The review of existing international assessment initiatives and actors involved reveals a tremendous potential for collaboration. Similarity of goals, complementary expertise, scarcity of resources and a general interest in collaboration, present an ideal starting point to develop efficient networks. In fact, many of the named initiatives present networks and many actors are already collaborating at different levels. In an attempt to explore possibilities to increase collaboration efficiency, this section explores some possibilities for organizing information, analyzing the usefulness of C&I to facilitate collaboration and discussing limits for their harmonization.
The information age in which we are living is characterized by digital communication and excessive quantities of information. There is a general consensus about the need to organize and structure this often overwhelming information and to optimize its utilization and benefits. This applies also to the information generated by environmental, economic and social monitoring. Consequently, numerous conferences, meetings and expert consultations have taken place over the last years to discuss possibilities for improving information management. Here, the following two strategies for improved information management have been defined (Köhl, 2000; UNEP, 2002; Braatz, 2002; Puustjärvi and Simula, 2002):
- Harmonization: Making reports to different instruments comparable and consistent, for example through the use of common or comparable terms and definitions, standardized units for data and common reference years. Comparability means that the definitions are set so that their possible differences may be identified and data based on one definition may be converted to meet the needs of another, related definition. Consistency of definitions reflects an internal agreement of various elements of definitions, or agreement between systems of definitions. Often, harmonization implies a process of standardization by applying the same definitions for a concept within different contexts, or the same rules to formulate locally applicable definitions.
- Streamlining refers to the reduction in the number of reports or the amount of information required in individual reports; this is possible by reducing duplication in the reporting requests or reducing the number of items to be considered in a certain report.
A variety of opportunities have been discussed to implement these strategies. One of the most comprehensive attempts to evaluate existing options was the feasibility study worked out by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) with the initial aim of exploring ideas for harmonizing national reporting to international agreements, especially to harmonize information management between the five global biodiversity-related treaties4 (WCMC, 2000). In summary four harmonization strategies were discussed:
- Modular reporting: The concept of modular reporting is based on the idea that the information required for implementing conventions, and reporting on that implementation, can be defined as a series of discreet information packages (modules), which between them respond to the reporting requirements of any given convention.
- Virtual Reporting: Instead of submitting reports, the information that comprises the report is made available to the potential users, by placing the information on a national website, instead of submitting the information to national focal points. Thus, virtual reporting would see countries providing access to their primary data in electronic form, continuously updated in a cycle, which suits national needs.
- Reporting obligation database: Here the concept is to develop a detailed consolidated inventory of all reporting obligations placed on a specific country. The information would be compiled in the form of an annotated list of specific “questions” or information elements demanded (directly or implicitly) for each obligation and each of these questions and obligations would be key worded to facilitate analysis. Subsequent analysis of the database should highlight areas of potential overlap and synergy and help guide national information management as well as definition of reporting requirements.5
- Consolidated reporting: The concept here is to prepare one “consolidated” report that would satisfy the obligation of a range of international conventions to which the country is party.
WCMC recognized that financial and technical support is necessary to strengthen regional mechanisms to facilitate harmonization of reporting to international treaties. External support is needed for the development of methodologies and national standards, fostering cooperation and providing a pool of expertise. The elaboration of a generic handbook, that provides in one place the relevant guidelines and formats for a range of conventions, was expected to generate great day-to-day practical benefit, as well as being a tool to promote a process of stepwise harmonization. UNEP agreed with four developing countries for pilot projects to test the different harmonization strategies. A web forum was established to facilitate the discussions and the exchange of information and intermediate products between the pilot projects. So far, however, only the pilot project related to the model of a consolidated national report was finished (UNEP, 2002).6
Nevertheless, existing assessment initiatives already apply different strategies for harmonization and mainstreaming. From the initiatives listed in Annex 1, the following four cases may give an impression of the diversity of strategies applied in the attempt for most effective and useful information management.
