1 SUSTAINABLE FOREST MANAGEMENT REVISITED
The forestry and natural resources community has debated the concept of "sustainability" for decades. A high level of political commitment to advancing "sustainable forest management" was achieved at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992). Considerable effort has been invested subsequently in intergovernmental processes to define criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management.1 Beyond this, governments have committed staff, time and resources to develop a programme to advance sustainable forest management (e.g. the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests and the UN Commission on Sustainable Development). In spite of all these efforts, sustainable forest management remains an elusive goal. This section summarises why this concept is so difficult to identify and implement.2
1.1 The objectives of sustainable forest management
References to sustainable forest management are universally vague and ambiguous. The lack of precision stems from a current inability to reach agreement on a complex set of issues that are largely determined by culture, personal values, and individual hopes, fears and concerns about uncertainty. Major questions that remain unanswered in the current debate about sustainable forest management, include the following:
· what should be the objectives of sustainable forest management;
· what is the relative importance of each of these objectives;
· what are the uncertainties associated with managing complex ecosystems such as forests; and
· what time frame and spatial context should be adopted when examining the sustainability of different forest management options?
· who should benefit from forests and their management?
An example of an attempt to define the objectives of sustainable forest management
Participants at a conference on sustainable forest management (held at the University of California in March 1997) discussed the specific objectives of forest sustainability, starting with those from Agenda 21. These objectives included:
· to preserve biodiversity;
· to maintain economic productivity;
· to take advantage of present economic opportunities;
· to maintain future options;
· to respect inter-generational equity; and
· to respond to social and cultural needs.
Participants then added more objectives to those given above, including:
· to satisfy the values of indigenous peoples and local communities;
· to take into account aesthetics;
· to provide recreation opportunities;
· to avoid of off-site consequences and the export of environmental problems;
· to satisfy existence values; and
· to provide flexibility.
Some participants suggested that the list should be broadened even further to include human and non-human issues, environmental rights, ethical restraints on behaviour, fair land tenure practices and the creation of political structures for environmentally sensitive development.
Historically, forest management systems have tended to focus on one objective of overwhelming importance, such as the maintenance of a certain flow of timber, protection of a fragile watershed or provision of an attractive forest environment for outdoor recreation. In reality, this was mostly an analytical and operational simplification. Natural resource users and managers have always observed with awe the miracle of forests: they produce a multitude of goods and services, frequently at the same time and from the same piece of forest land and they often regenerate with minimal human intervention. Forest management attention has also generally shifted from management for a single objective (often wood production) to an ecosystem approach that tries to incorporate the production of multiple outputs into forest management decisions.
1.1.1 How can conflicting objectives be reconciled?
Same forest - different values!
The same forest is valued by different persons and by the same person, as any and many of the following:
· a source of raw materials for industry
· a source of fuelwood
· an agent for the protection of watersheds
· a place of unique natural beauty
· a sink for carbon sequestration
· a site for recreation and education
· a source of foreign exchange
· a place to hunt wild animals for food
· a space for a large forest plantation
· a place for settlement of poor people
· a place for grazing
· a place to find unknown species
· a source of medicines
· a place of worship
·
The recognition of the hopes and aspirations of the many stakeholders interested in the future of forests is a positive step forwards. However, this raises the question of: how can this multiplicity of objectives be addressed once it is acknowledged that it is simply not physically possible to manage forests in a way that simultaneously achieves every aspiration? Increasingly complex modelling and valuation methodologies have been developed to quantify the range of diverse products and environmental services that forests can provide, but trade-offs or compromises still have to be made as policy advice moves from theory to practice. The community of forestry professionals and forest stakeholders continues to search for an acceptable method to reconcile different perceptions of the relative importance or value of each forest management objective.
In the allocation of market goods, prices are the main indicator upon which production, consumption, savings and investment decisions are taken. Thus, because so many of the outputs of forest ecosystems do not pass through markets and are public in nature, many argue that market solutions result in far too little investment in the conservation and management of forests. However, to decide on a different course of investment and conservation, the trade-offs implied must be analysed within the framework of a commonly accepted value system. Values determine the "weight" or importance of each one of the objectives in sustainable forest management, but values vary enormously between different people and are seldom expressed in terms that would provide clear operational guidance. To summarise, if there is little agreement about objectives and their relative importance, it is not possible to conclude whether a forest is sustainably managed or not.
