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EMBRACING COMPLEXITY – MEETING THE CHALLENGES OF INTERNATIONAL FOREST GOVERNANCE 6 Overcoming the challenges to integration: embracing complexity in forest policy design through multi-level governance

Forest policy at the international level suffers from both difficulties in securing agreement on policy goals as well as a lack of implementation on the ground. Attempts to respond to these problems through repeated efforts at top-down regime redesign have so far had little success. Even though many continue to argue that creation of a new treaty-based international regime might be an optimal solution, it remains an unrealistic option given the highly fragmented institutional architecture of the existing mix of international agreements, the multiple interests of public and private actors, and the complex policy problems that need to be addressed in the sector. Rather than persist in advocating exclusively for the creation of a treaty-based top-down regime, this chapter argues that reformers should, rather, embrace complexity and design incremental additions or ‘patches’ to the existing mix of regime elements which can help overcome their problems of fragmentation and poor policy coordination. Some regional organisations have successfully applied new governance instruments to existing mixes in such a fashion and lessons can be drawn from those experiences. Examples from the European Union and ASEAN in particular illustrate the potential of this decentralized approach to global forest policy design.