Understanding forest certification using the Advocacy Coalition Framework

Forest certification is an indirect economic incentive for improved forest management. Originating in the early 1990s, and supported by environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), forest certification has become one of the more controversial topics in forest policy discussions, and the real benefits it provides to forest owners and managers have been questioned. Under these circumstances, the rapid spread of certification has been subject to divergent interpretations. In this article, the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), an actor-based analytical framework developed by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith in the US, is used to analyse the development of forest certification systems in Canada, Indonesia and Sweden. The ACF provides a convincing framework for this analysis, particularly when it is complemented with elements from the policy network approach and the concept of epistemic communities. Support is provided for several of the key hypotheses of the ACF, and a number of proposals for modifications to the ACF are made. Based on the example of forest certification, it is argued that the ACF can be a useful tool for understanding policy processes with multiple actors and involving policy learning.