There is a considerable amount of knowledge available about the techniques to achieve various dimensions of sustainable forest management. Thus, although there is some uncertainty about the precise effects of forest management over the long-term, it is generally believed that enough is known to manage forests on a more sustainable basis. However, it is also estimated that a significant proportion of the world's forests is not managed in a way that could be described as sustainable. The questions facing forestry policymakers around the world therefore, are: why is this the case and what actions would encourage the wider implementation of sustainable forest management practices?
It is against this background, that this working paper has been prepared as part of an FAO input to the World Bank Forest Policy Implementation Review and Strategy. The paper assesses the technical, economic and institutional feasibility of sustainable forest management and the conditions under which governments, FAO, the World Bank and other international agencies can effectively support its implementation. It describes the experiences with attempts to improve forest management across a broad range of forest types and locations, with management objectives ranging from purely timber production towards broader multipurpose forest management. It also examines the constraints that account for why sustainable forest management practices are not implemented across much of the world's forest estate and the possible ways in which development finance could support the implementation of some of the more important aspects of sustainable forest management.
The paper is in four main sections. The first section examines what is meant by sustainable forest management, how this varies between different people and how it has varied over time. The next section then describes the technical requirements for improving forest management in areas such as silviculture, harvesting and forest planning. This draws on experiences from a number of countries around the world. The third section examines economic and institutional aspects of the implementation of sustainable forest management. It examines the economic feasibility of sustainable forest management in different forest ecosystems, the trade-off between sustainable and unsustainable forestry practices and the market failures that can affect the way in which forests are managed. The economic challenges to wider implementation of sustainable forest management practices are sometimes exacerbated by policy and institutional failures and these are also examined here. The final section of the paper presents some recommendations for FAO and the World Bank to consider as they develop strategies to encourage improved management of the global forest estate.
This paper has been prepared from a number of inputs. The section on technical aspects of sustainable forest management draws heavily from two background papers produced by CIRAD Foret (Dupuy et al, 1998) and Stig Hagner (Hagner, 1998). The last section summarizes the conclusions reached at a joint FAO and World Bank consultation held to discuss some of the challenges raised in this paper (Technical Consultation on Management of the Forest Estate: Issues and Opportunities for International Action by the World Bank and FAO, 28-29th April 1999, FAO, Rome).
Arnoldo Contreras was the author of the other sections of this paper and overall editor and co-ordinator of this piece of work. FAO would like to express its gratitude to all the contributors to this paper and to thank everyone that has provided comments on earlier drafts of this work. FAO will continue to explore, with member countries, the ways in which sustainable forest management can be implemented with greater success and to assist with implementation through its technical and normative work programmes. In this respect, we would welcome comments on all aspects of this study from readers.
Lennart Ljungman
Director
Forestry Policy and Planning Division
For decades, sustainable forest management has remained an elusive goal in many regions of the world, but particularly so in tropical areas. This document focuses on the questions:
· why is sustainable forest management not happening on a large scale in the world;
· what does the experience in trying to apply sustainable management concepts tell us; and
· what are the most important obstacles to the implementation of more sustainable forest management strategies?
The paper also discusses development strategies for overcoming these obstacles and for promoting the wider application of more sustainable forest management techniques.
First, the paper discusses the concept of sustainable forest management, which, as it is well known, is open to a variety of interpretations. Then, the paper focuses on a restrictive interpretation of the sustainable forest management concept: the sustainable production of wood. This does not mean that other goods and services of forests are irrelevant, but that experience on their management is even more limited than in the case of sustainable wood production systems. Therefore, it is much more difficult to derive general conclusions for this broader but more imprecise concept of sustainable forest management.
Next, the paper examines the obstacles that influence the technical, financial and institutional feasibility of more sustainable forest management practices. In general, enough technical and silvicultural knowledge is available to implement the restrictive concept of sustainable forest management (i.e. the production of a sustainable flow of wood products) in most ecological conditions. This is generally true in most tropical moist and dry regions and in temperate forests and plantations. In the case of tropical forests, this assertion may meet with some scepticism, because no sustainable forest management systems have ever been implemented for a sufficiently protracted period to provide indisputable evidence that long-term sustainability of wood production is possible. However, these failures to implement sustainable forest management over long periods of time have mostly been due to economic or institutional obstacles, rather than imperfect technical knowledge.
If the sustainable forest management concept is expanded to cover the whole range of multipurpose forest goods and services and to embrace the social and environmental aspects of sustainability (ecosystem management), then the above assertion is a great deal weaker. Experience of this type of much more complex sustainable forest management is practically non-existent and, therefore, the degree of uncertainty about its feasibility is much higher.
Examined in isolation, some sustainable forest management practices may show positive financial results in the long run and a few practices may also be profitable in the short-run. However, these results, even if good, are generally not good enough. Frequently, other forest management options or other land development options are more profitable from the point of view of the private operator. These options include the depletion of the natural forest capital stock and the complete removal of forest cover, to convert lands to activities such as cattle ranching or agriculture.
To a great extent, the economic factors acting against the achievement of sustainable forest management arise because there are no markets for many of the benefits derived from sustainable forest management. Even in cases where markets exist for outputs these are often plagued by a number of distortions. In such cases, forest managers are unable to capture the benefits of any efforts to implement more sustainable forest management methods and are, therefore, reluctant to undertake such efforts. In addition to this, in many cases the motivations of forest managers are steered in the wrong direction by mistaken, albeit frequently well intentioned, government policies.
The institutional requirements to implement more sustainable forest management practices, especially in tropical countries (where institutions are often weak), pose formidable obstacles to the wider implementation of this concept. These obstacles include: defective land ownership arrangements; the open access nature of many public forestlands; illegal operations; and corruption.
Given the above factors, encouraging sustainable forest management is a particularly challenging undertaking in many tropical, temperate and boreal countries. This is not a surprising conclusion as there is much evidence to show that most tropical forests and many other forests in temperate and boreal regions are not currently managed in a sustainable manner.
Finally, the paper discusses some principles for promoting more sustainable forest management practices. Given that ecological, economic and institutional conditions vary widely between different parts of the world, it is clearly impossible to derive a formula of universal validity. Consequently, this discussion centres on the conditions that are likely to prevail in different forest ecosystems and the possible policy reforms that could be implemented in each.
