Deforestation in the tropics is a complex issue, involving many actors who often pursue competing goals and interests. Over the three past decades, a range of governance interventions to halt degradation and deforestation has emerged - from traditional approaches like land use zoning (i.e., designation of protected areas), to partnerships between private, public, and civil society actors. Increasingly, interventions are implemented at the landscape or jurisdictional level. Assessing the effectiveness and equity of such governance approaches, however, is challenging due to their long implementation times, limitations to using experiments, and ethical concerns with real-world studies.
To overcome these challenges, we used the agent-based ABSOLUG model - developed in a previous study - to simulate three governance archetypes under varying social and environmental conditions.
The results of our research are currently under review and I will share them here as soon as possible :-)