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In the last two decades, attention on forests and ownership rights has increased in different domains of international policy, particularly in relation to achieving the global sustainable development goals. This paper looks at the changes in forest-specific legislation applicable to regular productive forests, across 28 European countries. We compare the legal framework applicable in the mid-1990s with that applicable in 2015, using the Property Rights Index in Forestry (PRIF) to measure changes across time and space. The paper shows that forest owners in most western European countries already had high decision-making power in the mid-1990s, following deregulation trends from the 1980s; and for the next two decades, distribution of rights remained largely stable. For these countries, the content and direction of changes indicate that the main pressure on forest-focused legislation comes from environmental discourses (e.g. biodiversity and climate change policies). In contrast, former socialist countries in the mid-1990s gave lower decision-making powers to forest owners than in any of the Western Europe countries; over the next 20 years these show remarkable changes in management, exclusion and withdrawal rights. As a result of these changes, there is no longer a clear line between western and former socialist countries with respect to the national governance systems used to address private forest ownership. Nevertheless, with the exception of Baltic countries which have moved towards the western forest governance system, most of the former socialist countries still maintain a state-centred approach in private forest management. Overall, most of the changes we identified in the last two decades across Europe were recorded in the categories of management rights and exclusion rights. These changes reflect the general trend in European forest policies to expand and reinforce the landowners' individual rights, while preserving minimal rights for other categories of forest users; and to promote the use of financial instruments when targeting policy goals related to the environmental discourse.

This paper explores the deployment of flower missions, flower shows and window gardening in Victorian efforts to elevate the moral and material condition of London's working poor. It identifies three forms of botanical engagement e the moral, pedagogic and civic e that were key to understanding the use of flowers in this period. The construction of a 'moral botany' in the early nineteenth century popularised the notion that flowers could carry meaning beyond their ornamental value. This attribute was widely used by social reformers who employed flower shows as biopolitical and pedagogical instruments to discipline the desires, habits and behaviours of the working poor and their children; projects that were heavily gendered, placing responsibility for the moral defence of the family upon women. Floral reform movements at the civic level also worked within a racialised framing of 'civilisation' amidst late century fears of racial degeneration. This paper therefore argues for the political nature of plant life, drawing attention to the role of plants in the co-constitution of human worlds.

Forests are expected to contribute towards an increase in supply of sustainable renewable materials and energy, which is commonly referred to as 'wood mobilization'. In Europe, much attention has focused on the gap between wood potentially and actually harvested. This paper assesses the evidence for successful interventions, based on a critical review of evidence conducted through the EU-funded project SIMWOOD (Sustainable Innovative Mobilisation of Wood). Few evaluations are able to report the impact of interventions on the amount of wood harvested in a way that can be attributed unambiguously to the intervention. The review concludes that (1) there is a need to focus less on surveys of constraints and more on real-life interventions and their success or otherwise; (2) more could be learnt from the experience of such interventions, if evaluations were published in the scientific literature, and if qualitative methods were included, to help understand why stakeholders do or do not change behaviours and increase wood harvests; (3) successful interventions are multifaceted (often combining incentives and advice, or farming and forestry, or production and markets) and (4) although experience can be shared effectively between regions, interventions must be tailored to local social, biophysical and political conditions and developed in context.

Anna M. Lawrence combines family, gender, and religious history to chronicle the rise of Methodism in England and America during the Revolutionary period. Focusing on the transatlantic Methodist notion of family, this book speaks to historical debates over what family means and how the nuclear family model developed over the eighteenth century

The Shimshal Nature Trust is an indigenous institution rooted in a thriving and dynamic culture that links the local ecology and society. It has deployed identity, traditional knowledge, science, and institutional innovation to adapt to outside challenges without destroying local commons management. This paper reviews scholarly debate on natural resource management and uses resilience theory to examine this complex adaptive system. Two disturbances to Shimshal resilience prompted by a national park and a new road are traced. Shimshali responses include social processes of learning, knowledge systems, and renewal. Ways in which adaptive renewal cycles involve Revolt, a short, fast reaction, and Remember, a larger, slower cascade, are put in perspective. Simple and powerful qaulities that guide change are highlighted. We conclude that the Shimshal Nature Trust creates a resilient interface between the outside and inside worlds. Government, donors, and academics can participate in contextualized action-learning cycles that result in more informed and negotiated contributions to local institutions for commons management.

