Criteria and indicators of sustainable forest …...sustainable forest management to succeed. It...

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33 Chapter 2 Criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management John L. Innes In the previous chapter, we examined some of the early interactions between humans and forests and how concerns about the supply of forest products led to the devel- opment of ideas about forest management. We also looked at how the evolving ideas about forest management were focused very much on the volumetric yield of timber (reflecting their origins in concerns about timber supply), whereas at the same time concerns were growing about environmental degradation in general, often triggered by concerns over deforestation and forest degradation. By 2007, and the Non-legally Binding Instrument on All Types of Forests (UN, 2007), these two streams of thought had reunited, with recognition that good forestry practices could play a major role in maintaining the environment and economic and social welfare. How did this happen? The early concepts developed in central Europe about maintaining a continuous supply of timber formed some of the earliest ideas about sustainability. In such cases, it was strictly related to the development of a sustainable supply of timber. Forests were managed on an economic basis, with no concern about other values, such as biodiversity. This reflects the views of Heinrich Cotta that forests should be managed as crops: in agriculture, the crops were also seen purely from the point of view of the products they produced. Such ideas were inconsistent with the views that forests could serve multiple pur- poses. In the second half of the 20th century, there was increasing recognition that forests could provide many different goods and services if managed well. This view has evolved over time, and today it is widely recognized that forests can supply these multiple goods and services, provided that a landscape view is adopted. There are however some differences of opinion here. Some believe that an individual stand can- not provided all goods and services, and instead a landscape viewpoint should be adopted. Others argue the opposite, insisting that every forest area can meet all needs. As in many forest-related questions the answer probably lies somewhere in between, and might best be couched as ‘It depends . . . .Whichever spatial scale is being considered, forest managers still need to have an idea of why they are managing an area of forest. The growing environmental concerns about forest practices in the 1970s and 1980s led to attempts to define what the goals of forest management should be, with such definitions invariably being linked to sus- tainability, or sustainable forest management. One of the first international organiza- tions to work in this area was the International Tropical Timber Organization. Taylor & Francis: Not for Distribution

Transcript of Criteria and indicators of sustainable forest …...sustainable forest management to succeed. It...

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Chapter 2

Criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management

John L. Innes

In the previous chapter, we examined some of the early interactions between humans and forests and how concerns about the supply of forest products led to the devel-opment of ideas about forest management. We also looked at how the evolving ideas about forest management were focused very much on the volumetric yield of timber (reflecting their origins in concerns about timber supply), whereas at the same time concerns were growing about environmental degradation in general, often triggered by concerns over deforestation and forest degradation. By 2007, and the Non-legally Binding Instrument on All Types of Forests (UN, 2007), these two streams of thought had reunited, with recognition that good forestry practices could play a major role in maintaining the environment and economic and social welfare. How did this happen?

The early concepts developed in central Europe about maintaining a continuous supply of timber formed some of the earliest ideas about sustainability. In such cases, it was strictly related to the development of a sustainable supply of timber. Forests were managed on an economic basis, with no concern about other values, such as biodiversity. This reflects the views of Heinrich Cotta that forests should be managed as crops: in agriculture, the crops were also seen purely from the point of view of the products they produced.

Such ideas were inconsistent with the views that forests could serve multiple pur-poses. In the second half of the 20th century, there was increasing recognition that forests could provide many different goods and services if managed well. This view has evolved over time, and today it is widely recognized that forests can supply these multiple goods and services, provided that a landscape view is adopted. There are however some differences of opinion here. Some believe that an individual stand can-not provided all goods and services, and instead a landscape viewpoint should be adopted. Others argue the opposite, insisting that every forest area can meet all needs. As in many forest-related questions the answer probably lies somewhere in between, and might best be couched as ‘It depends . . . .’

Whichever spatial scale is being considered, forest managers still need to have an idea of why they are managing an area of forest. The growing environmental concerns about forest practices in the 1970s and 1980s led to attempts to define what the goals of forest management should be, with such definitions invariably being linked to sus-tainability, or sustainable forest management. One of the first international organiza-tions to work in this area was the International Tropical Timber Organization.

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The principles of sustainable forest management developed by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO)

As a result of growing concerns about maintaining supplies of high quality timber, and potential threats of a boycott among consumer countries of wood derived from tropical forests, the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) began to look at ways in which forests might be managed more sustainably. Some of this early work recognized that the whole idea of sustainable management depended on what value was being sustained (Poore, 1989). While the emphasis remained on production of timber, the importance of other goods and services provided by forests was recognized. An unpublished report commissioned by ITTO in 1988 concluded that ‘the extent of tropical moist forest which is being deliberately managed at an operation scale for the sustainable production of timber is, on a world scale, negligible’. It went on to state that ‘progress in establishing stable sustainable systems is still so slow that it is hav-ing very little impact on the general decline in quantity and quality of the forest’ and ‘the future existence of large areas of tropical forest, perhaps even the majority, and of highly significant ancillary goods and service of the forest, depends equally on the establishment of sustainable systems of management, many of which must have timber production as their basis’ (cited by Poore, 2003).

Poore (1989) recognized many of the issues that subsequently found their way into the definition of sustainable forest management. It is worth quoting from his intro-ductory chapter as his concerns bring together the issues that have exercised forest managers all over the world.

The widespread concern about tropical forests is based on a number of issues: that these forests are disappearing at an alarming rate; that the loss of so much forest has potentially disastrous environmental effects – on soil, water, climate, the genetic richness of the globe and the supply of future possible for-est products; that the uses to which the land is being converted are often not sustainable – that the forest in fact is being destroyed for no ultimate benefit, and that forest-dwelling peoples are being arbitrarily displaced.

(Poore, 1989, p. 1)

As a result of the work done by Duncan Poore, ITTO was one of the first organiza-tions to recognize the need for guidelines on the sustainable management of forests. In the first of its publications, ITTO Guidelines for the Sustainable Management of

Natural Tropical Forests, 41 principles for the sustainable management of tropical forests for timber production were laid out, as well as some possible actions under these principles (ITTO, 1992a). At this time, the emphasis was still very much on timber production, but the principles clearly recognize the need to consider a broad range of fac-tors if the timber production is to be sustainable. The 41 principles were very general, and there was recognition that these would need to be modified for local application. There was also a recognition by Duncan Poore that these principles would have little effect

Figure 2.1Deforestation and forest degradation near Bogor, Indonesia. The lack of sustainable management of tropical forests remains a particular concern of ITTO.

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if there was no system of reporting, and that this reporting would need to have a sound baseline and regular evaluation. This however, proved to be too big a step, and even today no country has provided a comprehensive report covering all the areas proposed by Poore.

At the same time as these principles were being formulated, ITTO was also devel-oping ways in which the sustainable management of forests could be defined and measured. ITTO commissioned a discussion paper from Duncan Poore and Mok Sian Tuan and then convened a panel of experts in The Hague in September 1991 to work on both a definition of sustainable forest management and a set of criteria and indica-tors by which it might be measured. Following more discussions and recommendations from a further panel of experts, ITTO published its Criteria for the Measurement of Sustainable Tropical Forest Management (ITTO, 1992b). This publication provided a revised definition of sustainable forest management and a provisional list of criteria and indicators for use at both the national scale and the scale of the ‘forest management unit’. It was aimed at helping producer countries meet ITTO’s Target 2000 – namely to ensure that all trade in tropical timber was sourced from sustainably managed forests by the year 2000. At this point, there was no clear definition of a criterion or indicator – it was simply taken for granted that people would understand these terms. The first national-level criterion was the ‘forest resource base’, characterized by several indicators such as the area of protection and production forests within the permanent forest estate. The remaining criteria were the continuity of flow, the level of environ-mental control, socio-economic benefits and institutional frameworks. At the scale of the forest management unit, the criteria were less descriptive, with one being ‘An acceptable level of environmental impact’, and an indicator for this criterion was the extent of soil disturbance. The remaining criteria were resource security, the continuity of timber production, the conservation of flora and fauna, socio-economic benefits, and planning and adjustment to experience.

