Green Development Governance and Local Livelihoods: a Realist Synthesis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25077/jakp.11.2.377-398.2026Abstract
Green-development policies create opportunities for resource-dependent communities but can also impose restrictions, administrative costs, and livelihood uncertainty. This study examines how these conditions shape cooperation, withdrawal, exclusion, and resistance. A bounded realist synthesis was adopted to develop context-sensitive explanations across selected policy settings rather than estimate average effects or provide exhaustive global coverage. The boundaries comprised publication date, policy relevance, and geographical emphasis. The synthesis covered peer-reviewed publications from January 2022 to 16 August 2026 on social forestry, conservation, sustainable commodities, and community environmental governance, primarily in Indonesia, supplemented by comparative international evidence. Publications were identified through journal hand-searching, targeted publisher searches, and citation chaining. Eligibility required a governance or livelihood pathway and sufficient information to inform at least one context–mechanism–outcome (CMO) element. Purely technical studies without such a pathway were excluded. The evidence comprised 26 substantive publications and four methodological and public-administration sources. Implementation accounts, relevant associations, and contrasting findings informed six provisional configurations concerning rights and authority, participation, livelihood compatibility, administrative burden, market access, and restrictive enforcement. The Green Implementation Alignment Framework connects these configurations through rights, authority, livelihoods, implementation capability, and accountability. Its contribution is to explain how constraints in one domain may undermine improvements in another, including recognition without usable authority and certification without accessible markets. The framework offers diagnostic guidance for public administrators. Geographical concentration, heterogeneous evidence, and incomplete search and appraisal records limit causal confidence, warranting further comparative testing.
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