The term forest can signify many different physical realities. However, discourse analysis of Irish National and European Union forestry-related documents indicates ambiguity around this term is often cultivated rather than clarified. We argue here that policy language often embraces the multiple potential affordances within the term forest as a means of discursively bridging contradictions between economic and conservation goals. While this technique increases the readability and acceptability of such documents by diverse user groups and government bodies, it mutes the on-the-ground tensions of what forests mean for locals. Moreover, cultivating ambiguity favors the status quo through circumventing points of contradiction and shifting the work of interpretation and application of such documents to those on-the-ground, therefore perpetuating existing power differentials. As forests are central to resource management and responses to climate change, addressing this tendency is crucial to finding meaningful and place-specific environmental solutions.
Jodie Asselin is associate professor of Anthropology, University of Lethbridge. As an environmental anthropologist, her focus is in political ecology, place, and policy in rural resource sectors, particularly agriculture and forestry. Her geographic focus is in the circumpolar north and Ireland. Email: jodie.asselin@uleth.ca.
Gabriel Asselin is a cultural and linguistic anthropologist and policy analyst. His focus is on cross-sectorial communication, organizational culture, discourse analysis, agency, mobility, public health, community experience, and cultural reproduction. Email: gasselin@ualberta.ca.
Flavia Egli is currently working on completing her BSc of Environmental Science at the University of Lethbridge. Throughout her studies she has realized how important it is to understand the human side of environmental issues and how closely the two are related. This led her to do undergraduate research on environment, agriculture, and forestry policies in Ireland from an anthropological perspective. Email: flavia.egli@uleth.ca.