Social capital, context, and consensus-building and cooperation in community-based forest management

Due to its potential to contribute to the sustainability of forest management, community-based forest co-management has become globally acceptable, and some form has been reported in more than fifty countries. The benefits of co-management depend on cooperation among and between a group of local community stakeholders and a local government agency. However, neither cooperation, the consensus-building process through which it develops nor the context of the consensus-building process that influences both has been a focus of past co-management research. The thesis identifies the key criteria that are most important and best represent the consensus-building process as well as the context of the consensus-building process, using a comparative case study of two Local Citizens' Committees (LCCs) who advise a government agency on the development of public forest management plans in Ontario, Canada. Key criteria are identified using network analysis (domain, central and cluster analysis) of cognitive maps developed from participant and agency support staff interviews. Two structural analysis techniques are used to analyse each key criterion's links. Given-Means-Ends (GME) analysis of key consensus-building criteria is used to identify the informal goals of LCC members including the development of cooperation and their perceived influence over consensus-building criteria. GME analysis of key context criteria is used to identify the informal goals of agency support staff and their perceived influence over context criteria. Context, Structure and Performance (CSP) analysis is used to identify the relative influence of key consensus-building criteria on consensus-building and the development of cooperation and LCC performance. CSP is also used to identify the relative influence of key context criteria on context, consensus-building and the development of cooperation as well as performance. Since social capital is relevant to the design of resource management institutions for resource sustainability, an adapted social capital framework is used to re-interpret key consensus-building and key context criteria to generate a cross-case explanation of the development of cooperation. The thesis concludes by describing the two major obstacles to the development of cooperation between LCC members and co-management agency support staff, suggesting improvements to the social capital framework and with lessons and implications for consensus-building and co-management theory.