Hegemony, Uneven Development and Nature: Understanding Forestry Practices in Polish Carpathian Woods

The article examines the escalating environmental conflict surrounding forestry policies in Poland. Forest ecosystems have been identified as vital to maintaining the stability of the biosphere and its cycles within the planetary boundaries, including their role in biodiversity, water retention, and carbon sequestration. However, forests serve vital economic functions, as well, mainly as reservoirs of timber, a key resource for many industrial value chains. Increasing tension between these two dimensions of forests' metabolism can be observed in the Carpathian region of Poland, as identified by the multiple conflicts between the public institution State Forests, the wood industry, local communities, scientists, and the environmental movement. In particular, the intensified logging in old-growth forests in peripheral, mountain locations is a subject of intensified controversy.

The study investigates forestry practices in two Polish mountain communes - Bircza and Zawoja - highlighting their differing political economies and responses to state-led forestry regulations. Utilizing qualitative interviews and quantitative data and drawing from Gramsci’s theory of hegemony we analyze the historical material conditions and power dynamics shaping local forestry practices. Building on critical state theory, we perceive forestry practice and policy as embedded into a broader socioeconomic system of a semi-peripheral, dependent market economy. Arguably, extraction, processing and exports of timber resources fuels Poland's development, in a spatially uneven manner.

The State Forests National Forest Holding, as the dominant entity, influences economic and environmental decisions through both coercion and consent, perpetuating productivist forestry methods that prioritize timber production over ecological diversity and sustainability. The findings suggest that cooptation of rural populations is facilitated by the uneven development and long-standing spatial economic and political divisions. Including social aspects into the content of environmental conflicts may offer pathways toward more equitable and ecologically sensitive forest management while challenging the entrenched hegemonic structures of forestry governance in Poland.