What Is Secondary about Secondary Tropical Forest? Rethinking Forest Landscapes

Abstract

Forests have long been locations of contestation between people and state bureaucracies, and among the knowledge frameworks of local users, foresters, ecologists, and conservationists. An essential framing of the debate has been between the categories of primary and secondary forest. In this introduction to a collection of papers that address the questions of what basis, in what sense, and for whom primary forest is 'primary' and secondary forest is 'secondary,' and whether these are useful distinctions, we outline this debate and propose a new conceptual model that departs from the simple binary of primary and secondary forests. Rather, we propose that attention should be given to the nature of the disturbance that may alter forest ecology, the forms of regeneration that follow, and the governance context within which this takes place.

Keywords

Secondary forest; Forest landscapes; Disturbance; Regeneration; Public authority; Subsistence livelihoods

Published in

Human Ecology
2020, volume: 49, number: 3, pages: 239-247

SLU Authors

• Pain, Adam

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Marquardt, Kristina

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Lindh, Arvid

  • Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Hasselquist, Niles

  • Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG15 Life on land

UKÄ Subject classification

Other Biological Topics
Ecology

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-020-00203-y

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/109620