Forrest D. Fleischman

Assistant professor
Department of Ecosystem Science & Management
Texas A&M University
forrestfleischman.weebly.com/

Research Activites

"Forrest is an assistant professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science & Management at Texas A&M University, where his research and teaching both focus on natural resource policy. His current research projects focus on two closely connected areas: 1. Comparative Forest Administration: Studies of forest policy often identify administrators as key actors in making forest policies successes or failures, but rarely examine the actual work of foresters. Building on his dissertation research on forest policy implementation in the central India states of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, Forrest is developing a comparative approach to understanding the development of forester's professional values in interaction with political forces. In addition to continuing work in India, he is expanding his work to look at forestry in the United States (including in Texas and New England), as well as Mexico. 2. Comparative Forest Policy: Forrest is currently working with a team of colleagues to conduct a comparative assessment of the impact of policies on forest cover change in tropical forest countries. Although there has been a great deal of research on the drivers of land use change in these countries, most of this research has not focused on understanding how government action can slow or reverse deforestation. A large number of policies have been proposed and implemented, including decentralization, community-based natural resource management, and Payments for Ecosystem Services, and there are syntheses of experiences with these policies in particular, but they generally do not look at the larger policy context to understand how these policies interact with other agricultural or forest sector policies. The team is developing a comparative approach that will enable us to compare national policies across countries, controlling for other social and economic factors, using the SESMAD framework, hosted at Dartmouth College. The current focus is on Central America. Prior to joining the faculty at A&M, Forrest was a postdoc in the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth College, where he helped develop the SESMAD approach, building on the insights of his late mentor, Elinor Ostrom. He completed his PhD in the Joint Program in Public Policy at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs and Department of Political Science, where he was a research assistant at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis."