3. Forest governance in a multi-level and multi-stakeholder context Chair: Carina Keskitalo, Associate Professor of Political Science, Umeå university, Sweden Panel members: Maria Tysiachniouk, Director of the Centre for Independent Social Research, St. Petersburg Magnus. Boström, Associate Professor of Sociology, Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research/Stockholm University Antonina Kuliasova, Research Associate, Centre for Independent Social Research, St Petersburg Camilla Sandström, Senior Lecturer of Political Science, Umeå University Monica Hammer, Associate Professor of Life Sciences, Södertörn Collage Description: Globalization has a major impact on forest resource use: it globalizes markets and increases resource exploitation and competition for resources, at the same time as it creates the possibilities for multi-level structures for cooperation for sustainable forestry and natural resource protection. Structures for cooperation and decision-making often involve actors beyond the state in networks of governance. Examples of such structures for impacting forest governance are forest certification, a market initiative through which independent auditor organisations control environmental and social conditions of logging. It is thereby a case where private market initiatives for sustainable forest use have been successful where national or international state-led initiatives have failed (such as the attempts to develop a Forest Convention). Model Forests constitute another way of developing and implementing methods for sustainable forest use and conflict resolution in specific localities, often between stakeholders that may otherwise be in competition over resources, such as large-scale forestry and local recreation or hunting. However, mechanisms such as these only function when there is sufficient governance capacity to provide a stable and predictable policy environment. In areas where governance is weakened by the limited power of NGOs, auditors and the state to control forestry practices and warn about forest mismanagement, it is difficult to control illegal resource exploitation, overharvesting and trade, and to develop sufficient coordination and planning mechanisms. Russia and Sweden are two countries where civil society and models for forest management are developed very differently, but where forest certification and model forest development constitute existing means for improving forest governance, social accountability and the resilience of systems to deal with challenges such as globalisation. This working group will include case studies from Russia and Sweden within a number of ongoing projects, but also invites papers from other case study areas dealing with forest governance. The working group aims to elucidate the conditions that can be built upon in the different cases in order to develop or improve adaptive governance.