Ecosystem management and forestry planning in Labrador: how does Aboriginal involvement affect management plans?

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (11) ◽  
pp. 2247-2258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wyatt ◽  
Stephanie Merrill ◽  
David Natcher

Aboriginal peoples are increasingly being invited to participate in sustainable forest management processes as a means of including their knowledge, values, and concerns. However, it is justifiable to ask if this participation does lead to changes in forest management plans and to outcomes in management activities. We review four forest management plans over 10 years (1999–2009) in Labrador, Canada, to determine if increasing involvement by the Aboriginal Innu Nation has led to changes in plan content. We also compare these plans with three plans from another forest management district where there is no Innu presence and with two provincial forest strategies . Analysis shows that Labrador plans prepared since 2000, when the Innu and the provincial government established a collaborative process, are different from all other plans reviewed. Four principal characteristics distinguish these plans: a structure based around ecological, cultural, and economic landscapes, a network of cultural and ecological protected areas, increased attention to social and cultural values, and greater emphasis on research and monitoring. This suggests that Innu involvement has in fact influenced the contents of these plans, developing an innovative approach to implementing ecosystem management and demonstrating the utility of involving Aboriginal peoples in forest management planning processes.

2014 ◽  
pp. 9-23
Author(s):  
Milan Medarevic ◽  
Biljana Sljukic ◽  
Snezana Obradovic

The forest cover of Serbia occupies around 29% of its territory, which puts it among fairly well wooded countries in Europe. The forests of Serbia are characterized by both state and private forests, medium preservation status, i.e. 27% of area that is covered by insufficiently stocked stands. Coppice forests cover about 50% of the area, and private forests are additionally burdened by fragmented plots. Forest management planning in Serbia is older than 200 years (The Plan of Deliblato Sands Afforestation 1806). There are two basic assumptions that define forest management planning: sustainability and multifunctionality. Today, forest management planning in Serbia is regulated by the Law on forests and it has the characteristics of a system. The planning also has the characteristics of an integral, integrated and adaptive system. The latter is particularly important in terms of pronounced climatic changes. For the forests in protected objects of nature, there are also other types of plans that complement sector plans in forestry (e.g. management plans in protected areas).


2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 436-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Robson ◽  
Troy Davis

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the extent of policy change and learning in the 20 years following the implementation of Ontario’s forest sustainability legislation. Extent of policy learning and change towards sustainable forest management are measured using a combination of content, co-occurrence, and textual analysis of the previous Crown Timber Act and the new Crown Forest Sustainability Act, as well as the latter’s 1996 and 2009 forest planning manuals. There were four key findings. First, policy change towards sustainable forest management has been limited. Second, although there was an increased number of values mentioned in new legislation and planning manuals, the frequency of timber values remained dominant. Third, although integration occurred among a greater range of values, integration with timber values continued to dominate. Fourth, with respect to policy learning, the achievement of sustainable forest management is now explicit and judged based on evidence regarding the inclusion of a range of values beyond timber. The paper concludes that the transition to the more integrative and responsive policies of sustainable forest management remains a work in progress.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry A. Fisher ◽  
Yeon-Su Kim ◽  
Sitti Latifah ◽  
Madani Mukarom

Recent expansion of the forestry and plantation sectors in Indonesia has intensified agrarian and natural resource conflicts, and created increased awareness of the social, economic and environmental impacts of these disputes. Addressing these disputes is a critical issue in advancing Indonesia’s commitment to sustainable forest management.  The Forest Management Units (Kesatuan Pengelolaan Hutan, or KPH), have become the pivotal structural element for managing all state forests at the local level, with responsibility for conventional forest management and policy implementation (establishing management boundaries, conducting forest inventory, and developing forest management plans), as well as the legal mandate to communicate and work with indigenous people and local communities.  This paper presents the results of a national survey of all currently functioning KPH units, the first of its kind ever conducted with KPH leadership, to obtain a system-wide perspective of the KPHs’ role, mandate, and capacity for serving as effective intermediaries in managing forest conflicts in Indonesia. The survey results show that the KPHs are still in a very initial stage of development, and are struggling with a complex and rapidly evolving policy and institutional framework. The most common conflicts noted by respondents included forest encroachment, tenure disputes, boundary conflicts, and illegal logging and land clearing.  KPH leadership views conflict resolution as among their primary duties and functions, and underscored the importance of more proactive and collaborative approaches for addressing conflict, many seeing themselves as capable facilitators and mediators. Overall, these results juxtapose a generally constructive view by KPH leadership over their role and responsibility in addressing forest management conflicts, with an extremely challenging social, institutional, and political setting. The KPHs can certainly play an important role as local intermediaries, and in some cases, as facilitative mediators in resolving local conflicts, but only with a more concerted effort from central and provincial government authorities to provide greater consistency in policies and regulations, improved policy communication, and a sustained commitment to strengthening the capacity of individual KPHs. 


