0943-B1
Kailash Govil and Peter Holmgren 1
Most of the international forest-related international processes have an implicit or explicit goal to review the status of sustainability of forest resources in a holistic manner in each of the countries they span. However, lack of a conceptual framework to integrate multidimensional and multi-scale information may have constrained their progress towards this goal. The Forest Resource Assessment program, led by FAO, plans to take this challenge during its mid-term Global Forest Resource Assessment (GFRA) planned for 2005 by designing it to review the sustainability of forest resources using "Criteria" that are common among various "Criteria and Indicator" processes at regional and international levels.
This paper briefly describes this journey on the way to reviewing the sustainability of forest resources. It briefly spans the rationale, framework, methods, expected outcomes, partnerships and role of countries on way to GFRA 2005. In doing so it deals with concepts of forest capital, goods, flows, sustainability, equity and integrity. It presents spatial and functional boundaries conceived under global forest resource assessment (FRA) as well as their link to various international processes for monitoring progress towards sustainable forest management (SFM). The holistic multidimensional assessment proposed under GFRA 2005 may provide the missing link between information generated by forest assessments and its use in the development of national forest polices and programmes including enhanced support to sustainable livelihoods and better participation of civil society. It may also help to reduce the reporting burden of countries as well as help international processes looking for validated, harmonized and compatible national information.
"to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (WCED, 1987, Brundtland Commission Report)
Most of the international forest related international processes have an implicit or explicit goal to review the status of sustainability of forest resources in a holistic manner in each of the country they span. However, lack of a conceptual framework to integrate multidimensional and multi-scale information may have contained their progress towards this goal. Forest Resource Assessment programme, led by FAO, plans to take this challenge during its mid term Global Forest Resource Assessment (GFRA) due in 2005.
Based on the recommendations of fourth expert consultation at Kotka, Finland, nick named Kotka IV, (www.fao.org/forestry/fra-Kotka4), the GFRA 2005 is designed to review the sustainability of forest resources using "Criteria" common among various regional processes on "Criteria and Indicators" for Sustainable Forest Management (SFM). The GFRA 2005 has conceptualized a framework for production, aggregation, integration, analyses and valuation of multidimensional and multi-scale forest related information for this purpose.
This paper briefly describes this journey on way to review of sustainability of forest resources and also presents the "group convergence method" (GCM) developed by GFRA to qualitatively value and aggregate the complex information to review the sustainability of forest resources in a country. The GFRA http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra) expects to reduce the reporting burden of countries and serve the new international paradigm of governance through C&I by promoting productive dialogues on the progress towards Sustainable Forest Management.
The dependence of environment, ecological systems, and life forms on the sustainability of forest resources across political boundaries (countries) provides the basic rationale to ensure intergenerational equity in forest resources and to monitor the sustainability of forest resources across countries at the international level.
Demand for forest information is continuously growing and becoming complex as increasing number of international and regional processes are requesting forest related information from countries on structure and multiple functions of forests across social, economic and ecological dimensions and the civil society is increasingly concerned about the state and trends of forests stocks and their goods and services. Further, lack of integrated and holistic assessment of forest resources is containing development of effective national policies and strategies to sustain forest resources and to maximize their social, economic and ecological benefits..
FAO has taken up the endeavor to review the sustainability of forest because it is globally assessing the forest resources since 1947 on the request from its member countries. The global forest resources assessment (GFRA) process is led and implemented by FAO in collaboration with its partners. It reports on the global status and trends of forests, their management and uses. The GFRA basically deals with stocks, goods, and services of trees (www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/main/index.jsp).
The main report of GFRA 2000 (www.fao.org/forestry/fra) together with on-line country profiles, global maps and a series of working papers, constitutes the most comprehensive and accessible global reporting on forest resources to date. The core of GFRA is nationally validated data from national forest assessments collected through extensive network of national correspondents established by FAO over last fifty years.
GFRA meets diverse needs of forest related information at national, regional and global levels. It serves a wide spectrum of users including national governments, non governmental organizations, inter-governmental, international and regional organizations and processes, inter-sectoral assessments, scientific, research and academic communities, markets, private sector entities, and the public.
The FAO Committee on Forestry (COFO), with representation from all member countries, in its meeting of March 2001, has mandated and directed the forest resource assessments (FRA) programme at FAO to continue to carry out broad assessments to meet the varied global demand of information on the state and trend of forest resources.
The fourth expert consultation at Kotka, Finland in July 2002, nick named Kotka IV, has provided a general framework to FRA programme (www.fao.org/forestry/fra-Kotka4), to follow the directions given by COFO 2001. The salient features of this framework are that FAO should (a) mainly focus on monitoring and assessment of forests, (b) develop a midterm GFRA in 2005 and usual ten yearly GFRA in 2010, (c) use the framework of "criteria" that are common among various regional processes of "C&I" for SFM for development of its future GFRA, and (d) establish an advisory group (AG to FRA) to provide detailed technical specification to FRA. The Advisory group to FRA, established on the basis of one of the recommendation of Kotka IV, has sketched the technical details for implementation of this framework. Figure 1 provides an overview of this process.
Figure 1: FRA Development Process
The "Kotka IV framework" is in conformity with expressions and desires of many of the international and regional forums and processes. For example, the UNFF at its first session in June 2001 and Intergovernmental Panel on Forests in its fourth session in 1997 provided a framework by stating that "International and national forest assessments should take account appropriate international, regional, sub-regional and national-level criteria and indicators" for monitoring sustainable forest management (SFM).
The "AG to FRA" proposes to review the sustainability of forest resources of a country in a specific national and regional context by capturing trends of global variables that define the common set of criteria coupled with complementary national variables and regional variables. In conformity with "Kotka IV" recommendation, the GFRA will utilize set of six of the seven criteria that are common to all regional processes on "C&I" for "SFM". These include Extent of forest resources and Contribution to the Global carbon cycle, Forest ecosystem heath and vitality, Biological diversity, Productive functions, Protective functions, and Social and Economic functions.
The GFRA uses spatial functional boundaries of alternative types of forest management (Holmgren 2002) and plans to utilize the technical conceptual framework of "capital and its goods and services" (Govil, 2002a) for reviewing (assessing) the sustainability of forest resources. The concept of "capital" is a neo-classical economic concept that defines "capital" as the stock of real resources with power (function) of producing "goods" (or utilities and service) in the future (Berkes and Folke, 1994; Daly, 1994; Van del Perk, Chiesra, and Groot, 2000). Figure 2 illustrates the relationship of these three elements with criteria for assessment purposes and in doing so subdivides the first and the last criterion into two sub groups.
Figure 2 Assessing Forest Resources through "Criteria" of "C&I" processes
The information production process under GFRA for review of sustainability of forest resources consists of four levels that include collection, identification, assessment and review (Govil 2002b). The second level is composed of three sublevels processes that work in parallel to each other (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Process of production of information for GFRA 2005
The FRA plans to implement this process in joint collaboration with its partners and national correspondents and proposes a bottom up approach to reflect ground realities of the forests.
The level "A" activities relate to collection of basic raw information at the national level to establish and or update the broadened information set of national and FRA data banks. Respective countries are responsible for execution of activities at this level. FAO works with national correspondents (FRA) and if necessary assists in building country capacities in collecting and validating comprehensive information on related variables.
At sub level "B1", the FRA differentiates national variables into global, regional and complementary variables. The global variables differ from other variables through their commonality across countries and their capacity to define the respective "criterion". The work of standardizing national data into global variables is done by FAO at the global level in close collaboration with national correspondents. The result of level "B1" corresponds to the output level of FRA 2000.
At sub level "B2", regional variables, unique or specific both to the country and the associated region, are identified from the pool of national variables. The FRA proposes to use group convergence method (GCM) to implement this activity at regional level in joint collaboration of FAO, its partners and the countries. This et of variable may be empty for some countries.
