Accessible information on forestry management
New directions for world bank forestry efforts in Asia
Mixed or pure?
Research management in forestry. FAO Forestry Paper No. 102. 1992.
Rome, FAO. During the 1980s, the idea began to spread that the management of forestry research might not be so different from the management of other kinds of businesses. Business management involves the management of people, money, problems and opportunities. Business operations include planning, monitoring, evaluation, communication and marketing. Simply substitute "forest scientists" for "people" and "technology transfer" for "marketing", and you have a good definition of forest research management.
As management specialists began to look at forestry research, it became obvious that research managers were badly in need of skills of the type that managers of other enterprises often acquire from management courses, seminars, books and videos. Old-style, authoritarian research managers are particularly in need of such training if they are to have any hope of upgrading the efficiency of their organizations in an increasingly competitive world, or of keeping their best scientists from packing up and leaving.
Accessible information on forestry management
This publication is a condensed version of the 1990 FAO Forestry Paper No. 96, and is produced in a more convenient, small format. The condensation was done in order to provide busy managers with a more accessible text to browse during their free time. Nonetheless, all the essential messages of the original work, by principal authors Hans M. Gregersen, Allen L. Lundgren, and David N. Bengston, have been retained.
Planning is carefully explained in four chapters: the planning process; strategic planning; programme planning; annual planning and budgeting. A chapter on managing researchers covers recruitment; the assignment of duties and responsibilities; delegation; the development of individual capabilities; team-management; performance appraisal; and corrective action. A short chapter on leadership draws on recent studies on the principles and types of leadership and the qualities of outstanding leaders. There is also a checklist against which managers may measure themselves. Certainly, scientists will use it to measure their managers.
F. Ng
Strategy for forest sector development in Asia. World Bank Technical Paper No. 182. Asia Technical Department Series. 1992. Washington, DC, Land Resources Unit, Asia Technical
Department, World Bank. This report recommends a shift in the focus of World Bank support for forestry in Asia. It proposes that the Bank move aggressively to improve the climate for investment and policy reform and mobilize political commitment to the need for change through an iterative process of sector analysis, policy dialogue and targeted investment. This strategy is designed to help the governments of the region put into place the essential institutional and decision-making capability to resolve forest land-use and allocation problems; mobilize and deploy investment and other resources in ways consistent with overall national development priorities; and equitably resolve the conflicts that inevitably accompany forest development. The report reviews the forest situation in the region and concludes that deforestation is proceeding at a pace of over 3 million ha per year, at an estimated economic cost of more than US$8000 million; that fuelwood scarcities are becoming increasingly acute; and that loss of biodiversity is reaching unprecedented proportions. Above all, the report identifies a growing confidence crisis in the ability of existing forestry institutions to manage this important resource effectively and productively. The report also concludes that international agencies, including the World Bank, have not proved very effective in improving this situation and need to review their approach.
The report argues that the situation results from three basic and interrelated sets of problems: economic, institutional and scientific. Divergences between social and private costs are a central feature of forestry; virtually all environmental concerns can be characterized as examples of economic externalities. However, while the management of external costs should be among the principal tasks of forestry institutions, virtually all those currently in place in Asia were designed to extract "surplus" from the land and to act as police forces. The scientific basis for forest management in the tropics is characterized as lagging badly behind agriculture and other sectors in the production and application of technological innovations that will allow for the sustainable use of the natural resource base.
The report concludes that the World Bank's support to the forestry sector in Asia needs to proceed from the premise that, unless the fundamental constraints described are seriously addressed, the sustained availability of all of the goods and services provided by the forestry sector will be threatened. Priorities identified by the Bank for investment in forestry in Asia are resource expansion including plantations and private farm forestry - primarily in wood-deficit countries; improved natural forest management and industrial plantation establishment in countries approaching the transition to sustainable forest utilization; and, above all, the restructuring of forestry institutions to put a greater emphasis on development, investment performance and public accountability.
S. Dembner
Mixed and pure forest plantations in the tropics and subtropics. FAO Forestry Paper No. 103. 1992. Rome, FAO. (In English only)
Mixed and pure forest plantations in the tropics and subtropics.
Over the past few years, the FAO Forestry Department, with financial assistance from the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries (SAREC), has carried out a study on the economic,, social and environmental aspects of mixed and pure forest plantations. Work has included an intensive review of published and unpublished literature; direct contacts with researchers, practical foresters and forestry institutions worldwide; and discussions in a small expert consultation, held at FAO headquarters in June 1991. The results of the study are published in FAO Forestry Paper No. 103, Mixed and pure forest plantations in the tropics and subtropics. The stated objectives of the project were to "clarify the relative value of mixed plantations in comparison with monocultures in relation to environmental issues, economic feasibility and social considerations".
The study stresses that forest plantations in the tropics and subtropics make a proportionately greater contribution to people's needs for forest products than their relatively small area suggests, not only to the supply of industrial roundwood but also through the provision of many other goods and environmental services. Although most forest plantations are established using one single species, mixtures of many species, may be deliberately created or may develop through the natural regeneration of other woody tree species in otherwise single-species plantations. Mixtures cover a wide range of options, from simple, even-aged mixtures of two species to several species in a plantation managed as a selection forest; mixtures can also be created by the planting of different species in adjacent plantation blocks.
Although providing a number of recommendations related to the economic, social, environmental and aesthetic aspects of plantation forestry, this paper does not arrive at a clear-cut conclusion based on a global comparison of mixed and single-species plantations. The literature review does demonstrate the lack of data available to make direct comparisons and highlights the dangers of making dogmatic statements for or against either sort of plantation. It further shows that many well-known instances of poor growth of plantations have not been due to the use of single species but rather to species incorrectly matched to the site or to other failures of management. Finally, the study strongly restresses the general principles of clearly defining objectives prior to plantation establishment and involving people who live in or close to the forest in decisions taken in this regard.
C. Palmberg-Lerche
