Between forest and growth : conceptualizing constrained climate policy space for a sustainable future in rainforest countries

Abstract

Rainforest countries occupy a structurally paradoxical position in the international political economy of sustainable development and climate governance. With a unique ecosystem, they are the most ecologically important and climate-critical regions in the world, yet they are consistently on uneven, often suboptimal, paths toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The dominant narratives explaining this disparity point to weak domestic governance, insufficient institutional capacity, and policy ambition, overlooking how global economic integration, trade dependence, and international climate governance structurally constrain national policy space. This dissertation introduces and develops the concept of Constrained Climate Policy Space (CCPS) as its central theoretical contribution to explain the unequal sustainable development outcomes in rainforest countries under binding structural constraints embedded in the global political economy. In doing so, I argue that rainforest countries' policy space for sustainable development is jointly constrained by developmental imperatives (growth pressures, fiscal dependence, trade exposure) and environmental pressure (deforestation, biodiversity loss, emissions). To empirically test the CCPS framework, the dissertation adopts a multi-level quantitative design, combining panel data analysis for a broader sample of 87 rainforest countries (2000–2023) with a country-specific time-series analysis for Brazil, Indonesia, and Cameroon. Methodologically, the research triangulates dynamic fixed-effect panel models, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) estimation, and Granger causality tests to identify both contemporaneous and intertemporal linkages between SDG performance, structural pressures, institutional variables, and external financial flows. The results offer strong statistical support for four main findings. First, developmental imperatives emerge as the stronger and more consistent predictor of SDG performance across specifications, producing a persistent and often lagged negative effect across all models. Second, environmental pressure rarely has a strong or systematic concomitant effect on aggregate SDG performance but acts instead as a conditioning constraint that cumulatively closes policy space over time. Third, the interaction term DII×EPI is positive and statistically significant, indicating that structural pressures do not accumulate in a purely additive manner. The qualitative comparison shows different CCPS regimes. Four, governance and political institutions mediate the effects of CCPS in rainforest countries. Brazil is in a development-constrained regime dominated by growth-oriented imperatives and characterized by environmental pressure as an amplifier. Indonesia is in a fragile, interaction-driven regime where mounting environmental stress increasingly bites into development space. Cameroon is in a severely constrained regime with high developmental urgency, low institutional buffering, and a reactive sustainability governance orientation. These cases illustrate that global ecological standing does not yield developmental equilibration and highlight the worry of missing the target of the SDG 2030 agenda if immediate actions are not relieved of both developmental and environmental constraints. The study's conclusion is that sustainable development in rainforest countries is conditioned by feasibility under constraint, not solely by ambition within an unequal international political economy. By redirecting the analytical lens from policy design to structural constraint, the CCPS framework can help make the concept of climate-compatible development more realistic, as well as the research and policy dialogue on international cooperation under conditions of constrained policy space.