Reconciling conflicting objectives for forest management is compounded by uncertainty. It may take fifty years or more for a forest to develop a preferred habitat for certain types of wildlife or to produce timber of a desired size. This is a long time compared to most other crops or manufactured goods and it adds further complexity to the problem of defining sustainable forest management. Technical specialists seldom hold a universal view about the eventual impact of a management practice on the forest ecosystem. Partly, this is because the forest ecosystem is enormously complex but this uncertainty also stems from the fact that it takes years, if not decades, to obtain reliable results from field-tests of interventions.
1.1.3 Spatial and temporal issues
People have been modifying forests for a very long time. Available anthropological and ecological evidence points to the fact that people have been living in and modifying forest ecosystems to their advantage for centuries.
The spatial and temporal dimensions of sustainable forest management are additional issues that complicate matters. There are wide-ranging discussions, often between stakeholders with similar points of view, about the spatial dimensions of sustainable forest management. Is the appropriate scale for evaluating sustainable forest management a single stand of trees, a watershed, a landscape, a nation, or the world as a whole?
Similarly, the planning period for sustainable forest management is equally ill defined. Should the forest manager be looking for sustainability over 50, 100 or 150 years, or in perpetuity? While the implicit perception is in perpetuity, it is very important to recognise that forest ecosystems are not static. With or without direct human intervention, forests continue to evolve in the face of the forces of natural change - fire, drought, pest and disease. Even without human intervention, the present forest estate is not what would exist in fifty years from now or even in twenty years time in some cases.
Forest ecosystems are not static
Forests and forest ecosystems continue to evolve in response to natural and human-induced change. They often undergo measurable change even if humans do not intervene. Active management of forest ecosystems is required to meet almost any set of conservation and development objectives
Finally, responses to the shifting trends in public opinion about how forests should be managed have to take into account the long production period. In the last twenty years, there have been substantial shifts in opinion about the role of forests in the economy, in the environment and in societies. In principle, alternative options for forest management should be judged against the long-term objectives of sustainable forest management. These objectives should reflect the values of society, but this raises the question of: should these objectives reflect the values of today's society, future generations or a mixture of the two? Often, proponents of sustainable forest management refer to the values, wants and needs of future generations, but is there really any feasible way of estimating these?
Finally, the debate on sustainable forest management reflects expressions of concern about equity or the fairness in which the benefits of forests are distributed. While there are many equity aspects to forest management; most reflect the fact that the poorest people in developing countries tend to live in or near forests. The implications for equity of sustainable forest management, however, vary depending on the type of improvement to forest management that is being considered.
For example, improving commercial forest management and harvesting would benefit large numbers of poor people (through, for example, reductions in off-site environmental costs) while the costs would be borne by a small number of (usually powerful) stakeholders. However, stopping the widespread clearance of forests by small-scale farmers in order to reduce deforestation could have negative implications for equity. As these examples show, sustainable forest management can have both positive and negative implications for equity.
The relative weakness of forest policy to address equity issues remains a major challenge for the wider implementation of sustainable forest management. The discussion is furthered compounded by strongly held views on the tools needed to resolve these equity concerns: market, policy or institutional reforms. While technical and economic analysis may play some role, the equity of market outcomes is largely determined through political resolution. It remains useful to recall that attitudes and definitions of equity differ, sometimes widely, among cultures and stakeholder interests.
1.2 The need to focus on a process of continuous improvement in forest management
In view of the difficult conceptual issues related to sustainable forest management, it seems likely that it will remain an imprecise concept. Given this, many analysts have suggested that forestry policy should promote forest management decisions that will contribute incrementally to sustainable forest management (whatever that may mean) or that will, at least, avoid forest management practices that are clearly unsustainable. This "continuous improvement process" or "use with minimal damage" can be viewed as a set of "goal posts" that are based on the best (but still imperfect) information that is currently available and can be used to practically guide forest management decisions. This view is appealing to those, such as forestry policymakers that are more concerned with the practical application of sustainable forest management and less with the theoretical details.
1 Although this paper focuses largely on the sustainable management of forests used for wood production, it should be noted that forestry policy should meet a broader set of objectives such as those specified in the phrase used in the 1992 Statement of Forest Principles: "the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests".
2 Contreras (1999), a supporting document to this study, provides an in-depth look at this subject with numerous excellent examples.
