social indicators of multifunctional rural land use: the case of forestry in the uk

www.elsevier.com/locate/agee

Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 120 (2007) 31–40

Social indicators of multifunctional rural land use:

The case of forestry in the UK

Bill Slee *

Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, AB15 8QH and University of Gloucestershire, Dunholme Villa, The Park,

Cheltenham GL50 2RH, United Kingdom

Received 3 August 2005; accepted 20 March 2006

Available online 17 November 2006

Abstract

This paper reviews the problems surrounding the development of indicators for multi-purpose/multifunctional forestry in the United

Kingdom. Because of international and national forestry policy commitments to multi-purpose forestry and the development of indicators for

sustainable forest management, which include social indicators, forestry offers a useful laboratory in which to explore the practical and

conceptual issues surrounding the development of indicators in relation to rural land use.

In this paper, the background to the emergence of a multi-purpose forestry policy in the UK is explored. The shift towards multi-purpose/

multifunctional forestry was boosted at international level by the Rio Earth Summit, which led to a range of region-specific international

institutions which have promoted sustainable forest management. The pan-European Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests

subsequently agreed a criteria and indicators approach to the evaluation of sustainable forest management, which includes consideration of the

social dimension.

Social indicators are problematic for several reasons. First, many social scientists would challenge the positivist basis on which indicators

are normally constructed, arguing instead that social values are mutable social constructions. Nevertheless, a parallel thrust of much UK forest

research in recent years has been to value the non-market benefits of forestry with greater accuracy. Given the prevalence of this positivist

logic in UK forest policy circles, it is unsurprising that social issues have been marginalised and relatively weakly researched.

There are now strong pressures from government to all ministries to develop performance indicators. Such indicators already exist both in

relation to sustainable forest management in the UK and more widely in relation to the assessment of the Forestry Commission’s performance.

Recent work in the UK recognises the contested and negotiated nature of indicators and points to the resultant problems that are likely to arise

in the development of social indicators, for example in the farm sector. The high degree of state ownership makes social objectives more

readily achievable in the state forestry sector than in other forms of private sector productive land use, where social objectives are closely

interlinked with the overall livelihoods of private landowners, but also relate to the wider values of a more complex and increasingly

consumption-based rural society. The pursuit of consensually agreed social indicators for the forest sector poses major challenges and wider

applications to other rural land uses such as the farm sector will also be deeply problematic, both in the UK and more widely.

# 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Social; Indicators; Forestry; Multifunctionality; UK

1. Introduction

In this paper the development of aggregate-level

indicators, with particular emphasis on social indicators,

will be examined in the context of the development of

* Tel.: +44 1242 531010; fax: +44 1242 536204.

E-mail address: [email protected].

0167-8809/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2006.03.034

policy-induced multifunctional forestry. The discussion will

be contextualised within a wider debate about the problems

of legitimising indicators in what might be broadly

described as post-modern society, where highly divergent

claims are made by different groups over the same resource.

The paper will identify the social indicators articulated at

national level within the forestry sphere in the UK and

explore the extent they might be deemed to fully embrace

mailto:[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2006.03.034

B. Slee / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 120 (2007) 31–4032

the social dimensions of multifunctional forestry in the UK.

It will then seek to elaborate a more detailed set of social

economic and environmental indicators for use in evaluating

rural development forestry projects which, in a UK context,

tend to comprise area-based projects to promote multi-

functional forestry. In this paper, the use of indicators at

individual forest holding level is not considered.

Over the last 20 years in Western European countries

there has been a discernible diminution in the aggregate

economic significance of traditional production-based rural

land uses and a contemporaneous increase in their value as

environmental and socio-cultural assets. Often, but by no

means always, the increase in environmental and socio-

cultural values is unaccompanied by an overt and explicit

market manifestation. This lack of an overt market signal

makes the delivery of environmental and socio-cultural

services a major challenge to policy makers, who may wish

to increase the stock and flow of environmental, social and

cultural services, at the same time as ensuring compliance

with wider policy imperatives.

The decline in the economic significance of agriculture

and forestry in developed western economies has occurred in

spite of a substantial injection of public money into both

sectors. As farming and forestry became locked into a

policy-induced technological treadmill that embraced large-

scale technology, and often involved the simplification of

production and processing systems towards greater mono-

functionality, the environmental and socio-cultural ‘outputs’

that have been increasingly recognised as important co-

products of farming and forestry were, at the same time,

compromised by the modified production systems practised.

More recently, those mono-functional models of agri-

culture and forestry have been widely challenged and

policies have been instituted in the EU to nurture multi-

functional outputs from the rural land use sector. However,

multifunctionality can be seen as a malleable concept. van

Huylenbroek and Durand (2003) talk about three roles (of

agriculture) in addition to production: territorial; environ-

mental; and socio-cultural. As a broad generalisation, within

much of Northern Europe, multifunctionality is seen more in

terms of the delivery of environmental services, whereas in

Southern Europe, multifunctionality is conceived more in

socio-cultural terms. Further, although socio-cultural out-

puts are identified as part of multifunctional agriculture, the

broadened and reformed CAP ‘Pillar II’ policy instruments

in article 33 of the Agenda 2000 reforms focus almost

exclusively on supporting new economic activities or

environmental outputs. Social and cultural outputs are thus

effectively ‘piggy-backing’ on these measures as co-

products or joint products, rather than being explicitly

supported by policy measures.