At sub level "B3", complementary variables unique or specific to a country are identified from the remaining, if any, national variables. The complementary variables, as the name suggests, complement the information contained in global and regional variables to fully capture the national specific forest conditions, for better definition, explanation and assessment of the related criterion.
The third level (C) focuses on assessment of state of forest conditions against each of the six criterion through "global", "regional" and "complementary variables". This step involves ranking, valuation and then aggregation of variables measured along varied dimensions by using "GCM" to derive convergence among varied valuations done by different stakeholders.
The fourth and the last level (D) qualitatively integrates and aggregates the six assessed states of forest against the six criterion by using "GCM" to provide a holistic and qualitative assessment of sustainability of forest resources in a country.
FRA plans to use "group convergence method" (GCM), an iterative process, during expert consultations to converge at some common assessment of variables to review the sustainability of forest resources (Govil 2002b). The GCM is quite similar to various decision making processes like "Delphi" and Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) that function well with small as well as large groups. The proposed method works on cyclic (iterative) manner and enhances the quality of discussions at each additional round till convergence in valuations is reached among members of the group. The GCM needs a facilitator to implement it and it can be conducted when members of the group are distant apart or are sitting face to face. The GCM provide for maximum transparency to contain the subjective bias inherent in most of the qualitative valuation methods.
The equity simply means being impartial, fair and just to all the stakeholders. It demands and provides basis for strengthening and building capabilities of all stakeholders (individuals or institutions) to promote their complete and effective participation in the forest assessment. The issue of social equity has led to development of methodologies and protocols of "discourse-based" methods like Delphi and MCA that aim to provide majority agreement on social value of selected pubic goods (Arrow, 1951; Rawls, 1971; Habermas, 1984; Dryzek, 1987; Friskin, 1992; Sen 1979, 1995; Cohen, 1997; Nautiyal, Pant and Govil, 1996; CIFOR, 1999, Wilson and Howarh, 2002). The GCM developed by GFRA is a modern and better version of the above methods.
The GCM plans to ensure all equity (procedural, inter-temporal and consequential) considerations for providing sustainability, legitimacy, credibility and better utility of assessments The procedural equity requires that at any time all stakeholders, irrespective of gender, class or entitlements are able to participate effectively in the process of assessment because of the "public" nature and differential access and distribution of forestry good and services (Wilson and Howarth, 2002, Perkins, 2001; Coote and Lenaghan, 1997; Jacobs, 1997; Blamey and James, 1999). The inter-temporal equity in assessments demands a continuous a social process that is temporally open and dynamic to continually accommodate new stakeholders or generations and its satisfaction desires that views and values of all age group be respected while making assessments of natural resources (Solow, 1986 and Faucheus et al. 1998). The consequential equity deals with impacts of forest change by considering the distribution of value of impacts and its mitigation measures among various stakeholders.
GFRA proposes to include stakeholders (members) that have the capacity to explain, reveal, advocate and share their basis of assessment of variables during the consultation. It focuses on people with better information rather than their random selection as is common in most of the other evaluation methods. The size of the group may vary from two to twenty to ensure fair and equitable participation (Kerr et. al. 2000; Wilson and Howarh, 2002).
The process is initiated by a facilitator, who first introduces the problem and the process to derive converged value to each member of the group. The members work individually and report their initial valuations directly to the facilitator. The facilitator computes average response and communicates this to all the members with or without revealing identity of the members. Each member then revaluates his or her initial valuation in relation to other individual responses and the average (most common) response of the group.
The group members, whose estimate differ from others members are individually asked to justify or convince other members by providing the basis (information) on which his/her/their estimates are based. This educates other members who may then either maintain or decide to change their original valuation. The members provide their modified response to the facilitator. This cyclic process goes on till the facilitator feels that the differences have come down to certain acceptable levels i.e. convergence has been achieved.