The criteria and indicators presented in 1992 were subsequently revised in 1998. By the time of this revision, a number of other criteria and indicator schemes had been developed to help define and measure sustainable forest management, and ITTO was able to draw upon these. The resulting criteria (Table 2.1) thus show a number of similarities to the other schemes developed elsewhere (ITTO, 1998). The revision acknowledged that the first version of the criteria and indicators had focused on the production of timber, and stressed that the 1998 revision was intended to cover the full range of forest goods and services, including non-timber values such as biological diversity. As in the first document, indicators were proposed for both the national level and the level of the forest management unit.

ITTO (1998) also clearly specified the nature and purpose of criteria and indicators. It argued that a criterion ‘describes a state or situation which should be met to comply with sustainable forest management’, whereas indicators are designed such that ‘a change in any one of them would give information that is both necessary and signifi-cant in assessing progress towards sustainable forest management’ (ITTO, 1998, p. 3).

The 1998 criteria and indicators presented by ITTO were accompanied by two manuals on their implementation (ITTO, 1999a, b), dealing with implementation at the national level and implementation at the scale of the forest management unit. The manuals were intended to give countries the tools that they needed to measure progress towards sustainable forest management, and through this, progress towards meeting Target 2000.

ITTO continued to work on criteria and indicators of sustainable forest manage-ment, and in 2003 worked with the African Timber Organization to combine two parallel sets of criteria and indicators applicable to tropical forests in Africa (ITTO, 2003). This represents one of the few successful attempts to merge independently

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Table 2.1 Criteria of sustainable forest management as published by ITTO in 1998.

1. Enabling Conditions for Sustainable Forest Management

This consists of the general institutional requirements for sustainable forest management to succeed. It addresses the policy, legislation, economic conditions, incentives, research, education, training and mechanisms for consultation and participation. Many of the indicators are descriptive. Taken together, the information gathered indicates the extent of a country’s political commitment to sustainable forest management.

2. Forest Resource Security The extent to which a country has a secure and stable forest estate, which could include plantations, to meet the production, protection, biodiversity conservation and other social, cultural, economic and environmental needs of present and future generations.

3. Forest Ecosystem Health and Condition

The condition of a country’s forests and the healthy biological functioning of forest ecosystems. Forest condition and health can be affected by a variety of anthropogenic actions and natural occurrences, from air pollution, fire, flooding and storms to insects and disease.

4. Flow of Forest Produce Forest management for the production of wood and non-wood forest products. This can only be sustained in the long term if it is economically and financially viable, environmentally sound and socially acceptable. Forests earmarked for production should be capable of fulfilling a number of other important forest functions, such as environmental protection and the conservation of biological diversity. These multiple roles of forest should be safeguarded by the application of sound management practices that maintain the potential of the forest resource to yield the full range of benefits to society.

5. Biological Diversity The conservation and maintenance of biological diversity, including ecosystem, species and genetic diversity. At the species level, special attention should be given to the protection of endangered, rare and threatened species. The establishment and management of a geographic system of protected areas of representative forest ecosystems can contribute to maintaining biodiversity. Biological diversity can also be conserved in forests managed for other purposes, such as for production, through the application of appropriate management practices.

6. Soil and Water The importance of the protection of soil and water in the forest is twofold. It has a bearing on maintaining the productivity and quality of forest and related aquatic ecosystems (and therefore on the health and condition of the forest, Criterion 3), and it also plays a crucial role outside the forest in maintaining downstream water quality and flow and in reducing flooding and sedimentation. The environmental and social effects of mismanagement (landslides, flooding, water pollution) can be very significant.

7. Economic, Social and Cultural Aspects

The economic, social and cultural aspects of the forest, besides those mentioned under Criteria 4, 5 and 6, are included here. The forest should have the potential, if sustainably managed, to make an important contribution to the sustainable development of the country.