The environmental dimension of multifunctionality is

overwhelmingly dominant in public and academic dis-

course. At a recent EAAE seminar on multifunctionality in

2004, only two out of over 40 papers presented were not

explicitly connected to agri-environmental or amenity

dimensions. Thus, the social dimensions are often largely

invisible to economists’ explorations of the topic and rarely

merit attention. However, these social dimensions are central

features of what Van der Ploeg and Renting (2000) describe

as the new rural development paradigm, which combines an

appreciation of the complex social and economic responses

of farmers and other rural actors to globalising tendencies

and the emergence of new networks and synergies between

actors as a means of response.

Perhaps inadvertently, the social dimensions of multi-

functionality have become interwoven with a protectionist

critique of free trade. Outsiders to the EU often view

multifunctionality as a trade-distorting means of supporting

farming incomes in the beneficiary economy (ABARE,

1999). Thus, the social values of multifunctionality can be

(and are, by some critics, especially among Cairns Group

countries) dismissed as a form of defensive localism,

articulated by non-competitive farmers and political

mouthpieces in a struggle to retain some degree of state

benefit. Socio-cultural values may be seen as rather less

robust, more contentious and certainly less easily measured,

than environmental values, with the consequence that the

latter are promoted rather than the former.

Interest in social aspects of forestry has grown in the UK

and Western Europe in recent years. Social aspects of

forestry have been a long-term concern in less developed

countries where forests have long been identified as an

important contributor to livelihoods. In developed countries,

as well as concern about the decline of forest-dependent

communities found most widely in North America and

Nordic countries, growing attention has been given to the

divergent values that forestry generates in different places

(e.g. Elands and Wiersum, 2003) and the impact of

consumption-oriented rural economies on forest values

(Slee, 2005a,b). The wider social and cultural values have

perhaps been given greater attention in the United States, not

least because of attempts to break out of narrowly defined

production forestry on federal and state-owned land (Brown

and Reed, 2000) and the relatively early involvement of

communities in forest planning (Jackson et al., 2004).

In this paper, the term ‘social’ is used in a general sense,

rather than conveying any narrow disciplinary meaning from,

say, a sociological perspective. Because of the widespread use

of the term ‘social’ in social cost benefit analysis, the term

necessarily includes non-market economic values, but equally

embraces wider social issues of inclusiveness, participation,

recreational engagement, impacts on livelihoods and quality

of life, as well as the spiritual values of forests.

2. Some conceptual issues in the use of indicators

The general use of indicators in policy evaluation at

various spatial scales is normally premised on the

assumption that the outputs of (in this case) complex

socio-economic and biophysical systems can be reduced to a

B. Slee / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 120 (2007) 31–40 33

set of measurable indicators, which reflect their performance

with respect to societal values about society, economy,

biodiversity, etc. This approach has its roots in the

reductionist positivist approach to social science, most

widely evident in economics. However, there has been much

discussion in forestry about the association of the

productivist values with a rationalist model of resource

management and the need to invoke an alternative paradigm

of multi-resource forest management (Behan, 1990).

Further, Koch and Kennedy (1991) and Kennedy and Koch

(2004) have promoted the human ecosystems approach as a

vehicle for exploring the range of social values and a similar

approach is advocated by Lawrence (2004). These various

authors have fundamentally challenged the rationalist

paradigm in a number of ways, exposing the need to

challenge spurious quantification and recognise the diffi-

culty of measuring and adding social values. More generally,

particularly in the United States, social scientists exploring

changes in forest values and their impact on local

communities have questioned the legitimacy of indicator-

based approaches and suggested ethnographic longitudinal

studies as an alternative (Jackson et al., 2004). In many

ways, the debate over the appropriate model of forest

management on federal lands presaged the international

debate about the values of multifunctional forests and how

the social consequences of that multifunctionality (or multi-

resource use) could best be explored. A number of

dimensions of this challenge of assessing socio-economic

impacts and values are summarised below.

First, Sagoff (1988) presents a specific challenge. He

asserts that conventional economics tends to rely on

judgements of value based on individualistic assessments

(so-called consumer values), but that social choices are

made on the basis of citizen values. He argues that decisions

relating to policy should be driven by citizen values rather

than consumer values, whereas most attempts at measure-

ment of social benefits are based on consumer values, or

because of weak survey design, an unknown combination of

both consumer and citizen values. This poses major

challenges to any optimising approach that attempts to

factor in non-market values.

Second, the utilitarian values of conventional economics

are challenged from within the subject by the work of Sen

and applied in a US forestry context by (Kusel, 2001). Kusel

(op. cit.) argues that the concept of well-being can be

beneficially explored through Sen’s ‘capabilities and

functionings’ approach, which is rooted in the exploration

of the resources that people have and the opportunities can

be achieved in the light of these endowments. In his work,

Sen explicitly sets his approach in contrast to the

predominant economic preoccupation with the efficient

operation of the market. Kusel goes on to consider well-

being at community level in the context of different forms of

capital, an approach very similar to that adopted in many

developing countries in the sustainable rural livelihoods

(SRL) approach (Carney, 1998).

A third critique of the utilitarian approach comes from

sociologists, ethnographers and anthropologists who are

discomforted by the top-down economics approaches built

on the edifice of neoclassical welfare economics. Their own

theoretical predispositions vary, but a core belief is that not

all values are reducible to economic values. Further, there is

often recognition of the condition of reflexivity as a critical

differentiating feature of social systems, which contrasts to

the non-reflexivity of bio-physical systems (Giddens, 1982).

