Achieving forest biodiversity outcomes across scales, jurisdictions and sectors with cycles of adaptive management integrated through criteria and indicators

2006 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
B J McAfee ◽  
C. Malouin ◽  
N. Fletcher

The national forest strategy provided a model for Canada's international support for sustainable development, which later resulted in the development of a national biodiversity strategy. Adaptive management is a preferred approach for implementing such policies where incomplete knowledge and the highly variable dynamics associated with natural ecosystems are challenges. While the concept of adaptive management is embedded in various policies, complete implementation is only beginning in Canada. Case studies on adaptive management frameworks focusing on conservation and sustainable management of forest biodiversity compare how information has been integrated across spatial scales, jurisdictions and sectors of activity. To monitor progress in sustainable forest management, the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers established a framework of criteria and indicators in 1995. The potential for criteria and indicators reporting to drive cross-scale adaptive management of Canada's biological resources is discussed. Key words: forest biodiversity, conservation, sustainable use, criteria and indicators, adaptive management, monitoring

2005 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
S R.J. Bridge ◽  
D. Cooligan ◽  
D. Dye ◽  
L. Moores ◽  
T. Niemann ◽  
...  

The Canadian Council of Forest Ministers' (CCFM) framework of Criteria and Indicators (C&I) for Sustainable Forest Management, published in 1995, provide a science-based framework to define and measure Canada's progress in the sustainable management of its forest. In 2001, the CCFM launched a review of its C&I to ensure the continued relevance of the indicators to Canadian values and to improve the ability to report on indicators. This paper describes the threestep review process, which engaged a broad array of representatives of various sectors of society. First, focus groups were used to identify public values, issues and concerns with respect to the sustainable use of Canada's forest. Second, technical experts from across the forest sector revised the indicators. Third, the revised C&I were validated with users of the framework. The revised framework, released in September 2003, consists of six criteria and 46 indicators. The number of indicators has been reduced, compared to the 1995 framework, by focusing on indicators that are most relevant to Canadians' values, are most often measurable with available data, and are understandable to policy makers, forest managers and an informed public. Links between criteria are better defined and, in some cases, indicators address multiple values under different criteria. A number of tools and techniques originally developed for use at the sub-national level were adapted for use at the national level in this review. Canada's experience with reviewing its indicators may serve as an example and model to other countries now considering reviewing their national C&I frameworks. Key words: Canada, Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, criteria and indicators, C&I, sustainable forest management, review


2003 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 752-756
Author(s):  
André H Rousseau

The Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM), established in 1985, is composed of the federal, provincial and territorial Ministers responsible for forests. Its role has evolved into one that stimulates the development of policies and initiatives for strengthening the forest sector, including the forest resource and its use. One of the most important functions of the CCFM is that it sets the overall direction for the stewardship and sustainable management of Canada's forests by addressing issues and stimulating joint initiatives. Under its guidance, four successive National Forest Strategies and three Forest Accords have been developed. Another major achievement has been the development of the CCFM Criteria and Indicators Framework: Defining Sustainable Forest Management - A Canadian Approach to Criteria and Indicators. Today, the CCFM works under five strategic themes: sustainable forestry; international issues; forest communities; science and technology; and information and knowledge. The ongoing, positive cooperation between the two levels of government helps maintain healthy and productive forests and their sustained contribution to Canadians' economic, environmental and social well-being over the long term. Key words: stewardship, governments, collaboration, national framework, for action, criteria and indicators, integrated information


2003 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 748-751 ◽  
Author(s):  
André H Rousseau

The Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM), established in 1985, is composed of the federal, provincial and territorial Ministers responsible for forests. Its role has evolved into one that stimulates the development of policies and initiatives for strengthening the forest sector, including the forest resource and its use. One of the most important functions of the CCFM is that it sets the overall direction for the stewardship and sustainable management of Canada's forests by addressing issues and stimulating joint initiatives. Under its guidance, four successive National Forest Strategies and three Forest Accords have been developed. Another major achievement has been the development of the CCFM Criteria and Indicators Framework: Defining Sustainable Forest Management – A Canadian Approach to Criteria and Indicators. Today, the CCFM works under five strategic themes: sustainable forestry; international issues; forest communities; science and technology; and information and knowledge. The ongoing, positive cooperation between the two levels of government helps maintain healthy and productive forests and their sustained contribution to Canadians' economic, environmental and social well-being over the long term. Key words: stewardship, governments, collaboration, national framework for action, criteria and indicators, integrated information


Social Change ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 204-221
Author(s):  
Ghazala Shahabuddin

