The forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are increasingly hailed as a “solution” to climate change, positioned within global climate governance as sites of carbon sequestration and climate finance. This framing extends a longer history in which scientific knowledge has rendered these forests legible as resources for accumulation: throughout the 20th century, forestry science promoted Congo’s forests as commercial timber reserves, facilitating an export-oriented industry largely shaped by foreign capital and colonial epistemologies. As avoided-deforestation schemes and carbon markets are attracting attention from researchers and investors alike, interrogating how knowledge practices have historically mediated forest commodification becomes essential for understanding the political economies underpinning contemporary climate interventions.

Informed by Extractivism, we introduce the concept of intraction – the immobilization of natural resources for profit – to trace continuities between colonial logging regimes and present-day carbon offset initiatives. Drawing from archival records (n = 249), interviews (n = 15), and scientific publications (n = 51), we examine whose knowledge shapes forest governance, who benefits, and for what purposes.

Our findings reveal that forestry science has consistently operated as an infrastructure of valuation, first enabling timber extraction and now facilitating carbon commodification. Timber extraction removed matter from place, while carbon markets now lock them in situ; yet, both forms of governance sustain distal societies while silencing local actors – particularly forest-dependent communities. The concept of intraction thus illuminates how contemporary climate governance reproduces historical power asymmetries, demonstrating that the shift from timber to carbon marks not a rupture, but a reconfiguration of extractive relations.

Gender equality is a key target for conservation but is often treated as a women's issue with limited attention to the roles of men and masculinities in perpetuating unequal gender relations. This paper provides a qualitative systematic review of academic literature on “masculinities”—actions, norms, and values associated with men—in the conservation sector and synthesizes the reported effects of masculinities on conservation science, policy, and practice. We adopt a performative and intersectionality-inspired approach, recognizing that masculinities may be performed by men, women, nonbinary, and gender-diverse people, and that gender interacts with other dimensions of identity such as race, age, and (dis)ability. We found that the current literature primarily reports conservation masculinities performed by White men in Global North and settler-colonial contexts. The most common actions and norms were the exercise of control/authority, rationalism, and strength, and the most common effects were the marginalization of others, prioritization of natural sciences over other knowledge, and support for policies such as protected areas and militarization. Explicitly addressing the dominance of such masculinities, as well as the conditions through which their dominance is enabled and rewarded, may contribute towards gender equality and to more just and effective forms of conservation. 

In the context of accelerating environmental degradation, human-nature relationships have gained renewed attention. In and around protected areas, these relationships are marked by contestation, war and conflict. This study explores the relationships between residents of Kisandji Village, near Upemba National Park (UNP) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the natural resources they depend on. Using mixed participatory methods, we examined resource use and perceptions of conservation versus livelihoods. Residents emphasized provisioning services as essential to daily needs, identity and security. This dependence, alongside institutional and historical constraints and threats of extractive activities, has shaped a feeling of exclusion and precarity. While some view UNP as limiting their livelihoods, others support conservation when it includes participatory management and acknowledges local needs. The findings highlight that the need for inclusive conservation strategies that align ecological goals with community priorities is even more crucial when other drivers of extractive activities threaten.

Printed business media, such as daily newspapers and periodicals, historically played a central role in public understanding of the colonial enterprise. They informed and shaped the view of entrepreneurial activities, often with the effect of legitimising the colonial project. We explore representations of ‘the local’ within business media, how these have changed (or not) over time, and the mechanisms that facilitate the stickiness of representations. By unpacking historic media, we can gain insights into how colonial narratives, and the systemic inequalities they produce, persist today.We focus our study on Cameroon's forests and forestlands, home to diverse indigenous and local communities, through the lens of four prominent British business media publications (The Economist, The Guardian, The Observer and The Times). We employ a critical political economy perspective to inductively analyse representations of ‘the local’ in these publications. More than 1800 articles were screened, and a total of 303 articles, covering a time span from the 1850s to the early 2010s, were analysed in depth using critical discourse analysis. Results demonstrate four main themes that legitimise and justify exploitation of ‘the local’ within the British business media: Comparing, Centring, Controlling and Fearing. We further identify Decentring as an emerging theme that hints at decoloniality. Whilst narratives of ‘the local’ within the British business media landscape appear to begin deconstructing historic power inequalities through time, this occurs behind many hidden nuances and justifications. Ultimately, exploitation and marginalisation of ‘the local’ persist through time, however their form is remoulded as perhaps a reassurance to the colonial conscience.

Climate finance is often considered an avenue of transformational change to address deforestation. However, financial dynamics influencing forests extend beyond climate related initiatives; forest landscapes are subject to a myriad of actors and interests. This paper examines if and how REDD+ finance can lead to transformative decisions in a complex political landscape of competing land uses, interests, and financial flows in Mai-Ndombe, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We employ a critical global political economy perspective to investigate inequality within global forest governance. We use a telecoupling framing combined with open-source research methods to examine public information and databases on company ownership and structures, to capture flows of finance and commodities. Our study demonstrates that, in Mai- Ndombe, climate finance incentives have limited influence in the presence of dominant interests and investments in extractive activities; particularly when mining, livestock, timber, and carbon concessions overlap, and oil exploration permits are in use by state and private sector actors. REDD+ strategies in the DRC inadvertently reinforce historical inequalities by focusing on local interventions; this overlooks persistent power relations that are visible in discursive practices, financial flows, and incentive structures centering around extractive land uses. The methods and data in this paper provide insights into how finance and investments in both climate change mitigation and industrial land use are driving land-use change and inadvertently reinforcing inequality. We encourage funders, policymakers, and researchers at the intersection of climate and forests to move beyond oversimplified narratives of who is to blame for deforestation, and instead trace the financial flows to examine who actually benefits.