Many people working in this field shun the reductionist

approach with its focus on indicators and argue for an

approach rooted in longitudinal studies of communities and

different stakeholder groups. Further, such authors explicitly

question whether an externally derived set of indicators can

be appropriate as a means of assessing local perceptions of

well-being (Parkins et al., 2001).

A fourth critique of the economically centred notions of

total resource value can be found in the outpourings of those

(often environmentalists) who, often with quasi-religious

zeal, deny the reductionism of economics and flag the

unmeasurable and non-reducible spiritual values of natural

resources.

In addressing the policy-induced desire to frame a range of

indicators to assess progress towards sustainable forest

management, including social indicators, the social scientist

is often stranded between his own epistemological sensitiv-

ities and the desire to engage constructively in contemporary

policy debates. The result has often been a pragmatic

compromise, perhaps best illustrated in the work of Buttoud

(2000) who argues the merits of a so-called ‘mixed methods’

approach, which gives voice to different actors and

stakeholders but sets these contested values alongside the

broadening range of values derived from the mainstream

economics. The work that is described later in this paper

broadly adopts Buttoud’s mixed methods approach.

Social indicators are likely to be a particularly mutable

set of indicators, reflecting the different ways in which

multifunctional forestry impacts on different stakeholders.

Indicators have been widely used in forestry, both in local

studies in North America and at national level in Western

Europe. The literature yields evidence of other examples

where it is possible to compare and contrast professionally

derived sets of indicators and acknowledge the possibility of

the lay community developing an alterative set. This implies

(and perhaps legitimises), the existence of competing

discourses relating to the social performance of forestry.

The debate over the objectivity and general acceptability

of indicators is not, however, exclusively a social

phenomenon. The development of the Index of Sustainable

Economic Welfare (ISEW) by Daly and Cobb (1989) can be

seen as an attempt to produce a more comprehensive

indicator of economic performance than routine GDP-based

approaches (Munday et al., 2002). It offers an alternative

composite index including, inter alia, the value of unpaid

domestic work (W below) and negative external effects such

as pollution (E below). This index is now widely recognised


and used by a range of NGOs and quangos to examine

economic welfare, and is clearly used in advocacy by

environmental agencies and NGOs such as Friends of

the Earth. (http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/sustainable_

development/progress/international.html).

In simplified form the ISEW can be expressed as

ISEW ¼ Cadj þ Pþ GþW � D� E � N

where Cadj is the consumer spending adjusted for income

inequality, P the non-defensive public expenditures, G the

growth in capital and net change in international position, W

the non-monetarised contributions to welfare, D the defen-

sive private expenditures, E the costs of environmental

degradation and N is the depreciation of environmental

capital base (Munday et al., 2002).

This example reveals how the very choice of the indicator

can be seen as a form of political rent-seeking, through

which competing groups advocate their particular view of

the world. Indeed this dialogue between the different

stakeholders and the whole search for representative

indicators can be seen as a reflection of the contested

nature of values relating to development.

This section has indicated that there is a wide-ranging

debate about how multi-purpose forestry can best be subjected

to scrutiny by social scientists. From the assumption of the

primacy of mainstream economic values to the rejection of

economics of deep environmentalists there is a spectrum of

approaches to the determination of social values associated

with forests. There is also debate as to whether indicators

should be treated as if they were quasi-objective measures of

performance of complex systems or, alternatively, to be seen

as mutable social constructions, subject to divergences in their

legitimacy and perceived importance/relevance among

different social and stakeholder groups. Whilst government

might wish to see indicators as quasi-objective indicators,

other groups may take a different view.

3. The background to the emergence of

multipurpose/multifunctional forestry in the UK

It is impossible to view multifunctional forestry in the UK

without briefly considering the context of developing

forestry policy. The overwhelming emphasis of 20th century

British forest policy was to create a strategic reserve of

timber, sufficient to meet the needs of a war of attrition. This

mission was tasked to the Forestry Commission, which

became a landowner and manage in its own right as well as

the agency promoting productive management of private

woodlands. With modest exceptions in relation to ancient

royal forests and at times of economic crisis when forestry

was supported as a form of regional policy, the productivist,

monofunctional thrust remained well after the prospect of a

war of attrition had receded (Ryle, 1969).

Paradoxically, alongside a predominantly (but not

exclusively) monofunctional state-owned forest, remnants

of a pre-industrial forest economy remained in the private

forestry sector (Edlin, 1949). Edlin describes the huge range

of artisanal wood products still widely crafted by workers in

the late 1940s and hints at the possible future viability of

some, while recognising others as of historic interest only.

The legacy of wood and forest-based livelihoods supporting

activity does, however, indicate the capacity of woodlands to

contribute in a variety of ways to the well-being of rural

households. Ryle (1969) notes the degree to which private

woodland owners were seen by the state forestry sector to be

failing to contribute to the monofunctional mission of

creating the strategic reserve, largely because of their

predilection for game management and general disinterest in

commercial silviculture. This criticism is an implicit

acknowledgement of the residual existence of multifunc-

tional forestry on privately owned land.

The monofunctional model of predominantly state

forestry came under considerable pressure from the mid-

1950s, and the debate about the appropriate level of forest

cover, the appropriate style of forestry activity and the

economic justification for forestry intensified from the mid-

1950s. Expert committees conducted major enquiries in

1957, 1966, 1972 and 1986 (Natural Resources (Technical)

Committee, 1957; Department of Education and Science,

1967; HM Treasury, 1972; National Audit Office, 1986),

which sought to critically appraise the economic rationale

for public expenditure on forestry, using a broadening

definition of outputs.

