Sustainable Forest Management:

Is Everything in Order but the Patient Still Dying?

Session 147: Demonstrating Sustainable Forest Management

XXII IUFRO WORLD CONGRESS8-13 August 2005, Brisbane

Robert Nasi, Center for International Forestry Research

Outline

Tropical forests

Some recent positive trends

Reality check

Lesson learned

Conclusions

Some implications for forestry research

Tropical forests

Tropical forests

Are the most biodiversity rich terrestrial ecosystem but are under unprecedented pressure for agricultural land and forest goods and services

Protected areas are essential to conserve tropical forests and their biodiversity but protected areas alone won’t work

Most of the important biodiversity will be conserved or lost in managed forests used to produce timber and other goods.

Some recent positive trends

The area of tropical forests under protection has increased dramatically

The area of tropical forests under formal management is quickly increasing

New, powerful management tools are available

Markets value forests for what they are (certification, payment for environmental services)

A growing proportion of forests is owned and/or managed by communities living in and by these forests

We witness emerging new paradigms for natural resource management

Everything in order?

Reality check

Tropical forests continue to be destroyed or degraded at an alarming rate

A large part of tropical forests, either or not in protected areas, either owned or not by communities, is still in a situation of

uncontrolled harvesting of forest resources (from logging to hunting or NTFP collection)

under antiquated, inadequate and poorly enforced legal frameworks

facing increasing land conversion for agriculture and spontaneous colonization

with widespread corruption at all levels

Reality check, managed timber production forests

Basic tenets, from European models ‘exported’ to the tropics in the 50s, have not really changed

Existing plans are often based on unrealistic prescriptions hindering their adoption by a large part of the operators or pushing them into illegal activities

Concern mainly large concessions in untouched forests whereas there is an increasing number of small to medium scale enterprises working in secondary or logged-over forests.

Reality check, success stories

There is however a growing portfolio of (partial) successes in managing tropical forests for production:

Managed timber concessions (Latin America, Africa, South-East Asia)

Joint Forest Management (India)

Community based forestry (Central America and Mexico, Nepal)

Environmental NGOs - logging companies partnerships (Central Africa, Indonesia)

What do failures and success stories

tell us?

Lessons learned

We must change the main conceptual model of tropical forest management, look for new paradigms and apply them

We need to rethink our concept of sustainability in the context of the management of production tropical forests

Lessons learned: shifting paradigms

The long-standing approach to management of (marine) resources is based on a flawed

conceptual model: the ‘optimal’ harvesting of targeted stocks in systems that are assumed

to be reasonably stable

An emerging approach rejects this paradigm in favor of management practices that recognize

coupled socio-ecological systems that are characterized by complex dynamics and

thresholds, with multiple possibleoutcomes and inherent uncertainties

Hughes et al. (2005)

Sustained production of a single commodity (sustained yield forestry)Sustained production of multiple goods and services (multiple use forestry)Sustained production of multiple goods and services while maintaining future options and not damaging other ecosystems (sustainable forest management)Strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way (ecosystem approach, INRM)

Lessons learned: shifting paradigms

Lessons learned: sustainability

None of the actual forest management approaches is really ‘sustainable’ in the tropical forest context

Forest composition inevitably change

Some species are lost or become to rare for use

New ecosystems emerge with new properties

Altered ecosystems will not revert to their original wilderness condition by relieving stressors (e.g. logging)

Success stories are more about building resilient adaptable socio-ecological systems than about achieving sustainability

Lessons learned: sustainability

The following points appear essential in building resilient socio-ecological systems:

consider both people’s interests and natural resources

mix top-down and bottom-up approaches

rely on partnerships and negotiated approaches

recognize and use local knowledge

avoid complex or unrealistic rules and regulations

monitor carefully but allow for adaptation and learning

foster and use technical progress

taylor-made management solutions are always superior to generic ones

Lessons learned, in summary…

Do not try to achieve “Sustainability”

Avoid irreversibility

Allow change but manage for resilience

Recognize linkages between environment and people

Recognize that uncertainty is inevitable and design flexible management regimes

Do not wait, take decisions based upon a careful assessment of potential risks and costs

Learn by doing and from others and use what you have learned

Is the patient dying?

Is the ‘managed’ patient dying?

My answer is ‘no’ but it is sure suffering and will certainly change because of us

We must learn to adapt our management to the emerging new modified ecosystems we created and not only focus on ‘primary-like’ ecosystems

We should envision Sustainable Forest Management as a co-evolutionary process between the changing forest, the changing market and an industry moving toward higher efficiency standards over time

The aim should be maintenance of functional forest ecosystems providing a continuous flow of goods and services

Some implications for forestry research

The endless search of a globally accepted definition of SFM is pointless

Research should consider various scales both spatial and temporal; results from short term, local experiments should be used with caution and always subject to revision

Forestry researchers should open-up, learn from and team up with others (health, marine sector)

Disciplinary approaches are doomed to fail and trans-disciplinary training should become part of forest research curriculums

Thank you