The subnational government power influence in the management of forest protected areas in Patagonia

Abstract

Protected forests are territories of power struggles between different private and state actors at different levels of governance with increasingly land use pressures. In federal countries, where forests are under a subnational jurisdiction, subnational actors have a strategic role in the management of forests, resulting in power distributions. In Argentina, the aesthetic attractiveness and environmental value of the Andean Patagonian Forests resulted in the protection of the ecosystem under different features, turning the ecological region into one of the most protected with both national and subnational protected areas. Against this background, the aim of this study was to analyse and compare the power balance of the actors involved and define the role of the subnational government in two protected areas with different jurisdictions. In order to do so two protected areas in the Andean Patagonian region were selected, in the first case the subnational government is the main authority and in the second case the subnational government shares the administration of a forest territory with the national government and indigenous communities. By applying the Actor Centred Power approach that considers the power expression into three elements: information, incentives and coercion we compared the governance structure in both areas. Our results showed that in both cases the subnational government was one of the actors with most coercive and incentive power, although the information power remained with other actors. However, subnational governments did not show enough coercive capacity to develop effective regulations to prevent the appearance of conflicts of interest.