In the period following the Second World War, private

afforestation was supported by grant schemes (termed

dedication schemes) through which, if private owners

formally dedicated their woodland to productive use, they

would receive grant aid. Tax benefits were also conferred on

forest owners. The public debate about the use of this tax-

avoiding, grant-aided forestry came to a head in the debate

over the afforestation of high-nature value moorland and

bogs in Northern Scotland known as the Flow Country (see

Tomkins, 1989). The imitation of the monofunctional state

forestry model by the tax-avoiding, new private forest

owners can be seen with hindsight to have deepened the

debate about the future direction of forestry in the UK and

hastened the movement towards a more multifunctional

conception of forestry.

There were signs of change in forestry policy and practice

from the early 1980s. First, the grant system was changed to

give much more support to broadleaved afforestation by

private owners. Second, the state forestry service shifted its

approach to be much more welcoming of public access.

Third, forestry was increasingly articulated as a form of

green infrastructure provision in peri-urban regeneration and

new interagency partnerships were constituted to promote a

new national forest and community forests.

Forestry also occupied a prominent position in the Rio

Earth Summit in the early 1990s, which further raised its

profile and raised questions about the multiple functions of

forestry. The Rio process instigated a process, subsequently

http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/sustainable_development/progress/international.html

http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/sustainable_development/progress/international.html


Box 1. Social indicators in UK Forestry 2002

This group of indicators includes recreation and

access, health and safety, public awareness and

community involvement in forest management.

Many of the benefits of forestry for society are linked

to the direct use that individuals make of the forest,

and may be quantified to give valuable information.

They include recreational use of woodland (E1),

which is influenced by the extent of open public

access to woodland (E2). Increasing the provision

and uptake of recreational opportunities in woodland

is an objective of the countries’ forestry strategies.

Two other objectives are to increase public aware-

ness of forestry and to raise the level of participation

by communities in forest management and use.

These aspects of sustainable forestry are less amen-

able to a quantitative approach. Public awareness of

forestry (E3) is assessed by a biennial survey of

Public Opinion of Forestry. Many aspects of commu-

nity involvement (E4) could be assessed, but there is

little quantitative information at present. Forest man-

agement plays a role in conserving our historic envir-

onment and cultural heritage (E5). Little information

is currently available for this indicator and more may

be added in a future report. An indicator for health

and safety (E6) has been included because of the

relatively high rate of accidents to forest workers

compared with workers in other sectors (Source:

Forestry Commission, 2002).

developed in Europe through the Ministerial Conference for

the Protection of Forests (MCPFE), for the development of

criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management.

This internationalisation of forest policy thus formally

introduced the need to establish criteria and indicators.

Although their initial focus was largely ecological and

environmental, there was a social dimension that was

deepened in the so-called ‘Lisbon process’, which has

subsequently been picked up by signatories to the MCPFE

and operationalised at national level.

UK forest policy, premised as it had been on the need for

a strategic timber reserve, was driven by a top-down process

of policy initiation and delivery and by a high degree of state

intervention. This is reflected for example, in the UK

Forestry Standard (Forest Authority, 1998). The demand for

alternative, community-based models of forestry from the

early 1990s discomforted the Forestry Commission, which,

particularly in northern Britain, came under sustained attack

from a range of interests promulgating greater social and

community forestry and greater use of native species (Inglis

and Guy, 1997). The loss of an explicit social/community

purpose was increasingly singled out as a criticism of a state

forestry sector, threatened by privatisation and engaging in

cost cutting measures that often impacted adversely on local

employment.

At UK level, a further change in the policy context has

been the response to devolution. In the devolution

settlement, forestry was identified as a devolved responsi-

bility. This gave the Scottish and Welsh administrations an

opportunity to develop their own distinctive forestry

policies. The governments of England, Scotland and Wales,

in association with their sub-national branches of the

Forestry Commission, all developed a Woodland (or Forest

and Woodland) Strategy in the late 1990s. These represent

the latest major policy statement relating to multifunctional

forestry, as well as embodying the principles for European

Sustainable Forest Management and the attendant criteria

and indicators approach.

The England Forest and Woodland Strategy (Forestry

Commission, 1998) articulated a four-stranded case for

forestry in England. The four elements were:

� r
ural development;
� r
ecreational access and tourism;
� r
egeneration;
� e

1 However, wider quality of life issues have been considered in an

indicator-based framework by the DETR (2004) in their quality of life

counts.

nvironment and conservation.

By the late 1990s, the Forestry Commission had thus

fully embraced multifunctionality in England. The Scottish

and Welsh strategies comprise differently nuanced but

nonetheless highly multifunctional perspectives.

The Forestry Commission published its 40 indicators of

sustainable forest management in 2002 (Forestry Com-

mission, 2002). There were six groups of indicators

relating, respectively, to woodland, biodiversity, condition

of forest and environment, timber and other forestry

products, people and forests and economic aspects. The

selection of indicators was shaped by national guidelines

laid down in the UK Forestry Standard (1998) and the

pan-European Indicators of Sustainable Forest Manage-

ment, as well as being influenced by two rounds of public

consultation.

In the 2002 indicators report (Forestry Commission,

2002), each indicator is assessed with respect to its

relevance, key trends, availability of statistical sources,

contextualisation alongside other indicators, and the scope

for improving the quality of the statistical information on

which it is based. The social indicators used, and the

rationale for their use, are listed in Box 1.

The social indicator approach adopted by the Forestry

Commission represents a broad mix of social indicators.

