What is sustainable forest management?
The Food and Agriculture Organization defines sustainable forest management as the stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in a way, and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic and social functions, at local, national, and global levels, and that does not cause damage to other ecosystems.
“Sustainable forest management” means forest resources across the landscape are used, developed, and protected at a rate and in a manner that enables people to meet their current environmental, economic, and social needs, and also provides that future generations can meet their own needs [based on ORS 184.421]. On a statewide basis, sustainable forest management will provide: • Healthy and diverse forest ecosystems that produce abundant timber and other forest products; • Habitat to support healthy populations of native plants and animals; • Productive soil, clean water, clean air, open space, and recreational opportunities; and • Healthy communities that contribute to a healthy state economy.
It is difficult to explicitly define what sustainable forest management is. However, several recent international meetings have suggested that the following seven thematic elements are key components. (1) Extent of forest resources; (2) Biological diversity; (3) Forest health and vitality; (4) Productive functions of forest resources; (5) Protective functions of forest resources; (6) Socio-economic functions; (7) Legal, policy and institutional framework. These thematic elements, acknowledged by UNFF, are based on the criteria of the nine on-going regional/international processes on criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, and were acknowledged by the International Conference on Criteria and Indicators in Guatemala in February 2003 (CICI 2003) and by the FAO Committee on Forestry in 2003. In February 2004, the FAO/ITTO Expert Consultation on Criteria and Indicators recognized that these elements are important for facilitating international communication on forest-rela
Sustainable forest management, particularly in its widest sense, is an ambiguous concept. The lack of conceptual precision relates to various dimensions: · the question of what needs to be sustained (i.e. what should be the objectives of sustainable forest management?); · the values attached by different stakeholders to the various sustainable forest management objectives; · the uncertainties associated with interventions in complex forest ecosystems; and · the time frame and spatial boundaries that should be adopted when examining the sustainability of different forest management options. 2.1 What should be sustained? The first question that normally induces contrasting answers is: what should be sustained? In the past, most forest management systems tended to focus on one objective of overwhelming importance, such as the maintenance of a certain flow of timber, protection of a fragile watershed or provision of an attractive forest environment for outdoor recreation. However, this app
