias
Carolina Navarrete Frías
Directora de América Latina y el
Caribe – CIAT
c.navarrete@cgiar.org