Adapted from ITTO (1998).

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developed sets of criteria and indicators. However, comprising 1 principle, 5 criteria, 33 indicators and 45 sub-indicators at the national level, and 3 principles, 15 criteria, 57 indicators and 140 sub-indicators at the forest management unit (FMU) level, the ITTO system typifies one of the problems associated with such indicator sets: a large number of indicators and sub-indicators are specified with no indication of how these will actually be measured in countries where access to finances and technologies is severely limited.

The difficulties associated with the proliferation of indicators led to some seri-ous rethinking of ITTO’s proposed criteria and indicators, and in 2005 it made further revisions to its lists (ITTO, 2005). The revisions took into account the many developments in the use of criteria and indicators around the world, and the experi-ence gained by ITTO in the training of numerous parties in the use of criteria and indicators (C&I). While there are always problems associated with the revision of indicators that are designed to measure change over time, if carefully done revisions can increase the value of a monitoring system. This was recognized by ITTO, and ITTO (2005) stated:

The ITTO C&I should continue to be reviewed and refined to benefit from experience and to reflect new concepts of sustainable forest management. Revision should take into account evolving knowledge about the function-ing of forest ecosystems, human impacts on forests, whether planned or unplanned, and the changing needs of society for forest goods and services. Moreover, the capacity to measure indicators will increase and knowledge will improve about the nature of the ‘best’ indicators with which to assess, monitor and report on forest management.

(ITTO, 2005, p. 8)

While similar to the criteria used in ITTO (1998) (see Table 2.1), the revised criteria more closely fitted ‘common thematic areas’ of sustainable forest management that had

Figure 2.2The merging of the ITTO criteria with those developed in Africa means that the full range of tropical forests is included, from humid to semi-arid. These heavily grazed Acacia woodlands in northern Kenya would now be included.

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been identified during conferences of experts in 2002 and 2004, organized jointly by ITTO and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). These common thematic areas are:

• Extent of forest resources;• Biological diversity;• Forest health and vitality;• Production functions of forest resources;• Protective functions of forest resources;• Socio-economic functions;• Legal, policy and institutional framework.

Most recently, there have been several changes in ITTO’s approach (ITTO, 2015), and four objectives and seven principles are recognized in the voluntary guidelines for the sustainable management of natural tropical forests (Table 2.2). The seven principles are accompanied by 60 guidelines, each of which has up to eight suggested actions. Some of these are quite specific; others such as ‘Ensure that forest management plans have provisions for biodiversity monitoring and that managers understand and are responsive to the outcomes of such monitoring’ will encounter the types of problems described in Chapters 3 and 15.

A full account of the history of ITTO and its role in promoting the sustainable management of tropical forests can be found in Poore (2003).

Table 2.2 Objectives and principles for the sustainable management of natural tropical forests, and their relationship to ITTO’s criteria and indicators.

Objective Principle C&I for SFM

Providing the enabling conditions of SFM

Principle 1: Forest governance and security of tenure

Criterion 1: Enabling conditions for SFM

Principle 2: Land-use planning, permanent forest estate and forest management planning

Criterion 1: Enabling conditions for SFM

Criterion 2: Extent and condition of forests

Ensuring forest ecosystem health and vitality

Principle 3: Ecological resilience, ecosystem health and climate-change adaptation

Criterion 3: Forest ecosystem health

Maintaining the multiple functions of forests to deliver products and environmental services

Principle 4: Multipurpose forest management

Criterion 4: Forest production

Criterion 5: Biodiversity

Criterion 6: Soil and water protection

Principle 5: Silvicultural management

Integrating social, cultural and economic aspects to implement SFM

Principle 6: Social values, community involvement and forest-worker safety and health

Criterion 7: Economic, social and cultural aspects

Principle 7: Investment in natural forest management and economic instruments

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The Montreal Process

At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, discussions about forests were particularly protracted. Conference discussions eventually led to the production of a document called the Non-Legally Binding Authoritative Statement of Principles for a Global Consensus on the Management, Conservation and Sustainable Development of All Types of Forests, otherwise known as the Forest Principles. This document described in broad terms the principles by which forests should be managed, but had no legal force.