Indicators E1 and E2 are clearly relevant to the informal

recreational role of forests, but are not rooted in any market

or imputed economic value. E3 gives an indication of public

perceptions. E4 and E5 are important but extremely difficult

to measure and E6 comprises a specific industry problem.

However, the wider community values of forestry are

scarcely touched upon.1


4. How might social dimensions of forestry

multifunctionality in the UK be explored more fully

using an indicator-based approach?

Over the last decade and a half, forestry policy and

practice in the UK has been profoundly modified as a result

of the external need to accommodate pan-European

obligations into national forest policy and internal needs

to address both the devolution settlement and a number of

emergent concerns about the nature and direction of forestry

policy and practice. This section explores the use of social

indicators in relation to area-based projects.

The pan-European obligations have been manifested in

the production of the set of indicators of sustainable forest

management but, in many ways, the social and economic

indicators developed are largely unconnected to recent

policy and research agendas, except insofar as they

recognise the growing importance of recreational access

and indicate a desire to consider community participation as

a social indicator.

This section reflects on more recent work undertaken for

the Forestry Commission, which explores more fully the

social dimensions of contemporary forestry. Two main types

of work are evident. First, there is a body of qualitative work

that examines the attitudes and values of different user

groups relating to woodland (see e.g. Bishop et al., 2002;

O’Brien, 2003). Second, there have been attempts to extend

economic analysis into a broader-based analytical template

to enable a full socio-economic analysis of the contribution

of forestry to rural development and rural well-being more

widely.

The qualitative work undertaken in recent years exposes

how forests and woodland provide an important recreational

and cultural resource to different groups of people. O’Brien

(2003) makes a strong case for deliberative and discursive

approaches. However, the narrative/discursive approach

adopted makes it almost impossible to transform this

knowledge into social indicators, in that the very use of such

approaches implies a general rejection of the positivist

paradigm. However, some more formalised approaches

developed in action research such as citizen juries (Kenyon

and Nevin, 2001) offer a deliberative method that might

overcome some of the tensions generated by trying to add up

individual utilities to achieve a societal valuation of complex

public goods.

The second approach is to broaden conventional

economic analysis. This is premised on the recognition

that forest woodland and trees appear to confer widely

perceived advantages on many people who are not connected

to such resources through ownership or employment. The

most obvious shift in this direction has been the use of non-

market benefit estimation methods (e.g. Brainard et al.,

1999). Such application (e.g. Willis et al., 2003) has resulted

in an estimated value of such benefits at ca. £1,000,000,000

annually for the UK forest sector. Other studies (CJC

Consulting et al., 2003; Dickie and Rayment, 2001) provide

corroborative evidence of the growing relative importance of

non-timber benefits over timber benefits from forest and

woodland.

In addition to the attempts to measure non-market

benefits, other approaches have sought to frame an analysis

of the sub-regional impacts of forestry within a spatial

economic modelling exercise. A study by Slee et al. (2004)

found that the conventional timber outputs comprised barely

10% of the economic impacts of forest, woodland and trees

on local economies in two English regions and that what

they term a ‘halo’ or ‘shadow’ effect of trees impacted

beneficially on nearby firms and households, creating

associated regional spending which contributed significantly

to rural development outcomes. The Slee et al. (2004) study

undertook parallel social investigations, based on household

surveys and focus groups, which provided strong corro-

borative evidence of how forestry was recognised as

providing a range of recreational and environmental benefits

to adjacent households.

More recently, the Forestry Commission has indicated a

desire to evaluate the range of socio-economic benefits

arising from a range of forest and woodland projects. In

many different parts of the UK, there has been a diverse

range of multi-faceted publicly funded area-based rural

development forestry projects. These projects include both

new forest creation and rehabilitation of existing forests.

Almost all involve private forest owners and all have strong

wider community connections. Typically, such projects are

evaluated on a one-off basis in ways that afford limited

comparability from project to project. Slee (2005a,b) has

recently suggested a template, which might be used for

comparative evaluation of such projects. The template was

drawn up after a detailed examination of two projects, and in

the light of an interim evaluation conducted of a third project

(Slee et al., 2003). The socio-economic dimensions of this

template are summarised in Box 2. A more detailed

description of questions leading to the indicators sought is

presented in Table 1. This list of criteria and indicators is

intended for use for the evaluation of projects relating to the

enhanced management of existing forests and woodland, not

new afforestation projects, and relates specifically to the UK

context where much private woodland experiences little or

no management, with minimal socio-economic benefits and

potentially adverse environmental consequences (Kirby

et al., 2005).

It is immediately evident that a number of these facets of

rural development projects relate explicitly to social

dimensions of forestry (the detailed questions proposed in

relation to each category can be seen in Table 1) and most are

eminently suited to assessment via indicators. Questions 2–5

relate to economic dimensions of forestry. Questions 1 and

6–9 relate, in part at least, to social dimensions. This creates

an opportunity to compare and contrast a set of questions,

and associated indicators of project output or outcome and

the set of social indicators proposed by the Forestry

Commission to satisfy the demands of Sustainable Forest


Box 2. Categories of socio-economic informationsought in area-based forestry project appraisal

1. What were the processes by which the project

was designed and outputs were delivered and

how effectively were they implemented?

2. What economic effects has the project generated

and with what levels of efficiency have these out-

puts been generated?

3. What evidence, if any, is there of displacement

effects of the project?

4. Have any other projects taken place in the project

area or nearby which might have generated some

of the outputs/outcomes sought by the project?

5. What changes have taken place in the values of

non-market goods and bads?

