The final episode of Season 2 of Branching Out: The Forest Podcast, hosted by Jose Bolaņos from IUFRO HQ, focused on IUFRO Scientific Division 9 - Forest Policy and Economics. The episode features Janette Bulkan from the University of British Columbia in Canada and Lukas Giessen from the Technical University Dresden in Germany, along with co-host Gerda Wolfrum from IUFRO HQ. Janette and Lukas coordinate Working Parties on Indigenous peoples and forest landscapes and A.I. methods in forest social sciences, respectively.
Besides highlighting the broad range of topics covered by Division 9 spanning from forest resources research to information and communication, from forest history to legal aspects, and from forest governance to forest sector analysis, Janette and Lukas explained why the role of social sciences in forest research has become so important.
In this context, Lukas referred to a quote by famous forester Jack Westoby who said that "forestry is not about trees, it's about people."
Janette focused mainly on the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and forests highlighting her work in the Guyana Shield. Globally, she said, Indigenous Peoples, who have the longest association with specific places, including in forests, which are their traditional ancestral territories, often have the weakest legal rights to those areas.
Lukas, on the other hand, delved deeper into the concept of forest governance. He also talked about the big potential that he sees in AI helping social science to increase rigor and to reflect on human biases. It remains to be seen how successful AI will be in analyzing qualitative, not quantitative social science data, but this is what makes it so exciting.
Based on these two approaches, the episode investigates how both the traditional and the high-tech knowledge contribute to forest and forest management today and in the future.
Finally, looking ahead to the 2029 IUFRO World Congress in Nairobi, the first of its kind on the African continent, both shared their expectations of the event. While Lukas hoped for a large participation and lots of scientific outputs deriving from interactions at the event, Janette specifically wished for a good representation of Indigenous Peoples from Africa and elsewhere, who have a story to tell, who have knowledge to impart and who will be listened to by the policymakers and research scientists gathered there.