Every five to ten years, FAO conducts regional and global assessments of forest resources. This Global Forest Resource Assessment (FRA) is undertaken as a comprehensive technical projects, based on harmonized definitions of forest and close collaboration and participation as well as the support of the member countries A global network of experts and correspondents within national authorities and research institutions – the FRA Expert Network - provides the country information (FAO, 2001). For FRA 2000, 160 countries actively participated in gathering and analyzing information. To continuously improve the databases, the FRA Programme supports also developing countries to do national forest assessments by providing financial resources for capacity building and expert knowledge. Regular expert consultation7 provides guidance and feedback to FAO. In addition, an advisory group of specialists convenes more regularly to review and make recommendations aimed at strengthening existing institutional networks, making future forest resource assessments increasingly user-oriented and demand--driven, and linking them more closely with other international processes.
Recognizing the problem of potential global climatic change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1988 established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess scientific, technical and socio--economic information relevant for to the understanding of climate change and its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate-related data or other relevant parameters. It bases its assessment mainly on scientific and technical literature. IPCC supports the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through its work on methodologies for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories that need to be established by industrialized and transition countries signatory to the Kyoto Protocol (“Annex I Parties”) (UNFCCC 2000). Currently, IPCC has three working groups: one to assess the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change; a second to assess the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it; and a third one to assess options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigating climate change. A Task Force on national Greenhouse Gas Inventories is responsible for the IPCC National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Programme. Technical Support Units (TSU) financed by developed countries support the activities of each group. In addition the IPCC Trust fund provides financial support to assist the developing country Co-chairs perform their duties, in particular to cover administrative and travel costs. A number of other institutions provide in kind support for IPCC activities.
In 1979, IUCN established an office in Cambridge to monitor endangered species. In 1988 the independent, non-profit World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) was founded jointly by IUCN, the World Wildlife Found (WWF) and UNEP. In 2000 UNEP established WCMC as an independent, non-profit, world biodiversity information and assessment centre. The centre provides information services on the conservation and sustainable use of species and ecosystems and supports others in the development of their own information systems. The initial aim of WCMC is the harmonization of the five biodiversity conventions. WCMC has access to data from a wide range of expert sources and an extensive network of contacts and collaborative links throughout the conservation community. WCMC does not carry out its own assessments; rather, it improves the exchange and compatibility of existing data sources. WCMC acts as a clearinghouse allowing data providers and users to share data and information. The centre collects, formally and informally, published information on biodiversity, at national and international levels, and provides lists of biodiversity-related web sites, list servers and links to conservation and environmental information, resources and organizations, as well as to web sites, that which incorporate national reports, or profiles relevant to biodiversity conservation or management.
WCMC maintains a large collection of data including spatial datasets concerning habitat conservation. It also supports the implementation of a number of biodiversity-related agreements at both national and international levels through background reports to help scientific bodies do their work and support the analysis of achievements, knowledge gaps and priorities, etc. WCMC produces also publications in both printed and electronic format, covering key aspects of biodiversity conservation. Many publications result from in-depth work by specialist programme staff. International experts around the world support the work of WCMC. The spatial data holding on forests, their diversity and conservation status have formed the basis for a major statistical analysis of forest protection in the world, carried out in conjunction with CIFOR. WCMC is also working with IUFRO, FAO and other forest information organizations. A high-level scientific advisory council is being established to guide its work.
An interesting example of a well-organized international assessment process is the Human Development Report (HDR), which is responsible for the assessment of the Human Development Index and other socio-economic indices. HDR is an independent report commissioned by UNDP and is the product of a selected team of leading scholars, development practitioners and members of the Human Development Report Office of UNDP (UNDP, 2003). In early 2001, UNDP created a unit to support systematically the elaboration of National Human Development Reports (NHDRs). These reports are prepared and owned by national teams. So far, more than 470 regional, national and sub-national reports have been produced by 135 countries. The NHDR Unit provides support for the preparation of NHDRs through sharing of comparative experiences and best practices, capacity building, training and backstopping and through its facilitation of an Internet-Network called SURF HDR. The efficiency of NHDRs is based on three mechanisms: (1) the establishment of common monitoring standards, which includes the definition of the following six basic principles: national ownership, independence of the editorial team, quality of analysis, participatory and inclusive process, flexible and creative presentation and sustained follow-up; a systematic peer review process, and the development of indicators for minimum standards on the quality and impact of NHDRs; (2) capacity building of academics, policy-makers and UNDP staff involved in NHDRs, by providing courses and training modules; (3) systematic advocacy and promotion of the outreach of the national reports and thematic reviews. A communication office is responsible for the media strategy for NHDR launches, and provides support to individual teams on strategies for more effective outreach and dissemination of the reports.