The Montreal Process originated in a meeting in Montreal in September/October 1993 organized by the CSCE Seminar of Experts on Sustainable Development of Temperate and Boreal Forests. At this meeting, the concept of developing crite-ria and indicators of sustainable forest management was discussed, using ITTO’s documents as an example and with strong encouragement from Duncan Poore, who had played such a large part in developing the criteria and indicators for the ITTO. Another influential document at the meeting was a US Forest Service report titled Ecosystem Management: Principles and Applications. This report was one of the outcomes of the Eastside Forest Ecosystem Health Assessment, published by the US Forest Service in 1994. A draft of the chapter (‘An Overview of Ecological Principles for Ecosystem Management’) by P. Bourgeron and M. E. Jensen, who were both at the meeting, was available and was used heavily in the formulation of the meeting documents.

The meeting divided into two main parts, one looking at the physical and biologi-cal aspects of forest management, and the other dealing with the socio-economic and cultural aspects. By the end of the meeting, criteria and indicators for the physical and biological aspects had been identified and agreed upon, but the socio-economic group failed to reach any level of significant agreement. This problem has persisted throughout the history of the Montreal Process, and to this day the criteria and indica-tors for the socio-economic and cultural aspects of forest management remain quite unsatisfactory.

In December 1993, in a meeting attended by representatives from Canada, the USA, Japan, Russia, the UK, Germany and Finland, an agreement was reached to continue the development of criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management in at least two ways: in Europe, through the European Ministerial Conference on Forests (termed at the time the Helsinki Process), and informally with the non-European countries (Brand, 1997). The Helsinki Process drew up a list of criteria and indicators which was agreed upon in June 1994, with the list largely based on the environmental criteria developed at the previous year’s Montreal meeting, with the addition of a sociological criterion. The criteria and indicators were accompanied by Pan-European Operational Guidelines for Sustainable Forest Management aimed at guiding operations at the man-agement unit scale. At the Third Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe in Lisbon in 1998, the final Pan-European Criteria, Indicators and Operational Guidelines for Sustainable Forest Management were approved (Resolution L2). After the Montreal meeting, the non-European temperate and boreal countries agreed to continue in an informal manner, and a group of negotiators began the task of draw-ing up a list of criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management. This list, which drew heavily on the report of the 1993 meeting, was finalized quite quickly and was published in February 1995 in the form of the Santiago Declaration (see http://www.montrealprocess.org/documents/publications/techreports/1995santiago_e.pdf). It contained five environmental criteria, a socio-economic criterion (as in the European criteria) and a seventh criterion dealing with the legal, institutional and economic

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framework for forest conservation and sustainable management. Since then the Working Group has continued to meet, and the criteria and indicators have con-tinued to evolve. The Montreal Process agreement concerns the sustainable man-agement of forests in a range of temper-ate boreal countries, currently Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, New Zea-land, Russian Federation, the USA and Uruguay. The forests in these 12 countries represent 60% of the world’s forests and 90% of the world’s temperate and boreal forests.

The most recent (2015) edition of the Montreal Process criteria and indicators iden-tifies seven criteria:

• Conservation of biological diversity;• Maintenance of productive capacity of forest ecosystems;• Maintenance of forest ecosystem health and vitality;• Conservation and maintenance of soil and water resources;• Maintenance of forest contribution to global carbon cycles;• Maintenance and enhancement of long-term multiple socio-economic benefits;• Legal, institutional and economic framework for forest conservation and sustain-

able management.

Around the world, similar processes were occurring at the same time as ITTO and the Montreal Process were developing their criteria and indicators. A vast number of indicators have been proposed, and many of these have been listed online (see http://www. sfmindicators.org; a Chinese version is available at http://www.sfmindicators.cn). This website was initially set up as an interactive site that would enable anyone to add new indicators, but following the abuse of this policy, it is now a read-only site.

