Sciences, knowledges, and the practice of forestry

We address the question of how credible knowledge that will contribute to more effective forest policy and management can be produced. We argue that some forest-related knowledge-producing practices of professional scientists and of local people are similar, and given the differences in the knowledge they produce, we explore how they might be used productively together to create better understandings of forests with resulting better forestry practice and policy. Using a case study of participatory forest ecology research, we demonstrate that when professional (conventional) scientists do research in collaboration with local experts (civil scientists), the resulting knowledge can be more accurate and more policy relevant than they could produce doing research on their own or only with other conventional scientists.