Governmental regulation and nongovernmental certification of forests in the tropics: Policy, execution, uptake, and overlap in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua

We analyzed how and why governmental forest regulation and nongovernmental forest certification in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua and their execution lead to, or fail to produce desired changes in forest owner and user behavior toward the enhanced sustainability of tropical forests. The findings confirmed not only that sufficient resources and capacity for forest policy execution are crucial for attaining policy objectives, but also that innovative arrangements for promoting, verifying, and enforcing policy compliance can compensate for limited resources and processes. Such arrangements incorporate a mixture of policy tools and actors that go beyond the traditional command-and-control approach, including the establishment of positive fiscal incentives for sustainable forest management, provision of technical assistance, participation of private-sector forest stewards, and support from nongovernmental organizations. The results also shed light on the mitigating effects of local-level inducements and constraints to governmental and nongovernmental forest policy adoption and compliance, such as forest size and composition, available resources, technical capacity, and attitudes toward forest policy and implementers.