6. What changes have occurred at community level

as a result of the project?

7. What has been the impact of the project on house-

hold livelihoods?

8. What, if any, have been the wider knock-on effects

of the project?

9. Has the project impacted positively on sustainable

development indicators? (Source: Slee, 2005a,b).

Table 1

Guidelines for the identification of social indicators for multifunctional

forestry projects

1. What, if any, evidence is available about the pre-project situation

(baseline against which to evaluate) in relation to all outcomes that

are flagged as relevant to the project?

Are these available in all fields (economic, social, environmental)?

Are they available at an appropriate spatial scale?

2. What were the processes by which the project was designed and

outputs were delivered and how effectively were they implemented?

Was the project conceived by the community or external agency and

was there full consultation with all communities of interest prior

to the agreement of a plan?

What evidence is there of any alterations of plans to take

account of community views?

What evidence is there that the processes embodied in delivering the

project outputs were appropriate/fit for purpose?

What if any evidence is there of a brokerage role that delivers wider

process related benefits among different agencies and actors?

3. What economic effects has the project generated and with what

levels of efficiency have these outputs been generated?

What were the direct effects of the project?

What were the indirect effects of the project?

What were the induced effects of the project?

What levels of NGO or private sector leverage occurred in different

parts of the project?

What were the shadow/halo effects of the project?

How efficiently have the objectives been achieved?

4. What evidence if any is there of displacement effects of the project?

Have any local businesses suffered as a result of the project?

Have any local households suffered any losses as a result of the

project?

Management processes. It also enables articulation from

national level indicators to local area-based projects.

The principal differences between the indicators derived

from such an approach and those used at national level are:
5. Have any other projects taken place in the project area or nearby
which might have generated some of the outputs/outcomes sought

by the project?
1. A
Are there any possibilities of outcomes of this project being

attributed to other projects?

Are there any possibilities of outputs and outcomes of this project

being confused and muddled with other changes that have taken

place?

lthough public participation is flagged as a concern in

the SFM Indicators study, it is given much greater profile

in the above study. The processes of project design and

implementation are both seen as means of engaging with

a range of stakeholders.

2. C
6. What changes have taken place in the values of non-market goods
and bads?

What are the important goods and bads that merit attention

(see Willis et al., 2003) and customise to locale—may need to

list in annex?

What positive externalities have increased as a result of the project?

What negative externalities have increased as a result of the project?

Overall, is the project positive/neutral/negative with respect to

ommunity level changes are explored principally

through an exploration of impacts on social capital in

the Slee (2005a,b) study but social capital is not even

mentioned in the Forestry Commission (2002) report.

Capacity building and new group/partnership formation

is also explored in the Slee (2005a,b) approach but absent

from the Forestry Commission’s (2002) report.

external effects?
3. T
7. What changes have occurred at community level as a result of the

project?

How has the plan impacted on social capital?

Bridging capital

he Slee (2005a,b) study explicitly uses a livelihoods

approach (see Carney, 1998). This was developed in a

developing country context, but enables explicit focus on

the particular groups and of changes in various forms of

capital, including social capital.
Bonding capital 4. T Linking capital
What capacity building has taken place at individual and collective

levels?

Are communities/stakeholder groups/individual actors better able to

manage change in their businesses?

Has the project imparted particular skills/knowledge of benefit to

particular individuals or groups of actors?

What new groups/partnerships have been formed as a result of

project activity?

he knock-on effects of forestry projects can be treated as

a narrow economic phenomenon, previously estimated

by looking at relationships along the wood supply chain.

However, there is also a case for exploring these knock-

on effects more widely, not only to pick up halo effects

but also to ascertain whether project interventions result

in cultural revalorisation of forest and woodland

resources through a reconnection of communities to

the forest resource.


Table 1 (Continued )

8. What has been the impact of the project on household livelihoods?

Are there new opportunities for FT, PT, or ST work?

Are there other means through which the project contributes to

household livelihoods (e.g. NTFPs for household consumption)?

Is there any evidence that the project has contributed to any

of the five capitals in the livelihoods model?

Is there evidence of contribution to the livelihood of target groups

(farmers, forest owners, socially excluded groups, etc.)?

9. What, if any, have been the wider knock on effects of the project?

Has the project been instrumental in creating drawdown of support

in other related areas?

Has the project changed people’s evaluation of the local forest/

woodland resource?

Is the project likely to influence other activities in the longer term?

10. Has the project impacted positively on sustainable development

indicators?

At local/regional level in relation to headline indicators?

At local level in relation to quality of life indicators?

At local/regional level in relation to SFM indicators?

5. Implications of findings

In spite of indicators being applied extensively to forestry

to ensure compliance with international agreements, the nati-

onal-level social indicators used in official approaches to date

can be seen to offer a very partial picture of the wider social

impacts of forests and woodland on the population as a whole.

One of the principal challenges to the development of

social indicators in forestry is the extent to which multi-

functional forestry necessarily engages a wider range of

stakeholders. In consequence, the derivation of a consensus

as to what might be appropriate indicators (even sometimes

whether a change in some indicators is a gain or a loss2), can

be seen as problematic. Indicators can be seen as a social

product of negotiation, rather than a value-neutral process of

evaluation. In a more complex rural society of divergent

stakeholder interests, the determination of indicators may be

more a function of rural power relationships and less a result

of the application of value-neutral scientific logic. Similar

issues of negotiation between competing interests might

arise in a farming context if de-intensification of farming

generated more ecologically rich but more untidy and

‘down-at-heel’ landscapes.