The Web dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems defines aggregation as a "process by which the properties of a collection are described in terms of the sums of the properties of the units contained in that collection. ....". In absence of aggregation, the results would simply be a list of multiple priorities with no way of comparing results across countries (Background paper 2 for CSD 9, 2001).
The FRA addresses this complex issue of aggregation by using the GCM to qualitatively aggregate the variables with different dimensions. The problem of development of an aggregation protocol is complex because every country has different priorities and has different set of forests and its contextual conditions. Further, if same or equal weights are assigned to different variables then it means every variable has the same capacity to affect the forest system, which does not reflect the realty on the ground.
The GCM integrates or aggregates the qualitative assessment of state of forest against each criterion for the qualitative and holistic review of the sustainability of forest resources. The FRA supports two types (national and international) of assessment and aggregation regimes. First, a country develops a national GCM regime that is based on its culture and contextual conditions to provide realistic assessment of sustainability of its forest resources. This regime is likely to help in improvement of national policies for sustaining forest resources but has the disadvantage that the results across countries cannot be compared.
The FRA develops the second GCM regime which is an independent international aggregation regime to review the state of sustainability of forest resources with and without the help of remote sensing information. This may help in establishing international bench marks for monitoring and comparing the progress towards SFM across countries.
The expected outcome of this process is qualitatively valued state of forest for each criterion in addition to quality data set, improved country capacities and strengthened network of FAO and its partners (Govil 2002c). Table 1 provides an (hypothetical) assessment of the state of forest against each criterion in a country. This step may be done at regional level among countries having similar forest conditions.
Table 1. Review of State of Sustainability of Forest Resources in a country
Positive Change 2000-2005 |
Stable 2000-2005 |
Negative Change 2000-2005 | ||
Alarming |
Critical | |||
Positive Change 1990-2000 |
Social Function |
Economic function |
Biodiversity function |
|
Stable 1990-2000 |
Global carbon |
Health & Vitality |
||
Negative: Alarming 1990-2000 |
Extent of Forests |
Protective function |
Productive function |
|
Negative: Critical 1990-2000 |
||||
The GCM finally aggregates these eight assessments through GCM to review of the state of sustainability of forest resources in a country.
The GFRA proposes to continue past partnership (UNECE and UNEP) and establish new ones. For example, FRA is currently engaged in a collaborative effort with IUFRO to development a web based knowledge bank on forestry. FRA is in process of developing similar arrangements with other international processes or institutions.
The process of participation of country through their national correspondents proved very useful in the development of FRA 2000. Therefore, GFRA 2005 plans to improve its utility and efficiency by institutionalizing this process. The national correspondents will be the link between the country and the FRA process at FAO. They will be associated for a long term and are expected to coordinate FRA process at the national level as well as at the international level.
The national and other data collected or generated including during the process of development of this report is planned to be are stored in FORIS/FORACLE database of FAO. All relevant references including electronic web links will be documented in FORIS database in addition to their mention in this report and allied working papers.
The GFRA plants to initiate pilot studies in few willing countries to test feasibility of the above approach and to get necessary feedback to make modifications, if any, before finalizing the guidelines for final implementation of the above proposed methodology.
The paper spans rationale, information production process, role of countries and national correspondents in reviewing sustainability of forest resources during global forest resources in 2005. The backbone of global forest resource assessments (GFRA) will continue to be standardized and validated national level information through active participation of FAO and countries through their national correspondents. The GFRA builds on the set of six "Criteria" that are common amongst various regional processes relating to "Criteria and Indicators" for Sustainable Forest Management. It addresses the complexity of aggregation of information along different dimensions and scales by developing a qualitative assessment approach through expert group convergence method (GCM). The holistic multi-dimensional assessment proposed under GFRA 2005 will provide the missing links between information generated by forest assessments and the development of national forest polices and programs, enhanced support to sustainable livelihoods and better participation of civil society. It may also help to reduce reporting burden of countries and provide validated, harmonized and compatible national information to various international processes and institutions.
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1 Forestry Officer, Global Forest Resources Assessment, FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy. [email protected]