The Sustainable Forestry Handbook

A Practical Guide for Tropical Forest Managers on Implementing New Standards

Neil Judd, Sophie Higman, Stephen Bass, James Mayers, Ruth Nussbaum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136551888
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Scienze biologiche
• Subtopic: Ecologia

The Sustainable Forestry Handbook is widely considered to be the essential aid to understanding and implementing sustainable forest management. Providing a clear and concise guide to the practicalities of implementing international standards for sustainable forest management, this fully updated second edition covers new Forest Stewardship Council requirements, High Conservation Value Forests, clearer requirements on pesticides and developments in policy and forest governance. Aimed at forest managers, and employing extensive cross referencing and easy-to-understand illustrations, this highly practical handbook explains in clear terms what the standards require forest managers to do and how they might go about implementing them.

Introduction to Part One

There is increasing pressure worldwide for improvement in the quality of forest management. Concern about environmental and social issues associated with forestry – such as effects on biodiversity, climate change, desertification, flooding, conflicts over use rights and sustainable development generally – has led to international agreements and programmes for improving forest management practices.

Although there is general agreement that sustainable forest management (SFM) should be environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable, a need to agree a more precise definition of SFM has been recognized. As a result, various attempts have been made to develop international and national standards of sustainable forest management. However, it is often difficult for forest managers, especially in the tropics, to find practical information explaining exactly what is required and how to put it into practice. This handbook aims to fill that gap.

Part One looks briefly at the background to SFM and the development of new standards of forest management. It covers:

Chapter 1 What is Sustainable Forest Management?

Chapter 2 Why practise Sustainable Forestry Management?

Chapter 3 Standards for Sustainable Forest Management

What is Sustainable Forest
Management?

Sustainable forest management has been described as forestry's contribution to sustainable development. This is development which is economically viable, environmentally benign and socially beneficial, and which balances present and future needs (see Box 1.1).

Interactions between the flora and fauna in a forest ecosystem are complex and often poorly understood. The consequences of actions taken today may only show up in 50 to 100 years’ time. For this reason, some people feel that the phrase ‘sustainable forest management’ should not be used to describe current management systems. Other phrases such as ‘good forest stewardship’ or ‘well-managed forests’ are often preferred.

Although attempts at comprehensive definitions of SFM will always be argued over, there are many practices that are widely recognized as unsustainable, and which inevitably lead to forest degradation. For example, actions which cause a breakdown in the forest's ability to regenerate, or that exclude local people's needs, are unsustainable.

The approach taken in this handbook is to define practical sustainable forest management as the best available practices, based on current scientific and traditional knowledge, which allow multiple objectives and needs to be met without degrading the forest resource.

Early definitions of sustainable forestry concentrated on the timber resource, with management aimed at the ‘sustained yield’ of a limited number of wood products. Recently the importance of other products and services provided by forests has been recognized, particularly those of broader social concern. Concepts of SFM now encompass the continued production of these, such as protection of water supply, soils and cultural sites, as well as timber.

Box 1.1

What does sustainable forest management mean?

One of the most widely accepted definitions of sustainable development was produced by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. This defined sustainable development as:

‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

The concept of sustainable development recognizes that utilization will change natural ecosystems, but that conservation is also important. It also recognizes that utilization of forests is important for achieving social goals, such as poverty alleviation. These aims have to be balanced. Most governments now adhere to the concept of sustainable development and incorporate it in new policies.

There are various definitions of sustainable forest management, but they all say essentially the same:

‘Sustainable forest management is the process of managing forests to achieve one or more clearly specified objectives of management with regard to the production of a continuous flow of desired forest products and services, without undue reduction of its inherent values and future productivity and without undue undesirable effects on the physical and social environment.’

(ITTO, Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Management of Natural Tropical Forests, 1998)

Management of a forest for a single product will affect the forest's ability to provide other services or products, so trade-offs have to be made.

For example, managing the forest for high levels of timber production may affect the value of the forest as a habitat for wild animals. It is not possible to maximize production of everything, all the time. This means forest managers applying SFM must define the balance of different management objectives that they are aiming to achieve. It also means that the objectives of forest management will change over time, as different forest products and services become more valued, or less desirable, and as we learn more about what the forest can sustain.

1.1 Elements of Sustainable Forest Management

As described later in Part One, there are a multitude of initiatives to define the major components of sustainable forest management in practice. However, most initiatives have in common the elements shown below and the remainder of this handbook is based around these elements.

1 A legal and policy framework

• compliance with legislation and regulation;

• tenure and use rights;

• the forest organization's commitment and policy.

2 Sustained and optimal production of forest products

• management planning;

• sustained yield of forest products;

• monitoring the effects of management;

• protection of the forest from illegal activities;

• economic viability and optimizing benefits from the forest.

3 Protecting the environment

• environmental impact assessment;

• conservation of biodiversity;

• ecological sustainability;

• use of chemicals;

• waste management.

4 Wellbeing of people

• consultation and participation processes;

• social impact assessment;

• recognition of rights and culture;

• relations with employees;

• contribution to development.

5 Some extra considerations apply specifically to plantations and focus on:

• plantation planning;

• species selection;

• soil and site management;

• pest and disease management;

• conservation and restoration of natural forest cover.

Why practise Sustainable Forest
Management?

Why should forest managers improve their practices and implement the requirements of sustainable forest management described in this book? What are the conditions that encourage or require forest managers to adopt sustainable forest management practices, and what constraints do they face in improving their forest practices? This chapter addresses these questions.

2.1 Forest Governance

FOREST GOVERNANCE: WHAT IS IT AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Forest managers operate within a framework of laws, policies and institutional processes – they are ‘governed’. Forest governance requirements are therefore a fundamental factor affecting the forest manager's decisions on whether to work towards sustainable forest management.

Forest governance is about the policy, legal and institutional conditions that affect how people treat forests. It generally refers to the quality of decision-making processes – their transparency, accountability and equity – rather than the formal political structures of government. Good forest governance supports and encourages the implementation of sustainable forest management (SFM). At the same time, forest managers who implement SFM can themselves help bring about better forest governance.

Forest governance spans local to global levels. Governance pressures to implement SFM may be exerted at a number of levels, including:

Box 2.1

What is governance?

Governance is a notion commonly held to be very close to that of ‘government’ – more or less ‘what governments do’. But over the last decade in particular, governance as a term has become commonly used in a range of contexts, such as corporate governance, international governance, national governance and local governance. It is often now used in a general sense to mean the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented). One useful definition of governance is: ‘the traditions, institutions and processes that determine how power is exercised, how citizens are given a voice, and how decisions are made on issues of public concern’.¹

Governments are not the only organizations involved in governance. These days we are all told what to do, not only by our national or local governments, we are ‘governed’ by a range of nongovernmental organizations too, some of them more accountable to us than others. At the national level, informal decision-making structures, such as groups of special advisers may exist. More locally, powerful families or companies may make or influence decisions that affect us.

• the local level (eg community rules and social norms regarding forest use);
• the national level (eg legal rights to forest land and resources, and policies affecting the relative profitability of di...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables, Figures and Boxes
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Using This Handbook
• Part One: Introduction to International Standards for Forest Management
• Part Two: What Do the Standards Require?
• Part Three: Using an Environmental Management System
• Part Four: Meeting the Requirements
• Part Five: Tackling Social Issues
• Part Six: Forest Management Certification
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Index