During the last few decades, there has been a growing realisation that biodiversity conservation cannot be successful without the active involvement of the people living close to and dependent on natural ecosystems for their survival and livelihoods. Consequently, there has been a gradual broadening of the global conservation agenda from strict nature protection to include the sustainable use of natural resources, which is now reflected in governmental policy the world over. However, as conservationists strive today towards the harmonisation of people's needs with biodiversity conservation, one of the most elusive, yet critical, goals for them has been the sustainable extraction of plant resources from the wild. Hundreds of plant species continue to be extracted from natural habitats for use as food, medicine, fuel and fodder in households and for commercial sale, both legally and illegally. As a consequence of unmonitored extraction and over-exploitation, many plant species populations are reported to be declining in the wild. In the face of increasing pressure on forest resources, it has become more important than ever before to devise quantitative management policies for sustainable plant use so that both forests and the livelihoods of millions of rural people who are dependent on them, can be sustained. One of the major stumbling blocks for conservationists in developing countries, who are attempting to design and implement sustainable forest management systems, is the lack of information on the state-of-the-art in this field, especially that relating to field methods, data analysis, data recording and monitoring systems. In order to fill this lacuna, a comprehensive bibliography of studies undertaken so far in the science of sustainable use from terrestrial ecosystems is presented here. The scope of this bibliography includes sustainable


2002 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sen Wang

The world's forests have all the characteristics of "wicked problems" that are complex, tricky and thorny. Decades of sweeping changes that have taken place worldwide at various levels have resulted in the emergence of "metaforestry" which transcends the field of conventional forestry in response to the need to deal with ulterior and more fundamental problems concerning the forest. Being an overarching objective of metaforestry, sustainable forest management calls for a new line of thinking to promote collaboration in international forums concerning global forest policy. Key words: adaptive management, criteria and indicators, ecosystem, global forest policy, sustainable forest management


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murat Sarginci ◽  
Péter Ódor ◽  
Inken Doerfler ◽  
Thomas Nagel ◽  
Yoan Paillet ◽  
...  

<p>Forests provide essential economic, social, cultural and environmental services. To be able to maintain the provision of these services, sustainable forest management (SFM) is a vital obligation. The maintenance of biodiversity, ranging from gene to ecosystem levels, is essential for functions and associated services, and it is one of the most important criterion for assessing sustainability in the Pan-European region. <br>Currently, the majority of SFM Criteria and Indicators focuses on attributes relative to tree species or to the whole forest. With reference to biodiversity conservation, this means that the collected information cannot fully assess whether forests are being managed sustainably. To understand the drivers of forest biodiversity and drive sustainable management, several taxonomic groups should be investigated, since they may respond differently to the same environmental pressures. However, up to now, broad multi-taxonomic analyses were mainly performed through reviews and meta-analyses which limit our holistic understanding on the effects of forest management on different facets of biodiversity. Recently, several research institutions took up the challenge of multi-taxonomic field sampling. These local efforts, however, have limited extrapolation power to infer trends at the European scale. It is high time to share, standardize and use existing multi-taxon data through a common platform to inform sound management and political decisions. Biodiversity indicators have also some potential to be used in evaluation of impact of forest management on soils and surface waters in terms of naturalness, degradation and reclamation.<br>We present the COST Action CA18207 “Biodiversity of Temperate forest Taxa Orienting Management Sustainability by Unifying Perspectives” (Bottoms-Up). It will gather the most comprehensive knowledge of European multitaxonomic forest biodiversity through the synergy of research groups that collected data locally in more than 2200 sampling units across approximately 300 sites covering nine different European forest types. For each sampling unit, information will be available on at least three taxonomic groups (vascular plants, fungi, lichens, birds and saproxylic beetles being the most represented) and on live stand structure and deadwood. Multi-taxon biodiversity will be associated with: (i) information on forest management based on observational studies at the coarse scale, and (ii) structural data deriving from forest manipulation experiments at the fine scale. </p><p>Specific objectives are:<br>• Developing a standardized platform of multi-taxon data;<br>• Establishing a network of forest sites with baseline information for future monitoring;<br>• Designing shared protocols for multi-taxon sampling;<br>• Assessing the relationships between multi-taxon biodiversity, structure and management;<br>• Creating a coordinated network of forest manipulation experiments;<br>• Evaluating indicators and thresholds of sustainability directly tested on biodiversity;<br>• Developing management guidelines defining sustainable management to be applied in forest certification and within protected areas.</p><p>The Action involves about 80 researchers and stakeholders from 29 countries and represents an outstanding opportunity to develop a strong network of collaboration for standardized broad-scale multitaxon studies in Europe.</p><p>Keywords:  Multi-taxon, Pan-European region, Sustainable Forest Management. </p><p> </p>


2000 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Kneeshaw ◽  
Alain Leduc ◽  
Christian Messier ◽  
Pierre Drapeau ◽  
Sylvie Gauthier ◽  
...  

