Sustainable forest management has become the salient cross-cutting theme in forestry throughout the world today. This paradigm recognizes that forests are managed for a wide variety of ecological, ...economic, and social benefits. This explicit recognition of many outputs and services as management objectives has recast our economic analyses on the values of forests. Similarly, our policy tools must adapt to achieve the goals of multi-functional forestry across a broad range of ownerships and values. We review factors that affect forest policy selection, including the nature of goods and services, social values, and economic values. We then discuss traditional and newly developing natural resource policy tools in this context and discuss their applications in meeting the objectives of forest landowners and society in achieving multi-functional sustainable forestry goals in the future.
Many tropical countries have recently implemented similar forest policies including large-scale afforestation programmes and the devolution of land-use rights. Their success in enhancing livelihoods ...and contributing to improved environmental services has been widely questioned. This paper discusses the impacts of state afforestation efforts and forestry land allocation on farmers’ land-use decisions in northern Vietnam. It links policy outcomes with factors located beyond the local level by analysing the decision-making process at the policy implementation stage. Our study suggests that the current national afforestation campaign has not successfully involved households in the forestry sector and that forestry land allocation to households has often disrupted existing land-use systems with little impact on afforestation. These discrepancies between policy intentions and outcomes are partly linked to the relative freedom provinces have to interpret and adapt policies during the implementation stage. In this respect, the political and economic context has played a significant role in providing particular financial and bureaucratic incentives to the former State Forest Enterprises and to civil servants. However, we argue that these actors have been allowed or even encouraged to take advantage of these incentives by national policy-makers thanks to: (1) the lack of clarity or the poor adequacy of the policies designed at the central level, and (2) the blurred character of prevailing national discourses promoting afforestation and community-based forest management. We recommend that national policy-makers allow flexibility in policy implementation but develop mechanisms of accountability and control between the provincial and the central authorities.
Eight years after the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR) came into force, its effectiveness is still unsatisfactory due to deficient and uneven implementation among member states. In addition, ...some Western Balkan countries have poor legality monitoring systems, increasing the risk of trade in illegally harvested timber. Regardless of this, no recent work has analyzed the adaptation of national forest policies to the EUTR obligations. Our study aims to contribute to the understanding of EUTR implementation by analyzing the adaptation of policies of the Western Balkan countries (Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia) to the EUTR. Qualitative content analysis was conducted on 22 policy documents from Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. Documents were coded using coding categories derived from EUTR. Our results point out that none of the analyzed countries have a policy to directly address illegal logging or prevention of illegal activities. As EU members, Slovenia and Croatia has implemented EUTR through laws. The Slovenian Forest Act addresses all EUTR obligations, while Croatian Law on EUTR Implementation does not directly address the obligation of legality. This obligation is addressed by the Law on Forests. As Serbia is not an EU member, it did not implement EUTR. Nevertheless, Serbian Law on Forests addresses all EUTR obligations, but has some discrepancies regarding Traceability obligation. With ongoing discourses on Green Deal policies and the increasing focus on “deforestation-free” commodities, stricter implementation might be expected of EUTR at EU level. Most countries would probably have to build capacities for EUTR implementation and become more transparent and responsible concerning information availability. To successfully implement EUTR, an increased number of checks as well as stricter fines will be needed.
•We developed a system for assessing ecological integrity of managed forests.•Focal species link variability in forest condition and habitat to ecological processes.•We found some ecological ...differences from expected natural conditions.•Results provide insights into why undesirable effects are occurring.•The assessment approach can contribute to evidence-based policy analysis.
