Assessing actor power in the trade-offs between ecosystem services affecting forest management – A case study from Central Slovakia

In countries with a planned economy history, numerous actors interested in ecosystem services (ES) have emerged over the last decades. The power these actors exert is crucial to the promotion of their interests. The case study from central Slovakia aimed to determine who the most powerful actors are and, via the actor-centered power approach and actor analysis, to assess their power in trade-offs between ES in forest management. The actor analysis involved the identification of key actors and 38 subsequent in-person interviews. The results showed that the actors whose income depended on the sale of timber and fuelwood were predominantly interested in production ES, whereas the other actors were generally interested in supporting, regulating and cultural ES. This situation should not be surprising as interest conflicts of varying intensity naturally occur in multifunctional forest management. The identified trade-offs between ES however, were powered predominantly by conflicting policies and by information asymmetry. While governmental actors used various power elements (coercion, incentives, unverified information), the non-governmental actors relied mainly on unverified information. Due to existing power and governance imbalances among the actors, the forest policies were weak or further weakened by different interests. Although various actors have emerged in the last decades, only a few have real power in forest management, specifically governmental actors in forestry and (non) governmental actors in nature protection, (non) state forest enterprises and timber processing businesses. Certain actors benefited from this situation, often causing even more institutional erosion, resource plunder, bias towards promoting certain coalitions of interests or information asymmetry.