Forests and forestlands in the Global South have been claimed for a myriad of interconnected global interests since colonial times, for plantations, concessions for resource extraction and commodity production, and conservation. Resistance to these claims is expressed in discourse, contesting and clashing with often louder, more powerful, legitimations of resource extraction and production. Understanding who argues, how – and how powerfully – when plantations/concessions are resisted or legitimised will be important when trying to shape trajectories for more just futures in forest frontiers. We compare two cases: the establishment of a new oil palm plantation replacing forest in Kribi, Cameroon, and the establishment of a contract for carbon offsets to an international broker in Sabah, Malaysia. We analyse print media covering the individual cases, using Discourse Network Analyzer (DNA) to identify involved actors, coalitions, and the discursive strategies at play. While our two cases show differences in who resists and supports large land deals and how, we identified three discursive strategies common to both studies: those resisting from below encounter limitations when trying to leverage transnational coalitions, while those advocating for large land deals employ delegitimisation and dismissal of critique, as well as silence and silencing as main discursive strategies.

The Nam Theun 2 dam is an influential case of applying safeguards to mitigate social and environmental impacts from hydropower, being used as a model for large dams globally. However, these safeguards have produced mixed results. We examine the role of safeguards in hydropower, and how stakeholders have discussed its use. Based on a literature review and stakeholder interviews, we conduct a discourse analysis of narratives used to frame hydropower. We find four discourses being used for different purposes: Green Neoliberalism to legitimize, Ecological Modernization to operationalize, Green Radicalism to criticize, and Radical Incrementalism to repurpose hydropower. Whereas green radicalism in high-income countries challenges over-consumption, we find that green radicalism in low-income countries highlights environmental justice and shortcomings of conventional development models. We argue for a broader understanding of discourses to include Radical Incrementalism as one strategy for change of careful and considered actions over time.

The government of Laos views agricultural commercialization as a key policy instrument for improving the livelihoods of farm households and contributing to rural development. Recent studies indicate that these commercialization processes are not solely state-driven but are often actively embraced by local communities. Here, we examine how contemporary farming practices in the commercialized landscapes of northern Laos influence farmers’ perceptions of well-being and fairness. Using a combination of participatory methods, an adapted well-being framework, and a multidimensional equity lens, we analyze rural life in northern Laos. The findings reveal that foreign agricultural investments have increased income and asset accumulation, particularly through rubber and sugarcane sales, but economic gains are distributed unevenly. Land-poor farmers are increasingly reliant on wage labor, contributing to growing social inequalities. The paper highlights how social pressures alongside government policies are driving the shift toward industrial agricultural practices and commercial plantations. Additionally, it touches upon the ‘capability approach’, emphasizing access to forests and land as key components of well-being. The central argument is that perceptions of fairness in agricultural commercialization are influenced by factors such as land rights recognition, equitable land distribution, and participation in decision-making processes.

Data and information are central to policy processes, as they frame the policy problem, the design and the implementation of policy, and evaluation of policy impacts. Better data and information infrastructure is expected to lead to better policies and outcomes, for example, by enabling transparent decision making and enhancing capacity and accountability. However, the collection, selection, representation, framing and application of data are not merely technical and apolitical procedures, but are dependent on the interests represented in the policy processes they aim to inform. Social scientists have pointed to the “politics of numbers” and their effects on forests and trees and on the people relying on them, as well as on those involved in their measurements. We use the case of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) international initiative and focus on the central aspect of understanding drivers of deforestation and measures of REDD+ performance to unpack the politics of policy processes. Data and information are socially constructed, and their interpretations are shaped by the contexts in which they emerge. Dominant beliefs in the transformative power of new data and technologies cannot explain why, often, new information does not translate into policy change and action to halt deforestation. Technological advances in making new and ever larger amounts of data available for analysis are a necessary yet insufficient condition for changing the business as usual in deforestation. Through openness, reflexivity and the tackling of silences in data and information related to the global political economy of deforestation the scientific community can make a key contribution to more equitable policy change.

Justice and human well-being are increasingly used as key considerations when assessing the socio-economic impacts and trade-offs associated with forest conservation on local and indigenous populations. This paper incorporates environmental justice framework and human well-being bundles to get a more comprehensive understanding of the social-economic impacts of forest conservation. Through household surveys, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews in three villages adjacent to the Campo Ma'an National Park (CMNP) in Cameroon, we examine how the creation of the national park amidst expanding large-scale commodity plantations affects perceptions of well-being bundles and justice among local and indigenous communities. Specifically, we look at how the establishment of CMNP influences forest-dependent people's freedom to access forest resources, food sufficiency, health, security, social relationships, life satisfaction, and perception of fairness in benefit distribution, participation and recognition. The results reveal a concerning state of relatively low wellbeing evaluation and diminished perception of justice among local populations which, we argue, lead to a deterioration of overall capabilities among local and indigenous communities. The lack of sense of justice was associated with the loss of freedom in accessing common resources, hindered cultural-spiritual practices, lack of compensation, and unresolved human-wildlife conflicts. Comparative analysis reveals variations in well-being bundles among the three communities, influenced by various factors such as the different histories of displacement and law enforcement, ethnicity, level of dependence towards forest resources, external NGO support, and the expansion of extractive industries in the area. Reflecting on these findings, this study offers insights into how justice and human well-being can be more integrated into the process of co-constructing and reimagining future interventions aimed at improving the quality of life of local communities and promoting sustainability goals in Cameroon and beyond.