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emin Zeki BASKENT ◽  
Jose Guilherme BORGES ◽  
Jan KASPAR

Abstract Background: Forest policy and decision makers are challenged by the need to balance the increasing demand for multiple ecosystem services while addressing the impacts of natural disturbances (e.g. wildfires, droughts, wind, insect attacks) and global change scenarios (e.g. climate change) on its potential supply. This challenge provides the motivation for the development of a framework for incorporating concerns with a wide range of ecosystem services in multiple criteria management planning contexts. Thus, the paper focused on both the analysis of the current state-of-the art in forest management planning and the development of a conceptual framework to accommodate various components in a forest ecosystem management planning process.Results: Based on a thorough recent classification of forest management planning problems and the state-of-the-art research, the key dimensions of that framework and the process were defined. The emphasis is on helping identify how concerns with a wide range of ecosystem services may be analyzed and better understood by forest ecosystem management planning. This research discusses the potential of contemporary management planning approaches to address multiple forest ecosystem services. It highlights the need of a landscape-level perspective and of spatial resolution to integrate multiple ecosystem services. It discusses the importance of methods and tools that may help support the involvement of stakeholders and public participation in hierarchical planning processes. Conclusions: The research addressed the need of methods and tools that may encapsulate the ecological, economic and social complexity of forest ecosystem management to provide an efficient plan, information about tradeoffs between ecosystem services as well as the sensitivity of the plan to uncertain parameters (e.g. prices, climate change) in a timely manner.


Author(s):  
Andr Eduardo Biscaia de Lacerda ◽  
Maria Augusta Doetzer Rosot ◽  
Afonso Figueiredo ◽  
Marilice Cordeiro ◽  
Evelyn Roberta ◽  
...  

Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marija Ćosović ◽  
Miguel Bugalho ◽  
Dominik Thom ◽  
José Borges

Including biodiversity assessments in forest management planning is becoming increasingly important due to the importance of biodiversity for forest ecosystem resilience provision and sustainable functioning. Here we investigated the potential to include biodiversity indicators into forest management planning in Europe. In particular, we aimed to (i) identify biodiversity indicators and data collection methods for biodiversity assessments at the stand and landscape levels, and (ii) evaluate the practicality of those indicators for forest management planning. We performed a literature review in which we screened 188 research studies published between 1990 and 2020. We selected 94 studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria and examined in more detail. We considered three aspects of biodiversity: structure, composition, and function, and four forest management categories: unmanaged, managed, plantation, and silvopastoral. We used three criteria to evaluate the practicality of forest biodiversity indicators: cost-effectiveness, ease of application, and time-effectiveness. We identified differences in the practicality of biodiversity indicators for their incorporation into management plans. Stand-level indicators are more practical than landscape-level indicators. Moreover, structural biodiversity indicators (e.g., large trees, canopy openness, and old forest stands) are more useful in management plans than compositional indicators, as these are easily observable by non-professionals and can be obtained by forest inventories. Compositional indicators such are vascular plants, fungi, bryophyte, lichens, and invertebrate species are hard to identify by non-professionals and thus are impractical. Functional indicators (e.g., nutrient cycling) are not sufficiently addressed in the literature. Using recently updated existing databases (e.g., national forest inventories and bird atlases) is very time and cost-efficient. Remote sensing and other technology (e.g., smartphone applications) are promising for efficient data collection in the future. However, more research is needed to make these tools more accurate and applicable to a variety of ecological conditions and scales. Until then, forest stand structural variables derived from inventories can help improve management plans to prepare European forests towards an uncertain future.


2006 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 512-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Lee ◽  
Shashi Kant

With the recent involvement of a greater diversity of groups working in forest management planning, the identification and understanding of people's forest values and their perceptions of one another's values may be a promising approach to sustainable forest management. This study identifies and analyzes the forest values and perceptions of the members of four groups, Aboriginal People, Environmental Non-Government Organizations (ENGOs), the forest industry, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR), in northwestern Ontario. Conceptual Content Cognitive Mapping (3CM) was used to identify people's forest values and perceptions and dominant forest value themes were created using hierarchical clustering. Inter-group and intra-group similarities and differences among the rankings of participants' forest values and their perceptions were determined through various non-parametric statistical tests. Participants' perceptions about each group were generally similar, which included the two most prominent themes to be similar across all participants' perceptions of each group. Although the perceptions for a particular group were similar across the participant groups, they differed substantially with that participant group's personal ranking of the forest value themes. Key words: forest values, perceptions, stakeholders, cognitive mapping, sustainable forest management, collaborative decision-making


2001 ◽  
Vol 77 (6) ◽  
pp. 998-1005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tittler ◽  
Christian Messier ◽  
Philip J. Burton

In keeping with international efforts to encourage sustainable forest management, new legislation, regulations, and certification criteria have been brought into effect across boreal regions of the world in the past decade or less. These initiatives have established hierarchical systems of forest management planning that consider multiple uses of the forest and various aspects of sustainable forest management at different scales. We describe the systems established in Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, Russia, Finland, and Sweden. Most jurisdictions employ some form of three-level planning framework, in which strategic, tactical, and operational plans and considerations are presented with successively greater detail and spatial explicitness. However, planning scales and time horizons vary considerably, as does the level of consideration given to biodiversity and social concerns. We examine these systems in the context of sustainable forest management, raising a number of questions to be addressed in future research, adaptive management, and policy reform. In particular, we note (1) a need of new landscape and regional planning tools to evaluate the long-term and large-scale impacts of various land uses and (2) a general lack of responsiveness to global carbon and climate change concerns. Key words: forest management planning, sustainable forest management, boreal forest, forest policy, planning hierarchies, hierarchical planning


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