Iordachescu FLARE-Abstract
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Caring for forests during the Covid-19 pandemic: Forest livelihoods and the limits of cyberactivism in Romania George Iordachescu The University of Sheffield Department of Politics Abstract Evidence shows that rampant deforestation will worsen the frequency and intensity of future global pandemics. During the Covid-19 pandemic proposals to strengthen the fight against illegal logging and to dedicate concentrated efforts to protect forests around the globe are gaining traction. The pandemic is used by governments to justify deregulation of the forestry sector in an attempt to bust the economy, or, quite the contrary, to increase enforcement and strengthen forest protection. Since the first weeks of the lockdown, forest protection sparked political disputes in Romania, a country that has been invariably portrayed in the international press as ineffective in its fight against illegal logging and timber mafia. By linking the forest destruction to the havoc wreaked by coronavirus outburst, the civil society groups set in motion arguably the most widespread debate about timber exploitation, deforestation and illegal logging witnessed by the country in recent years. Policy changes came straightaway. The export of round wood outside the EU was banned, and officers from the forestry guards joined the police and the army in controlling the traffic on public roads during the state of emergency. Among the most extreme proposals advanced by activists was a total ban on timber harvesting. Using ethnographic data, in-depth interviews with a diverse range of stakeholders and follow-the- policy methods, the paper shows how the spectacle of illegal logging obliterated the boundaries between legality and illegality. I argue that blanket bans represent a case of slow violence affecting forest-based livelihoods and a large rural population that relies on timber to heat their homes and cook their food. As the Romanian case shows, bans are never only about saving forests or allowing nature to heal itself. They have manifold political and social outcomes and enforcing them in turbulent times can have severe – and long-ranging – impacts on already vulnerable environments and livelihoods, as well being ineffective in response to the current COVID-19 pandemic. .