Towards a donut regime? Domestic actors, climatization, and the hollowing-out of the international forests regime in the Anthropocene

Political responses to global deforestation, as a defining characteristic of the so-called Anthropocene, are a key field for scholarship and policy analysis. In the past decade, research has proliferated on global forest governance and the international forest regime (IFR), yet the academic literature on the IFR is just as dispersed and fragmented as the IFR itself. An emerging body of literature now suggests the key role of domestic actors in international forest governance, questioning an implicit top-down logic of global arrangements. In spite of all the resources at its disposal, the IFR is characterised by complexity, fragmentation and ineffectiveness regarding its main objective of reducing global deforestation.Based on an extensive literature review, the authors’ long-standing observations and selected own empirical findings, this review article aims to provide an updated historical account of the IFR and proposes a from-below approach for analysing the IFR from the viewpoint of domestic actors. In this bottom-up perspective the IFR is conceptualised as a set of resources that key domestic actors can pick and choose from according to their interests and in the light of domestic politics.Using illustrative empirical examples from recent research and own observations, the article finds that the IFR is being hollowed-out by (i) the growing policy links between forests and climate change - a process referred to as “climatization”- and (ii) domestic influences. We conclude that our from-below approach is instrumental in further explaining why deforestation has largely continued, despite the emergence of the IFR some three decades ago. Our findings about the importance of domestic actors illustrate that global governance arrangements cannot operate effectively, relative to their ambitious mandate and for tackling policy issues relating to the Anthropocene, unless they are granted adequate resources and support by key domestic actors.