The presented cases -as numerous other initiatives – dispose of well-established working mechanisms. In an attempt to manage the needed information most efficiently, they apply similar strategies, such as making use of existing data and data sources, building networks with interested organizations, taking care of capacity building at national level, and exploring possibilities for harmonization by clearly defining terms and concepts. However, very few of these initiatives have developed indicators related to specific and well-described standard assessment procedures.
Although much progress has been made, nearly all of these initiatives face substantial technical difficulties in their attempt to gather, administer and analyze the data efficiently. Most commonly, the following problems are mentioned: no consensus on concepts, terms and definitions; no standardized methodologies; gaps in data, lack of credibility of the data provided by countries, and inconsistency of national reports. Still, most of the information presented in complex national reports is more descriptive and/or partly based on anecdotal data and expert opinion (Braatz, 2002). This provokes serious problems in the attempt to aggregate the data at regional and international levels, and indicate also significant difficulties in the implementation of these assessments at national level. Another serious problem is a lack of collaboration between the several environmental initiatives as well as the complete absence of cross-sectoral collaboration with social and economic initiatives. At national level, the country forest departments responsible for the implementation of C&I appear to have done little cross-sectoral collaboration with sister agencies to acquire data. This unnecessarily increases the burden for on countries, while diminishing the potential impact of the gathered information. This is why various conferences, seminars and expert consultations continue to recommend the improvement of collaboration and the harmonization of the assessment initiatives. In the last years, the use of C&I was perceived as a fundamental tool to achieve progress in this regard (Braatz, 2001).
Various authors emphasized the potential of using C&I as a promising possibility to harmonize assessment processes and make them better manageable and more effective (i.e. UNFF, 2001; ECOSOC, 2003; Prabhu et al., 2003; Hendricks, 2003). C&I are tools designed to deliver information required to conceptualize, evaluate and implement sustainability (Prabhu et al., 1998). They denote a hierarchy of linked items (principles, criteria, indicators and verifiers) where the information accumulated at lower and more concrete hierarchical levels is used to assess the related items of the upper, more abstract levels (CIFOR, 1999). In this sense C&I represent a type of communication network, which allows the different actors involved in forest management to discuss the requirements for and to inform about the state of sustainability. An individual criterion or indicator needs to be considered within the context of other C&I of the system. Only the whole set of indicators related to the social, economic, political and environment dimension of forests provides a full picture of sustainability trends at the hierarchical level of principles and criteria. C&I disaggregate complex issues into smaller communicable elements, while at the same time enabling an integrative interpretation. C&I enable communication on specific aspects of sustainability as well as the application of specific procedures to assess each indicator and observe its development over time.
The assessment of the sustainability of forest management by using C&I, however, implies on the other hand the consideration of a huge amount of technical details and the need for transparency and validity regarding the content of each indicator. Most C&I sets suffer from significant deficiencies in completeness, clearness and specificity, which makes their assessment and adequate interpretation nearly impossible (Pokorny and Adams, 2003). Thus, as shown in Figure 1, the analytical level of a C&I set is to be completed by at an operational level, which defines exactly what has to be assessed. To enable the assessment of a C&I set, for each indicator, specific verifiers and methods for its assessment have to be defined. In addition, thresholds are helpful as a basis for interpretation. Only C&I sets operationalized in this way provide the transparency needed as a basis for information management and collaborative assessment (Pokorny et al., 2004). The utilization of C&I as a basis for assessment requires also the implementation of standardized protocols, clearly defined technical terms and concepts, and assessment guidelines related to methods and sources. The lack of one of these components would disable the compatibility and credibility of data captured and structured by C&I.
As seen in many ongoing C&I processes, C&I tend to be used to structure reports and not to organize an integrative and specified assessment of aspects relevant to assess the sustainability of forest management. Thus, these reports are often descriptive and may also provide the wrong impression of good quality data. This is one of the reasons for the difficulty in useful aggregation. The usefulness of the C&I tool relies on the quality of the assessment. For this, in order to maintain data quality and ensure the existence in countries of the technical capacity, rigid control and support mechanisms are necessary to realize the assessment.
