Forestry planning has traditionally been mainly concerned with the production of timber for industry and other wood products, and with forest industry development. Planning for environmental goals also has a long history but was largely restricted to designated areas for exclusive conservation. National forestry development agencies were essentially responsible for the sustained yield management on protected public forest lands and for reserved forests. The term "sustained yield" was mostly limited to wood production and therefore excluded the majority of other forest products and services. Although most forestry agencies have made progress towards multiple-use management, planning remains often biased towards timber in a wide range of countries.
Many of the actions taken in order to stimulate forestry development in the immediate future failed to sustain the momentum of growth in the longer term. Short term achievements sometimes resulted in degradation or destruction of the stock of natural capital needed in order to maintain growth in the future or reduced options for future end uses by degrading the forest capital. In most countries, the actual contribution of forests and trees to the economy is undervalued in the system of national accounts and political agenda. To correct this requires that planners take greater account of a larger set of forest goods and services than before, and indicate tradeoffs among them. Plans should be search that utilization of such goods and services is economically viable, ecologically sound, socially equitable and politically acceptable while ensuring sustainability. Today, it is widely recognized that policies outside the forestry sector such as macroeconomic policies, population growth, agricultural, trade or environmental policies, play an important role in forest use and conservation. Therefore, to be effective, planning for forests must support priorities in agriculture, parks and wildlife, energy, tourism, defense, culture and education, industry and trade and emphasize the potential contribution to poverty alleviation and the priorities of vulnerable or relatively disenfranchised groups such as indigenous people, women and children, people at the lowest levels of subsistence, and those in future generations.
The shift in emphasis of forestry development towards improvement of the welfare of people and protection of biological diversity and of long term local and global environmental benefits requires associated shifts in the planning process. Greater efforts for reflecting the interaction of forestry with other sectors also raise further the need for proposing new approaches which broaden and improve the process of forestry planning.
The demand for good planning is very large. Yet as demonstrated by recent experiences in the formulation of national forest action plans, only few countries succeed in achieving it. Good planning is not necessarily the result of sophisticated quantitative models. It is not driven by computer technology or necessarily depend on them nor does it require impossible skills. Much more important are the range of issues considered in the planning dialogue, and the efforts to anticipate and manage conflicts. Planning for forests cannot operate as a central and top-down process in which governments give instructions and impose controls. Instead, planning must engage the self-interest of the people it intends to affect. Everyone and every organization is constantly engaged in planning in some fashion; for this reason many individuals believe they already know everything about planning. But there is always room for improvement. Government agencies develop and review plans on a regular basis, but have they tried new organizational approaches and tools to make their planning more effective? Box 1 lists some institutions-related planning problems that are general to all planning and specific to forestry planning.
There are changing perspectives regarding how to achieve sustainable forest development in the long run and these guidelines are intended to assist with that task. There is a shift from mainly industrial forest production or forest preservation to multiple-use sustainable forest management or from top-down instructions to an open-ended dialogue with all interest groups. These changes call for new strategies and approaches and roles for national forestry planning.
