Abstract
This paper deals with a specific form of carbon-centred rationale aimed at maintaining carbon stocks in forest soils by promoting certain practices and discouraging others, primarily clearcutting. The goal is to explore recategorisations and realignments within the forestry sector brought about as a result of increased awareness of this rationale in the public debate within France. To do this, I conducted a qualitative case study (observations, interviews, and document analysis) in the Morvan region (centre, France), which plays a role in the French national media as a hotspot of opposition between contrasting forestry models. The global issue of maintaining carbon in forest soils is translated into the local context mainly by environmental NGOs and their allies, who redefine older critiques of clearcutting. Knowledge on the topic circulates in three parallel networks of stakeholders in the Morvan, due to a polarised setting where the Regional nature park of the Morvan has difficulty acting as an interface. Beyond the committed decarbonisation agendas of citizen-led forestry groups, a more general loss of legitimacy of clearcutting is tangible within the forestry sector, with some operators favouring other models, such as natural regeneration. Greened forms of clearcutting are also justified with merely strategic uses of carbon arguments. Paradoxically, these various positions about maintaining carbon in forest soils can lead to a similar interest for less productive areas of forest. Another weak signal of the revival of forestry production in the name of carbon is the increasing implementation of the Label bas carbone scheme.
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Notes
My own translation from https://www.forestopic.com/fr/foret/les-acteurs/1510-foret-bois-priorite-stockage-carbone-marc-fesneau-ministre-agriculture, retrieved February 28, 2023.
Regional Nature Park of the Morvan): A chartered local authority with rural development goals, created in 1970 and covering an area of 3,290 km2. It brings together rural municipalities and the departmental and regional councils to which they belong.
(Low-carbon certification): An incentive policy from the Ministry for Environment. It authenticates carbon credits linked to forest plantation or improvement.
Three forest rangers and the head of the local unit of the Office national des forêts (National Forest Office—ONF): a government agency managing all national and municipal forests in France, accounting for 25% of all forest surface area); officials from the decentralised Department for Environment, Planning and Housing in Burgundy, including the former forest policy officer; and the head of the section in charge of forestry at the decentralised Department for Agriculture, Food and Forest in Burgundy.
A PNRM employee, its President and a member of its board; four communal councillors in charge of forestry issues in their respective municipalities; two rural mayors experimenting with democratic or alternative management of their respective municipal forests; the mayor of a village involved in building new forest roads; the president of a departmental council and some of its employees; and a member of the board of the Bibracte Grand Site de France (Major Site of France: a label for France’s best-managed, classified natural sites that are very well known and receive large numbers of visitors).
Interviewees from eight local environmental NGOs: founders of Autun Morvan Ecologie (AME, created in 1989 in the city of Autun, covering the south of the Morvan, recognised as an institutional player) and Adret Morvan (created in 2012 to campaign against a planned industrial sawmill, covering the north of the Morvan, more activist-oriented), which are both bridging local oppositions with national advocacies; two managers, a forest advisor, and a member of the scientific committee of two so-called “citizen-led and ecological” forestry groups (the Morvan Deciduous-Trees Safeguarding Group, which is linked to AME, and the Wild Cat Group, linked to Adret Morvan); members of local groups campaigning against specific forestry projects: Amis de notre forêt au duc, Collectif Lavault-de-Frétoy, Sauvegarde du massif d’Uchon and la Bresseille.
An employee and an elected representative of owners from the Centre régional de la propriété forestière (Regional Centre of Forest Ownership—CRPF): an equivalent to the Chamber of Agriculture for the forestry sector, with a council of elected representatives of forest owners and a team of technical advisors—it also validates forest management plans; the heads of two local forestry companies who also own large tracts of forest (one of them being also involved in sawing activities); the local heads of a national forest management company and of a tree planting company; employees of two forest cooperatives; a large landowner managing his forest on his own, the SAFER (Land Use and Rural Settlement Corporation: a semi-public body which controls rural land ownership through a preemptive right on farmland. It also intervenes on forest land transactions, but in a mediation role); a forestry advisor for the Morvan; an employee in charge of the relations with local authorities; and the CEO of a start-up carrying out Label bas carbone projects.
(National Institute for Geographic and Forest Information): Originally a producer of the topographical maps of France, it has also been responsible for the National Forest Inventory since 2012.
(Burgundy Limousin Forest Cooperative): One of the six major forest cooperatives, active in the centre and centre-east of France.
Such as Forêts préservées, in the Pyrenees (https://foretspreservees.com/), or Etats sauvages in the Massif Central and in the Vosges (https://www.etatssauvages.org/).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the coordinators of the special issue for their invitation to analyse my materials from a carbon rationale perspective, which proved to be very stimulating, and for the organisation of the pre-submission workshop at Cestas (France) on 23 June 2022. Moreover, the comments and advice of both anonymous reviewers were very helpful in improving the quality of the argumentation.
Funding
This study is supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) within the framework of the Investissements d’avenir programme (ANR-15-IDEX-02). In particular, the funding paid for the research internship of Charlotte Bertrand, who carried out five interviews.
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Baysse-Lainé, A. Maintaining carbon in the forest soils of the Morvan (France): spatial and knowledge competition around the evolution of practices. Rev Agric Food Environ Stud (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41130-024-00205-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41130-024-00205-0