Other criteria and indicator initiatives

In 2000, Castañeda reported that there were nine major processes dealing with criteria and indicators. These were:

• Pan-European Forest Process on Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management;

• Montreal Process on Criteria and Indicators for the Conservation and Sustain-able Management of Temperate and Boreal Forests;

• Tarapoto Proposal for Criteria and Indicators for Sustainability of the Amazon Forest;

• Dry Zone Africa Process;• Near East Process;• Lepaterique Process of Central America;• ITTO Initiative on Criteria and Indicators;• African Timber Organization;• Regional Initiative for Dry Forests in Asia.

(Castañeda, 2000)

Figure 2.3Badly damaged forest in the Boonoo Boonoo area of New South Wales, Australia. Deforestation and forest degradation is not restricted to tropical areas; it is also widespread in temperate and boreal forests, and C&I schemes such as the Montreal Process are intended to measure progress towards the sustainable management of these forests.Ta

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As indicated earlier, the African Timber Organization and ITTO merged their schemes in 2005. Of the remainder, enthusiasm for their use has varied. However, even if they have not been fully implemented in national reporting schemes, they have resulted in the development of a general consensus over the definition and characteristics of sustainable forest management (McDonald and Lane, 2005).

Political realities

Criteria and indicators as a concept has long been viewed as both important and use-ful. It is in the forest sector’s best interest to measure progress towards achieving sus-tainable forest management, a goal that applies to all managed forests. In 1997, the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests endorsed the concept, urging countries ‘to integrate suitable criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, as appropriate, into the overall process of the formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of national forest programmes’ (Commission on Sustainable Development, 1997, p. 7). As a result, the concept was pursued, with regional politics resulting in the development of parallel processes around the world. When assessed in 2000, 150 countries appeared to have been involved in the development of criteria and indicators in some form.

In 2011, only six of the nine international sets of criteria and indicators were still in use (Grainger, 2012), and by 2014, it was evident that a lot less effort was being expended on criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management than earlier. In particular, the level of reporting was extremely variable, and many indicators that had been suggested had been dropped. Even within the Montreal Process countries, there was considerable variation in the level of reporting, and the quality and content of the few reports that had been published was extremely variable (Chandran and Innes, 2014). Countries were inconsistent in the indicators they chose to report, and with those indicators they frequently used differing methods to derive the data, making comparison almost impossible.

Criteria and indicators were designed specifically as monitoring tools to measure progress towards the achievement of sustainable forest management. This goal has only been partially fulfilled, but this does not mean that the concept has been a failure. In fact, it has achieved remarkable success in bringing into focus what is meant by sustainable forest management, and what components are a part of the management of forests. As a result, the criteria, which are broadly similar across the schemes, have been incorporated into a number of national and international forest policies and regulations (Rametsteiner and Mayer, 2004). Caswell (2014) argues that criteria and indicators are widely used for a variety of purposes, including monitoring specific projects, regional reporting, certification and other purposes. She found that important uses included developing a global understanding of sustainable forest management, increasing aware-ness and appreciation of non-timber forest benefits and values, improving and expand-ing forest monitoring and assessment, developing management plans and standards, communicating trends in forest conditions to policy-makers and the public, communi-cating and engaging with stakeholders, and improving forest databases and inventories. The concept has also been adapted to meet local needs (e.g. Hickey and Innes, 2008), with varying levels of effectiveness. An important adoption has been by certification standards: all the important standards are based on one or more of the criteria and indicator systems. Since these certification standards determine whether a management unit can be independently certified as being managed sustainably, criteria and indicators are playing a major role in the day-to-day management of forests around the world.

It is worth noting that while there has been relatively good agreement internationally on the meaning and content of the criteria, one criterion has proven to be stubbornly resistant to treatment, namely the maintenance and enhancement of long-term multiple

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socio-economic benefits (Gough et al., 2008). Twenty-one years after the initial Montreal Process meeting, there are still major concerns over this criterion, and it contains many noticeable gaps, such as the absence of any indicators deal-ing with the aesthetic values of forests. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the most important is that the numerous expert panels that have been convened to define criteria and indicators worldwide have been remarkably short on socio-economic expertise, reflecting the traditional training of foresters in the natural sciences.