Adaptation to climate change has often been discussed from the perspectives of social vulnerability and community vulnerability, recognising that characteristics at local level will influence the particular adaptations undertaken. However, the extent to which national-level systemic factors influence and shape measures defined as adaptations has seldom been recognised. Focusing on adaptation to climate change in forestry, this study uses the example of two countries in the northern hemisphere with different forest ownership structures, forestry industry and traditions: Sweden, with strong private, non-industrial ownership, dominant forest industry and long forestry traditions; and Scotland, with forest ownership dominated by large estates and investment forestry based on plantations of exotic conifer species. The study shows how adaptation to climate change is structurally embedded and conditioned, which has resulted in specific challenges and constraints for different groups of forest owners within these two different contexts. This produces a specific set of political spaces and policy tools by rendering climate change in relation to forestry manageable, negotiable and practical/logical in specific ways. It is recommended that the focus of future work on climate-related issues and development of adaptation measures and policy should not be primarily on climate-related factors, but on institutional analysis of structural factors and logics in target sectors, in order to critically explore concepts of agency and power within these processes

The paper explores the experiences and meanings that participants attribute to community wildlife sites, a new kind of space created through the initiative and commitment of local residents, often without any wider organisational involvement. The study focuses on six case studies in Oxfordshire, England. It is exploratory and discusses the findings as points of departure for further research. In all the sites, community was an important part of the motivation for starting the work, social relations a rewarding aspect of engaging in it, and personal connection with the site and its experiences of nature, a widely and emotionally expressed outcome. The sites offer spaces for the active enactment of participation in nature. While access is essential, property rights appear to be less important than the sense of ownership generated through interaction with the site. Likewise, formal organisation and governance is less important to the participants, than the social interactions of the group, and new friendships. The primary purpose in each case, is to give people more access to 'the countryside' or 'nature' or 'orchids'. In doing so, however, the participants have given themselves experiences that are personally meaningful. There is potential for contribution to resilient landscapes through networks of habitats, and to wider social objectives of government policy, but these will have to be balanced carefully with the important of local initiative in contributing to the sites' meanings.

The paper explores the experiences and meanings that participants attribute to community wildlife sites, a new kind of space created through the initiative and commitment of local residents, often without any wider organisational involvement. The study focuses on six case studies in Oxfordshire, England. It is exploratory and discusses the findings as points of departure for further research. In all the sites, community was an important part of the motivation for starting the work, social relations a rewarding aspect of engaging in it, and personal connection with the site and its experiences of nature, a widely and emotionally expressed outcome. The sites offer spaces for the active enactment of participation in nature. While access is essential, property rights appear to be less important than the sense of ownership generated through interaction with the site. Likewise, formal organisation and governance is less important to the participants, than the social interactions of the group, and new friendships. The primary purpose in each case, is to give people more access to 'the countryside' or 'nature' or 'orchids'. In doing so, however, the participants have given themselves experiences that are personally meaningful. There is potential for contribution to resilient landscapes through networks of habitats, and to wider social objectives of government policy, but these will have to be balanced carefully with the important of local initiative in contributing to the sites' meanings.

Europe has a wealth of community forest arrangements. This paper aims to transcend the diversity of locally specific terms and forms, to highlight the value of considering them inclusively. Building on methods to make sense of diversity, we use reflexive grounded inquiry in fifteen cases in Italy, Scotland, Slovenia and Sweden. Within four dimensions (forest, community, relationships between them, and relationships with wider society), we identify 43 subdimensions to describe them collectively. Our approach shows how European arrangements contribute to wider discourses of collective natural resource management. Both tradition and innovation in Europe inform options for environmental governance. Arrangements challenge the distinction between 'communities of place' and 'communities of interest', with implications for social and environmental justice. They exemplify multilevel environmental governance through both vertical and horizontal connections. Emerging from long histories of political and environmental pressures, they have a role in enhancing society's connection with nature and adaptive capacity.

Europe has a wealth of community forest arrangements. This paper aims to transcend the diversity of locally specific terms and forms, to highlight the value of considering them inclusively. Building on methods to make sense of diversity, we use reflexive grounded inquiry in fifteen cases in Italy, Scotland, Slovenia and Sweden. Within four dimensions (forest, community, relationships between them, and relationships with wider society), we identify 43 subdimensions to describe them collectively. Our approach shows how European arrangements contribute to wider discourses of collective natural resource management. Both tradition and innovation in Europe inform options for environmental governance. Arrangements challenge the distinction between 'communities of place' and 'communities of interest', with implications for social and environmental justice. They exemplify multilevel environmental governance through both vertical and horizontal connections. Emerging from long histories of political and environmental pressures, they have a role in enhancing society's connection with nature and adaptive capacity. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01377-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.