Sustainable forest management, particularly in its widest sense, is an ambiguous concept. The lack of conceptual precision relates to various dimensions:
· the question of what needs to be sustained (i.e. what should be the objectives of sustainable forest management?);
· the values attached by different stakeholders to the various sustainable forest management objectives;
· the uncertainties associated with interventions in complex forest ecosystems; and
· the time frame and spatial boundaries that should be adopted when examining the sustainability of different forest management options.
The first question that normally induces contrasting answers is: what should be sustained? In the past, most forest management systems 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. However, this approach did not recognize that forests are capable of producing a multitude of goods and services, frequently at the same time and from the same piece of forestland.
Indeed, forests are the source of a diverse array of products in addition to roundwood. They can also produce a wide array of environmental services and offer opportunities for social and economic development. For example, non-wood forest products and forest services directly contribute to the livelihoods of some 300 million forest dependent peoples around the world. These products and services acquired great importance in the last few decades.
Thus, the focus on single, or almost single, purpose management gave way to a much more complex objective of managing forest for multiple outputs. Box 1 presents an example of the number of worthwhile objectives of sustainable forest management. Unfortunately, this more complex objective introduced a great deal of confusion about the concept of sustainable forest management.
If all of these (and other) objectives could be attained simultaneously, there would be no great problem in implementing sustainable forest management. However, of course, this is simply not possible because, in most situations, some of these objectives conflict. Managing forests in a way to maximize simultaneously all these objectives is impossible.
Box 1: 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. |
This leads to the second challenge for the achievement of sustainable forest management: that some (often difficult) choices must be made and trade-offs must be considered. To quote Duncan Poore:
"if one is to be strictly accurate, sustainability can only be defined in relation to a specified set of products and a specified condition. It may, however, be possible to design a system that is an acceptable compromise between a number of objectives".
The questions facing forestry policy makers are:
· How can this compromise be achieved?
· What criteria can be used to judge the different options and compromises?
· How can forestry policymakers decide how far to go in pursuing one objective that implies a sacrifice of some of the others?
The answer to these questions is complex because the trade-offs involved can only 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. However, values held by people vary enormously and are seldom expressed in terms that would provide clear operational guidance (see Box 2). In other words, it is hard to agree on objectives and their relative importance and thus, to be able to decide whether a forest is sustainably managed or not.
The same forest is valued by different persons and by the same person, as any and many of the following: · a source of foreign exchange · a place to hunt wild animals for food · a site for recreation and education · a space for a large forest plantation · an agent for the protection of watersheds · a place for settlement of poor people · a place for grazing · a place to find unknown species · a source of raw materials for industry · a source of medicines · a place of worship · a source of fuelwood · a place of unique natural beauty · a sink for carbon sequestration |
It takes a long time to produce timber and some of the other products and services that forests can supply. The long production period introduces further complications and presents more opportunities to have different interpretations of the concept of sustainable forest management.
Basically these complications fall into two categories:
· The first complication is that there is greater uncertainty about the likely results of any particular forest management system. This is because forests and, in particular, tropical forests, are enormously complex ecosystems. Thus, in addition to the two problems already noted, technical specialists may also fail to agree about what will be the eventual outcome of any particular silvicultural intervention. This problem is compounded further by the fact that it often takes a long period of time to obtain reliable results from field-tests of such interventions and, therefore, identify the best course of action.
· The second complication arising from the long production process, is that values change over time and, accordingly, so should the objectives of sustainable forest management. The implication of this is that the forestry policymaker has no sure way to predict how these values may change in the future. Furthermore, they often do not have technical or management tools that can accommodate such uncertainty in the decision-making process.
A final complication is that, in theory, the values of future generations should be integrated into today's decisions about what is or is not sustainable forest management. However, there is no practical way of doing this. In these circumstances, different stakeholders pass various subjective judgements about how forests should be managed for the benefit of future generations and there is no clear way to determine which of these judgements is the "best".
A fourth complication associated with sustainable forest management is that it is not clear what the forest management planning horizon should be. This is partly because forests need to be managed for long periods of time in order to produce a full array of goods and services. For example, should the forest manger be aiming to manage forests in a sustainable way over the next 50, 100 or 150 years, or in perpetuity?
In the case of countries and regions with substantial areas of mature natural forests, sustainable forest management, may be impossible if there is any timber harvesting. In these cases, the forest policymakers' challenge is usually not to achieve a sustained yield of timber of a similar quality to that taken in the first cut. Rather, it is to either manage a smooth transition to a sustainable harvest of new growth timber (after a large and valuable first harvest of old-growth trees) or to leave these areas untouched.
To complicate matters further, the sustainable forest management concept is also imprecise in relation to spatial dimensions. For example, should sustainable forest management apply at the single stand level, at the landscape level or at the regional or national level?
To summarize, there is a multitude of possible combinations of all the various objectives commonly associated with sustainable forest management. Different values are given to each objective over various periods of time and physical spaces. Furthermore, these values vary between different members of the wide ranging group of stakeholders that have an interest in forests. They are also likely to change and evolve over time as well as with respect to different spatial scales.
This complexity partly explains the different and sometimes sharply contrasting opinions held about what exactly sustainable forest management really means in practical terms. In the real world it is necessary to know clearly what needs to be sustained, how the different objectives can be balanced, and what period of time and geographical space is being examined. However, unfortunately, there are no definitive answers to these questions.
In view of the above, it would be a futile exercise to attempt to define exactly what is sustainable forest management, because it would be almost impossible to reach a compromise that satisfied all parties. It is likely therefore, that sustainable forest management will remain an imprecise concept. Given this, some analysts have suggested that forestry policy should promote forest management decisions that will contribute incrementally to more sustainable forest management or that will avoid unsustainable forest management. This "continuous improvement process" can be viewed as a set of "goal posts", that are based on the best (but still imperfect) information and can be used to practically guide forest management decisions (Byron and Costantini, 1998). This view is appealing to those, such as forestry policy makers, that are more concerned with the practical application of sustainable forest management and less with the theoretical details.
Keeping in mind the conceptual limitations described above, the following sections of this paper will look at the feasibility of implementing a rather loose interpretation of sustainable forest management. This interpretation mostly considers sustainable wood production, which continues to be the management objective of utmost importance in most cases and the only management system about which much evidence exists. However, in a few cases when information exists, the text also deals with other dimensions of forest sustainability. The analysis examines sustainability at the landscape level in various types of forests and over elastic periods of time covering between 50 and 100 years. This is an admittedly imperfect interpretation of sustainable forest management but in view of the limitations of information, it presents a practical basis for analysis.