The use of C&I in assessment initiatives linking different aggregation levels, such as Forest Management Unit, country, region and world, demands on that detailed assessment that guidelines be followed rigidly. As mentioned above, the assessment of sustainability depends on the definition of a huge large number of verifiers and technical details. The comprehensive framework of assessment details, needed to ensure the consistency and compatibility of information at all levels and units, requires a high level of agreement between the various partners involved and profound technical knowledge about the methodological details. Thus, such kinds of processes naturally depend on strong leadership, efficient control mechanisms and continuous input to maintain the order of such a system.
But this kind of technical driven top-down approach contradicts the understanding of C&I as tools for communication and learning. As a result of different social, economic and environmental factors C&I sets are diverse. Different actors under different situations will create significantly different C&I sets, even, if the assessment goal is identical (Pokorny and Adams, 2003). Among the main motives for diversity of national C&I sets are:
§ The existing financial, human and technical capacities for the assessment of C&I vary strongly between countries. Rich countries may assess more indicators in more detail than do poor countries.
§ The ecosystems differ not only between different regions and countries but also within one country. Evergreen forests in the humid tropics naturally require other management techniques than do dry forests and the subtropics.
§ Also the different socio-economic frameworks must be considered in adapted C&I sets, as they have a strong influence on the sustainability of forest management. The dependence of a national economy on natural resources, the level of human well-being and the percentage of remaining forests have a profoundly influence on the role of forests.
§ C&I sets also have to reflect the variety of underlying views and interests of the nations. Industrialized countries with stable forest cover have different interests than do countries with extensive forest cover but a low degree of economic development. It is also natural that not all governments have the same concept of sustainability. The understanding of sustainability depends on the historical and social context and thus is undergoing changes (Schanz, 1996).
Diversity of C&I is part of the tool. Organizations like CIFOR, ITTO and FSC have acknowledged this fact and developed tools to adapt C&I sets to local circumstances and different actors. Thus, the harmonized assessment of a whole C&I set is not a realistic expectation. Even for relative simple quantitative indicators, such as forest cover and number of direct employees in the forest sector, it is quite challenging to achieve a harmonized assessment in different contexts (Matthews, 2001).
Another extremely important aspect when discussing the viability of harmonizing C&I sets is related to the general intention of C&I implementation on a national scale. C&I are not applied to generate statistical facts about forests. The essential aim of C&I is the initiation of collaborative learning processes about sustainable forest management mainly at national level, and to increase understanding and improve management of the world’s forests. For such learning processes, ownership of information is a fundamental precondition. Information stays where it has been generated. C&I support this generation of knowledge and communication. Although dominated by specialists, the intensive discussions between different actor groups, which have taken place for the definition of regional C&I sets for FSC-certification, the elaboration of national forest management guidelines, as well as the development of the international C&I sets, generated an important benefit in terms of understanding and communication and helped clarify for parts of society the expectations related to sustainable forest management. Also, the development of numerous local C&I sets, especially in the rural areas of developing countries, generated sensitivity and knowledge among the local actors and improved the understanding of external groups about local views on forests. There are many attempts to use C&I as guidelines or legal frameworks to audit the quality and legality of forest management. Actors involved in the development of C&I naturally are interested in implementing their own C&I sets, instead of receiving standardized C&I sets generated without their participation.
4 Convention on Biological Diversity, Convention on Migratory Species, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, Convention on Wetlands and World Heritage Convention.
5 The concept is carried out by the European Environmental Agency. This agency covers all the environmental agreements that relate to European Union countries (64 in the year 2000).
6 Another international initiative dealing with the harmonization of international conventions is the Environmental Management Group (EMG), which is a forum for UN agencies and MEA secretariats established under the chairmanship of the UNEP Executive Director. The first meeting of EMG in January 2001 established an Issue Management Group (IMG - with UNEP as task manager) to deal with harmonization of environmental reporting, in particular with respect to the biodiversity-related conventions. EMG examined a background paper, "Harmonization of information management and reporting for biodiversity-related treaties", providing a comprehensive overview and summary of the background, rationale, mandate, needs and benefits of harmonizing and streamlining information management and reporting to Mesa, with special focus on the five global biodiversity-related conventions.
7 Held in Kotka College of Forestry and Forest Industry in Finland in 1987, 1993, 1996 and 2002.