Ecological integrity of managed forests includes the ability of an ecosystem to support a community of organisms with a similar species composition and functional organization as found in nearby natural systems. We developed an indicator system for ecological integrity based on simulated natural disturbance and indicator species to test if forest condition and habitat in managed forests are similar to that found or expected in natural systems. We then applied the method in an area of the boreal forest (Ontario, Canada) where the objective of Ontario's strategic forest management planning approach is, in part, to conserve ecological integrity through the emulation of the natural disturbance process. Forest condition controls the supply of habitat to support the diversity of native organisms, and historically in boreal forests the natural disturbance process drove forest condition. We selected indicators of forest condition (landscape pattern and compositional mosaic) and habitat function (occupancy rates for a broad range of forest birds), and applied our assessment system to test whether indicators of forest condition and habitat function reflect outcomes expected if natural disturbance processes were successfully emulated. We collected occupancy data in natural and managed forest disturbance types using autonomous acoustic recorders, applied occupancy/detection modeling to estimate corrected occupancy rates (ψ), and then tested for differences in ψ between disturbance types. Some indicators of forest condition were within the range expected under natural disturbance, but we found relatively less old conifer, more young deciduous and greater edge density in managed forests relative to forests of natural disturbance origin. Most species (11 of 14) occurred with equal ψ in habitat originating from the two disturbance types. Brown creeper (Certhia americana), bay-breasted warbler (Mniotilta varia) and red-eyed vireo (Vireo olivaceus) differed between disturbance types. Brown creeper uses older conifer and occurred at lower rates in managed forest, while red-eyed vireo uses a range of deciduous forest ages, and occurred at higher rates in managed forest. Differences in quantity and/or quality of specific habitat types likely explain the responses. The results suggest what directional changes in the forest pattern and compositional mosaic would improve ecological similarity with natural systems, but also indicate what further research is required. We believe this approach to assessing ecological integrity can be adapted to study the effectiveness of conservation management strategies in other systems, and will contribute to adaptive management approaches and evidence-based policy development.
This study identifies the important factors that contribute to or inhibit forest transitions in nine Asian countries: China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Philippines, ...and Vietnam. A qualitative comparative analysis method was used to determine which conditions or combinations of conditions led to or prevented a forest transition. Under the condition of public ownership with no private forest tenure or ownership of forest land, there was no instance of forest transition among the nine countries studied. Under the condition of non-liberal timber trade policies, there was no instance of forest transition in the countries studied. The results of this analysis suggest that for a forest transition to occur, the country should liberalize timber import and provide forest tenure to the private sector. Based on these results, we argue that in order for a forest transition to take place or for REDD+ to be effective, the state should allow for private sector to participate in forest management and create market conditions that meet the demand for timber via trade policy alignment.
Changes of total forest cover (Unit: %). Display omitted
•Economic, ecological and political factors contributing to or inhibiting forest transition in nine countries in Asia, including China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Philippines and Vietnam, were examined.•Using qualitative comparative analysis method the conditions for forest transition to occur or not to occur were identified.•There are two potential conditions for forest transition to occur: 1) liberalization of timber import, and 2) private forest ownership or forest tenure enabling entrepreneurship to be operationalized for efficient land use decision making by individuals.•This corresponds to the conditions for forest transition not to occur, which include: 1) supply of timber from other countries is tightly controlled by the government, and 2) public land ownership under which entrepreneurship cannot operate in land use.
This research tried to identify the most important factors that motivate or hinder forest engineers in commuting between their household and the regional office of the National Forest Administration, ...or prompt them to relocate their entire family to Bucharest, where the headquarters of the NFA is located, in seeking promotion in the professional hierarchy. A survey, administered as a Google form, was designed to carry out analysis of independent benefits, opportunities, costs, and risks. The decision process was designed as an analytic hierarchy process, and each one of these factors was a separate analytic hierarchy process. We found that forest engineers tend to be very conservative when it comes to changing their professional position from the forest district to the NFA regional office or NFA top management. On the one hand, the professional opportunities to promote upwards do not compensate for the fringe benefits gained at the forest district level, while the costs of living in a larger city outweigh the benefits, even though the house rent is paid by the employer.
Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) are 20-year State-Federal agreements first signed between 1997 and 2001. They underpin the management of the majority of Australia's commercially productive native ...forests. Their objectives are to deliver certainty of resource access to forest industries, ensure that forest industries are profitable and protect environmental values, including biodiversity. I argue the objectives of RFAs have not been met with five key areas being unsuccessful. RFAs have: (i) failed to protect biodiversity and maintain ecosystem processes; (ii) been characterized by poor governance and watered down forest protection; (iii) overseen a demonstrable lack of profitability of, and declining employment in, native forest logging industries; (iv) led to the overcommitment of forest resources to wood production and (v) failed to account for other forest values that are often much greater than wood production. There is an urgent need for a comprehensive environmental, economic and social re-assessment of Australia's RFAs and forest industries per se. Efforts to thoroughly review RFAs must take better account of recent scientific and economic information, and explore new ways to manage forests values beyond only timber.
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