Within Canada, and internationally, an increasing demand that forests be managed to maintain all resources has led to the development of criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management. There is, however, a lack of understanding, at an operational scale, how to evaluate and compare forest management activities to ensure the sustainability of all resources. For example, nationally, many of the existing indicators are too broad to be used directly at a local scale of forest management; provincially, regulations are often too prescriptive and rigid to allow for adaptive management; and forest certification programs, often based largely on public or stakeholder opinion instead of scientific understanding, may be too local in nature to permit a comparison of operations across a biome. At an operational scale indicators must be relevant to forest activities and ecologically integrated. In order to aid decision-makers in the adaptive management necessary for sustainable forest management, two types of indicators are identified: those that are prescriptive to aid in planning forest management and those that are evaluative to be used in monitoring and suggesting improvements. An integrated approach to developing standards based on an ecosystem management paradigm is outlined for the boreal forest where the variability inherent in natural systems is used to define the limits within which forest management is ecologically sustainable. Sustainability thresholds are thus defined by ecosystem response after natural disturbances. For this exercise, standards are proposed for biodiversity, forest productivity via regeneration, soil conservation and aquatic resources. For each of these standards, planning indicators are developed for managing forest conditions while forest values are evaluated by environmental indicators, thus leading to a continuous cycle of improvement. Approaches to developing critical thresholds and corresponding prescriptions are also outlined. In all cases, the scale of evaluation is clearly related to the landscape (or FMU) level while the stand level is used for measurement purposes. In this view the forest should be managed as a whole even though forest interventions are usually undertaken at the stand level. Key words: sustainable forest management, criteria and indicators, biodiversity, regeneration, soil conservation, aquatic resources, landscape level evaluation, planning and monitoring


2003 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 652-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Herbert Kijazi ◽  
Shashi Kant

Prescriptions of the Forest Management Planning Manual (FMPM) for Ontario's Crown forests are examined for conformance with the elements of the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM) Criteria and Indicators (C&I) of sustainable forest management (SFM). The examination identifies gaps and highlights forest management planning aspects that require gap–bridging interventions at the forest management unit (FMU) level. The three levels (parts) of the FMPM—Management Planning, Annual Operations, and Reporting & Monitoring—are examined. Gaps are categorized in three groups—major, intermediate, and minor gaps. Major gaps are recorded for five out of 22 elements of the CCFM C&I framework, and these gaps indicate inadequate prescriptions for the corresponding elements at all the three levels. Minor gaps are also recorded for five elements, and these gaps indicate inadequate prescriptions at the monitoring level. Intermediate gaps are recorded for 11 elements, and depending on the specific element and indicator, inadequacy of prescriptions may only be for operations, reporting and monitoring, or may also include the planning level. The main findings of the gap analysis are that none of the six criteria of SFM has been fully incorporated in the FMPM; Part C (Reporting and Monitoring) has the highest degree and Part A (Plan Contents) has the lowest degree of non–conformity with respect to CCFM C&I framework; at the criterion–level the Global Ecological Cycles has major gaps while three criteria—Soil and Water Conservation, Multiple Benefits, and Society' Responsibility—have intermediate gaps; and the changes in the FMPM have been incremental while the shift in the concept of forest management from Sustained Yield Timber Management to SFM was a drastic change. Key words: biological diversity, Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, criteria and indicators, ecological cycles, forest management, multiple benefits, society's responsibility


2022 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
NC Stenseth ◽  
RA Ims ◽  
BE Sæther ◽  
L Cadahía ◽  
I Herfindal ◽  
...  

The sustainable use of natural resources is critical for addressing the global challenges of today. Strategies for sustainable harvesting need to consider not only harvested species, but also other non-harvested species interacting with them in the same ecosystem. In addition, environmental variation needs to be considered, with climate change currently being one of the main sources of this variation. Understanding the consequences of complex interactions between different drivers and processes affecting dynamics of species and ecosystems across spatial scales requires large-scale integrative research projects. The Norwegian research initiative “Sustainable management of renewable resources in a changing environment: an integrated approach across ecosystems” (SUSTAIN) was launched to fill knowledge gaps related to the sustainable management of populations and ecosystems experiencing climate change. SUSTAIN investigated terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems in boreal and Arctic regions, using both theoretical developments and empirical analyses of long-term data. This Climate Research Special contains both synthesis articles and original research exemplifying some of the approaches used in SUSTAIN. In this introduction we highlight 4 key topics addressed by SUSTAIN: (i) population structure, (ii) interactions between species, (iii) spatial processes, and (iv) adaptive management. These topics are fundamental to the understanding of harvested species from an ecosystem perspective, and to ecosystem-based management approaches, which we are striving to work towards.


1999 ◽  
Vol 150 (11) ◽  
pp. 437-442
Author(s):  
Rodolphe Schlaepfer ◽  
Rlta Bütler

A workshop about «Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management in Switzerland» was organized by the Swiss Forest Agency, in order to enhance knowledge about the paneuropean criteria and indicators and their possible applications. The workshop results are to be used as recommendations for the discussions in progress about sustainable forest management targets and the need for future relevant scientific data. In particular, two criteria turned out to be insufficient for Swiss requirements: Maintenance, conservation and appropriate enhancement of biological diversity in forest ecosystems (Criterion 4), as well as Maintenance and appropriate enhancement of protective functions in forest management (Criterion 5). Further pertinent indicators were proposed. Additionally, there were many demands for giving more weight to «financial sustainability». The workshop concluded that there was a need to define targets for sustainable management of the Swiss forests and that better relations need to be created between international criteria and indicators and their application at the canton and management unit level.


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