A second major difficulty is the identification (and then

measurement) of appropriate social indicators (see also

Parkins et al., 2001). This can be seen as both a problem of

objective science (we know in general what we want to

measure but not exactly how to best go about it), or a problem

of competing stakeholder values and their legitimation or

otherwise, given inequalities of power within the rural policy

process and in the operation of rural markets.

2 Some stakeholders might argue that a greater proportion of the mean

annual increment of timber felled was a positive sign of effective forest

management and a vibrant forest culture; other stakeholders might regard an

increase in MAI felled as a diminution of amenity.

A third problem is the extent to which there is a

resistance to quantification in some parts of the social

sciences, which stems partly from an antipathy towards

spurious and/or partial and/or inexact quantification in

socio-economic analysis, and partly from an assertion that

reductionist and narrowly positivist social science fails to

capture all elements of value. This latter problem is most

clearly evident amongst those who present a vision of

post-modern paradigmatic uncertainty, within a frame-

work of competing discourses about the nature and values

of forestry.

6. Conclusions

Social indicators have been developed in a very top-down

way in the forest sector in the UK, primarily because of

obligations to meet international agreements regarding the

assessment of performance of the forest sector against global

principles of sustainable forest management. Over and

above international agreement compliance, there is a widely

perceived need in government to assess performance more

objectively. To this end, ministries and public bodies are now

expected to enter Public Service Agreements (PSAs) with

the UK finance ministry (The Treasury) to assess the

achievements of particular facets of policy against pre-

agreed targets. The Forestry Commission in England is now

expected to identify a single performance indicator for each

of the four elements of their national strategy. This degree of

reductionism raises profound challenges to multifunctional

forestry and its assessment.

The use of indicators carries with it certain implications

for any multifunctional land use for which (normally) public

authorities require multi-disciplinary analysis. Whereas in

the past (and still to a degree) Cost Benefit Analysis

attempted to reduce multiple dimensions of land use or

programme or policy impacts to single values or ratios, the

recognition of the social dimension limits the capacity of

economists to assume primacy for their values and their

indicators. However, new policy agendas paying much

closer attention to social inclusion and the value of the green

infrastructure (see DEFRA, 2004) create a need for a broader

approach to impact measurement, even if the subsequent

PSAs between the finance ministry and government

departments and agencies comprise a minimalist evaluation

of social aspects.

Forestry as a multifunctional land use thus forms an

apposite sector with which to compare the scope for

assessing social indicators with the farm sector, where

basically the same policy pressures towards multifunction-

ality exist and a similar demand for indicators will

undoubtedly arise.

One major difference between agriculture and forestry as

land uses is the extent of state ownership of forests. State (or

more generally public or NGO forest owners) are likely to be

more inclined to promote public good outputs than private


forest owners who are unrewarded for this task. In

agriculture, the greatest leverage for effecting a farmer

response towards multifunctional output delivery can be

exacted through stringent cross compliance, rather than

through grant aid. However, this is thought of almost

exclusively as a means of delivering environmental not

social cross compliance. The identification of the most

appropriate means for the delivery of socio-cultural public

(and quasi public) goods and services through the reformed

CAP represents a formidable challenge.

It is important to differentiate the development of social

indicators as convenient means for policy makers to assess

performance and the development of indicators to deepen

understanding through independent academic inquiry.

Whilst the latter hopefully informs the former, the

development of multifunctional land use and the measure-

ment of its consequences can be seen as a complex and often

inherently conflictual process, whereby different stake-

holders are effectively rent-seeking to derive from the

particular elements of multifunctional land use more of that

which they value most. Given inequalities of power and

information asymmetries, the design and application of

indicators to assess performance cannot be seen as neutral

and disinterested, but must be seen as part of a negotiated

and often conflictual change in land use in response to

changing societal needs and demands.

References

Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics (ABARE), 1999.

Multifunctionality: A Pretext for Protection, current issues, vol. 3.

ABARE, pp. 1–6.

Behan, R.W., 1990. Multi-resource forest management: a paradigmatic

challenge to professional forestry. J. Forest. 88, 12–18.

Bishop, K., Kitchen, L., Marsden, T., Milbourne, P., 2002. Forestry, com-

munity and land in South Wales valleys. In: O’Brien, L., Claridge, J.

(Eds.), Trees are Company: Social Science Research into Woodlands

and the Natural Environment. Forestry Commission, Edinburgh, pp. 29–

38, http://www.forestry.gov.uk/PDF/treesarecompany.pdf/$FILE/tree-

sarecompany.pdf (September 12, 2006).

Brainard, J., Lovett, A., Bateman, I., 1999. Integrating geographical infor-

mation systems into travel cost analysis and benefit transfer. Int. J.

Geogr. Inform. Sci. 13 (3), 227–246.

Brown, G., Reed, P., 2000. Validation of a forest values typology for use in

national forest planning. For. Sci. 46 (2), 240–247.

Buttoud, G., 2000. How can policy take into consideration the ‘‘full value’’

of forests? Land Use Policy 17, 169–175.

Carney, D. (Ed.), 1998. Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: What Contribution

can we make? DFID, London.

CJC Consulting, Pearce, D., Willis, K., 2003. Economic analysis of forestry

policy in England, A Report to DEFRA and the Treasury.

Daly, H.E., Cobb, J., 1989. For the Common Good: Redirecting the

Economy towards Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable

Future. Beacon Press, Boston.

DEFRA, 2004. Rural Strategy 2004. DEFRA, London.