Despite the problems associated with the reporting of indicators, the criteria that have been developed still represent an attractive way to examine the various facets of sustainable forest management, and they form the basis of the different chapters in this book. The indicators also provide some interesting guides as to the types of infor-mation that need to be considered when assessing progress towards achievement of the criteria. As will be shown, it may be very difficult to gather some of this informa-tion, but good forest managers should be aware of them when making management decisions. For example, while it is almost impossible to measure genetic diversity, it is possible to avoid taking actions that are likely to reduce genetic diversity. In fact, achieving the conservation of biological diversity is one of the biggest challenges facing forest managers, and this is examined in the following chapter.

While criteria and indicators are useful in defining the scope of sustainable forest management, for framing forest policy at a national scale and for preparing forest management plans at the scale of a forest management unit, they are generally missing a critical component. The indicators are designed to measure progress towards sustain-able forest management, but no scheme so far has gone so far as to specify target values for a particular indicator. When planning the management of a forest area, having such targets is critically important. However, they are extremely difficult to set, and there is a general recognition that setting a target for one indicator will have an impact on what can be achieved with other indicators. Consequently, defining such targets has become a complex process, involving not only the incorporation of state-of-the-art scientific knowledge but also stakeholder consultation and complex modelling to optimize the potential solutions (Mendoza and Prabhu, 2003). Some of the techniques that can be used to do this are addressed in Chapter 16.

Conclusions

There is general agreement in the forest sector and beyond that we must manage the world’s forests sustainably. This agreement was formalized in 1992 at the World Con-ference on Environment and Development in the form of a set of non-legally binding principles of forest management (see Chapter 12). Since then, great effort has gone into codifying the nature of forest management. Criteria and indicators have become a widely accepted means of doing this. The criteria and indicator sets that have been developed are applicable at a range of scales (national, regional, forest management unit), although not every criterion or indicator is applicable at every scale. In practice, these different sets are actually quite similar, and convergence continues to occur as the

Figure 2.4Social and cultural values of forests have not been handled well in criteria and indicator schemes. The photo shows a canopy walk in the research forest of the Experimental Forest, College of Bio-Resources and Agriculture, National Taiwan University. Such raised walks have become increasingly popular around the world.

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sets are refined over time. While any of the sets of criteria and indicators could have been used as a framework for this book, the Montreal Process set has been chosen because its geographic coverage is so broad (its member countries represent 80% of the temperate and boreal forests of the world), and because the criteria are equally applicable to tropical forests. While the indicators are mentioned, little emphasis is given to them in this book. They provide some guidance for the type of phenomena that managers should consider, but the appropriateness of indicators will vary from forest to forest and situation to situation. There is a substantial literature on the selection of indicators, and considerable care is needed when developing them.

Further reading

ITTO 1999a. Manual for the Application of Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests. Part A: National Indicators. ITTO Policy Development Series No. 9. Yokohama: International Tropical Timber Organization. Available at: http://www.itto.int/policypapers_guidelines/

ITTO 1999b. Manual for the Application of Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests. Part B: Forest Management Unit Indicators. ITTO Policy Devel-opment Series No. 10. Yokohama: International Tropical Timber Organization. Available at: http://www.itto.int/policypapers_guidelines/

ITTO 2005. Revised ITTO Criteria and Indicators for the Sustainable Management of Tropical Forests Including Reporting Format. ITTO Policy Development Series No. 15. Yokohama: International Tropical Timber Organization. Available at: http://www.itto.int/policy papers_guidelines/

Poore, D. 2003. Changing Landscapes: The Development of the International Tropical Timber Organization and Its Influence on Tropical Forest Management. London: Earthscan Publications.

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: Not

for D

istri

butio

n