Criteria and indicators, in the forestry context, are tools that can be used to collect and organize information about forests in a manner that is useful in evaluating and implementing sustainable forest management. The concept of criteria and indicators arose in the late 1980s and was given impetus by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, at which there was renewed international emphasis on sustainable forest management. The need for indicators was recognized explicitly in Chapter 11 of Agenda 21. The concept is now being extended to agriculture (Anon, 2002b).
Following UNCED, several regional groupings (usually referred to as Processes) began to develop criteria and indicators. Sometimes the grouping had a political flavour (e.g. the Pan-European Process; and the Tarapoto Proposals, covering Amazon forests in eight countries), an eco-regional flavour (e.g. International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) for tropical forests, Montreal Process for Temperate and Boreal Forests) or simply a natural regional or sub-regional grouping (e.g. the Near East Process covering forests in countries in that region, the Lepaterique Process for forests in countries of the Central American sub-region), or, at times, a combination of these (e.g. the Dry Zone Africa Process and the Dry Forests Asia Process). A comprehensive description of these processes is given by Castañeda (2000); a listing of the criteria and indicators identified within them is given by Castañeda et al (2001). Although they take a broadly similar approach, the various Processes strongly reflect the biological, social and economic character of their grouping.
These various Processes attempt to encompass all the important aspects of forest conservation and management and all make some provision for the maintenance of forest biological diversity. The issue is normally addressed at three distinct, but interdependent, levels; ecosystem diversity, species diversity and genetic diversity. While this report focuses on the last of these, this neat classification is not entirely satisfactory in practice, since a situation at the ecosystem level can have important implications for the other two levels (and vice versa).
It is generally accepted that it is important to be able to monitor the trends in genetic diversity in forests, because, at the most fundamental level, conservation of genetic diversity is essential to:
(a) maintain short term viability of populations, through a high level of heterozygosity (i.e., variable genetic makeup in respect of a particular characteristic),
(b) maintain the evolutionary potential of populations - especially important to enable them to adapt to changing conditions,
(c) provide opportunities for use of the genetic resources present in genetically variable populations.
Thus, a decline in genetic diversity may have an adverse effect in the ability of a species to survive, with possible flow-on effects to other components of the forest ecosystem. A reduction in genetic variation will clearly reduce opportunities for exploitation of features that may become more important in the future, such as production of some pharmaceutical compound, increased drought or disease resistance, or tolerance of salinity.
In this report the term “genetic diversity” will be used to refer to the general issue being examined here, that is, the genetic diversity in the whole forest ecosystem. The term “genetic variation” will be used in referring to the variation that occurs within a particular species.
While some indicators in the ongoing criteria and indicator processes have been relatively easy to implement (though not without problems in data collection), biological diversity indicators in general, and genetic diversity indicators in particular, have presented difficulties for all processes. Biological diversity is a very broad concept and not easily assessed in the field. Forests are biologically very complex. It is not feasible to assess all aspects of forest biological diversity in a way that presents a meaningful assessment of sustainability. Hence all criteria and indicator processes have sought some surrogate attributes that would, in some way, describe the status and changes in forest biological diversity.
A major difficulty in the implementation of genetic diversity indicators arises from the underlying approach in some processes, at least, that indicators should be quantitative in nature. In the early stages of development of criteria and indicators there was a common desire to be able to define and implement a set of indicators that were generally analogous with widely accepted economic indicators, such as GDP, or which helped monitor quantifiable environmental or social values. Many genetic indicators were formulated with this in mind, but in the full realization that there was insufficient knowledge available at that time to implement quantitative indicators. Some processes took a more pragmatic approach and, while accepting the need for genetic diversity to be addressed, specified qualitative indicators.
A further difficulty arose because most of the criteria and indicators formulated in the mid-1990s were developed against a background of concern for natural or semi-natural forests (e.g., the Pan-European Process). They did not always specifically address issues particular to the sustainable management of plantation forests, which are very important in some countries. It may become necessary in the future to formulate complementary indicators for intensively managed planted production forests.
The biological diversity components of criteria and indicator processes are also being influenced by the activities of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which is dominated by concerns about natural ecosystems. This influence reinforces the bias towards natural forests in the implementation of criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management in some countries. This is unfortunate, since a basic principle of any forest criteria and indicator system is that it should apply to all types of forest (e.g., see Montreal Process Santiago Declaration).
Furthermore, in some parts of the world, the boundary between plantations and natural forests is often difficult to distinguish (Anon, 1999a). There is therefore a strong case for a more integrated approach to the whole issue of management of forest genetic diversity.
Given the steadily increasing significance of plantation forests around the world, it is important that their genetic diversity be actively managed and monitored. While point (a) above may not apply to them - plantations in any one planting block or unit may be clonal - points (b) and (c) are critical to them.
A further complication arises in respect of the level of application of the indicators. All eco-regional/regional criteria and indicator processes were initially intended to be applied at the national level. Some made additional provisions for application of indicators at a sub-national level, some referring to the forest management unit (FMU). While the term FMU can have variable interpretation, there are clearly quite different requirements for assessing conservation of genetic diversity at the national level and at some sub-national level. Some processes have formally incorporated sub-national level indicators (e.g. ITTO, Pan-European), while others (e.g. Montreal) have left it to participating countries to use the national level indicators as the basis for development of more specific sub-national indicators.
The problems attached to quantitative indicators of genetic diversity have led some processes to specify additional qualitative indicators of the general form:
“Existence and implementation of a strategy to maintain forest genetic diversity.”
This gives individual countries or management units the opportunity to use a strategy that suits their particular circumstances. However, formalized strategies to maintain forest genetic diversity are not common, except for mechanisms for the conservation of rare or threatened species, or management of the germplasm for important commercial plantation tree species.