Department of Education and Science, 1967. Report of the Land Use Study

Group. HMSO, London.

Dickie, I., Rayment, M., 2001. Assessing the economic benefits of forestry

in the UK. Paper prepared for the Forestry Commission’s Advisory

Panel, Environment Sub-Committee.

Edlin, H., 1949. Woodland Crafts in Britain. Batsford, London.

Elands, B., Wiersum, F., 2003. Forestry and rural development in Europe,

Forest and Nature Conservation Group, Report 2003-02, Wageningen

UR, The Netherlands.

Forest Authority, 1998. The UK Forestry Standard: The Government’s

Approach to Sustainable Forestry. Forestry Commission, Edinburgh.

Forestry Commission, 1998. England Forestry Strategy: A New Focus for

England’s Woodlands. Forestry Commission, Cambridge.

Forestry Commission, 2002. UK Indicators of Sustainable Forestry. For-

estry Commission and Forest Service for Northern Ireland, Economics

and Statistics Branch, Edinburgh.

Giddens, A., 1982. Sociology: A Brief but Critical Introduction. Macmillan,

London.

HM Treasury, 1972. Forestry in Great Britain: An Interdepartmental Cost

Benefit Analysis. HMSO, London.

Inglis, A.S., Guy, S., 1997. Rural development forestry in Scotland: the

struggle to bring international principles and best practices to the

last bastion of British colonial forestry. ODI Rural Development

Forestry Network Paper No. 20b. Overseas Development Institute,

London.

Jackson, J.E., Lee, R.E., Sommers, P., 2004. Monitoring the community

impacts of the Northwest Forest Plan: an alternative to social indicators.

Soc. Nat. Resour. 17, 223–233.

Kenyon, W., Nevin, C., 2001. The use of economic and participatory

approaches to assess forest development; a case study of the Ettrick

valley. For. Policy Econ. 3, 69–80.

Kennedy, J.J., Koch, N.E., 2004. Viewing and managing natural resources

as human–ecosystem relationships. For. Policy Econ. 6, 497–

504.

Kirby, K.J., Smart, S.M., Black, H.I.J., Bunce, R.G.H., Corney, P.M.,

Smithers, R.J., 2005. Long-term ecological change in British woodland

(1971–2001), a resurvey and analysis of change based on 103 sites in the

Nature Conservancy ‘Bunce 1971’ woodland survey, English Nature,

Perth.

Koch, N.E., Kennedy, J.J., 1991. Multiple use forestry for social values.

AMBIO 20 (7), 330–333.

Kusel, J., 2001. Assessing well-being in forest-dependent communities. J.

Sustain. Forest. 13 (1/2), 359–384.

Lawrence, A., 2004. Social values of forests. In: Burley, J., Evans, J.,

Youngquist, J.A. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Forest Sciences. Elsevier,

Amsterdam, pp. 1126–1131.

Munday, M., Roberts, A., Christie, M., Midmore, P., 2002. Developing an

Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare in Wales. Final Report for the

Countryside Council for Wales.

National Audit Office, 1986. Review of the Forestry Commission’s objec-

tives and achievement. In: Report by the Comptroller and Auditor

General, HMSO, London.

Natural Resources (Technical) Committee, 1957. Forestry Agriculture and

Marginal Land. HMSO, London.

O’Brien, E.A., 2003. Human values and their importance to the develop-

ment of forestry policy in Britain: a review. Forestry 76, 5–17.

Parkins, J.R., Stedman, R.C., Varghese, J., 2001. Moving towards local level

indicators of sustainability in forest based communities: a mixed

methods approach. Soc. Indicat. Res. 56, 43–72.

Ryle, G., 1969. Forest Service: the First Forty-five years of the

Forestry Commission in Great Britain. David and Charles, Newton

Abbot.

Sagoff, M., 1988. The Economy of the Earth: Philosophy, Law and the

Environment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Slee, B., Evans, R., Roberts, D., 2004. Forestry in the rural economy: a new

approach to assessing the impact of forestry on rural development.

Forestry 77 (5), 441–453.

Slee, B., Selman, P., Ingram, J., Taylor, D., 2003. Heartwoods: interim

evaluation. Unpublished Report to the Forestry Commission.

Slee, B., 2005. A generic framework to support the evaluation of rural

development forestry projects. A Draft Report to the Forestry Com-

mission.


Slee, R.W., 2005b. From countrysides of production to country-

sides of consumption? J. Agric. Sci. 143, 1–11 (Centenary

Review).

Tomkins, S., 1989. Forestry in Crisis: The Battle for the Hills. Croom Helm,

London.

Van der Ploeg, J.D., Renting, H., 2000. Impact and potential: a comparative

review of European rural development practices. Sociol. Rural. 40 (4),

529–543.

van Huylenbroek, G.,Durand, G. (Eds.), 2003. Multifunctional Agriculture:

A New Paradigm for European Agriculture and Rural Development.

Ashgate, Aldershot.

Willis, K., Garrod, G., Scarpa, R., Powe, N., Lovett, A., Bateman, I.,

Hanley, N., Macmillan, D., 2003. The Social and Economic Benefits

of Forests in Great Britain. University of Newcastle, CREAM. http://

www.forestry.gov.uk/website/PDF.nsf/pdf/sebreport0703.pdf/$FILE/

sebreport0703.pdf (September 12, 2006).

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/PDF.nsf/pdf/sebreport0703.pdf/$FILE/sebreport0703.pdf



social indicators of multifunctional rural land use: the case of forestry in the uk

Documents