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Since the end of the 19th century, there have been three main periods of forest management evolution in Tunisia: (i) the French colonial period (1881–1956), characterized by a coercive and authoritarian management system, (ii) the postcolonial period (1956–2011), during which forest bureaucracy maintained and promoted this coercive and police management, and (iii) the period following the revolution of 2011, marked with policy reforms pushing more sustainable forest management. The paper analyzes the pre-revolution performance of forest administration and the reform discourses of post-revolution forest policy programs. From a methodological perspective, the three-layer model is applied to evaluate the performance of state forest institutions comprehensively before the revolution and then to illustrate the assumed impact of the new policy programs on this performance with two new forest policy programs serving as case studies. Data used in this paper were collected between 2016 and 2018 through field observations, public and non-public documents analysis and expert interviews. The results indicate that post-revolution forest policy programs fail to foster an efficient implementation of their objectives and the improvement of the performance of forest administration as well. Two major reasons can be put forward to explain this failure. First, the lack of comprehensiveness and coherence of the objectives. Second, the gap between these objectives and the time needed for an efficient implementation. To conclude, this study highlights the need to pay more attention to particular causative factors in the design and implementation of post-revolution `strong´ policies in the forest domain.

Besides traditional timber production, other forest functions, such as biodiversity and recreation, have gained increasing importance during the last few decades. Demands on forests have become more diversified, thus making forest management and planning more complex. To meet these challenges, there is a growing interest in a more diversified silviculture, for which a number of different management options are available. However, it remains unclear how the various management options affect economic, ecological, and social aspects of sustainable forest management. Hence, in this study, we assess the consequences of various management options on different aspects of sustainable forest management through scenario analysis using a forestry decision support system. We evaluate 10 different forest management scenarios for two contrasting municipalities in Sweden, based on expert participation by way of a web-based multi-criteria decision analysis framework. We asked experts in economic, ecological, and social forest values, as well as those in reindeer husbandry, to weigh a number of indicators in their field of expertise against each other, and to create value functions for each indicator. We then determined scenario ranking for different sets of weights for economic, ecological and social forest values. Our results indicate that current management practices are favorable for economic aspects (wood production), while a number of scenarios would be better suited to fulfill the Swedish co-equal forest policy goal of production and consideration of environmental issues, such as scenarios with longer rotation periods, a larger share of set-asides and a higher share of continuous cover forestry. These measures would be beneficial not only for ecological values, but also for social values and for reindeer husbandry. Furthermore, we found that expert participation through the web-tool was a promising alternative to physical meetings that require more commitment in terms of time and resources.

The African Forest Forum, South African Forestry Company Limited (SAFCOL) and the University of Pretoria for funding the first author. The National Science and Technology Council, through Zambia-Mozambique bilateral Agreement has also funded fieldwork.

The forestry sector in Myanmar continues to face many challenges concerning sustainable forest management. Even though the participation of local people is a key principle of forest policy in Myanmar, there is ample opportunity for people's participation in forest conservation to be improved. This study aimed to identify what factors should be considered to promote the participation of local people in forest conservation. The primary objectives were: to investigate the perceptions of people in forest-dependent communities towards forest conservation, and: to determine which policy interventions would be most appropriate for motivating local people to participate in forest conservation. We studied several communities in the Bogo Yama Region of Myanmar as a case study, involving interviews with key informants, focus group discussions, and interviews among 330 randomly selected households using semi-structured questionnaires to conduct a survey. For the interview survey, three hypothetical incentives to promote forest conservation interventions were specified, namely, (i) direct payment, (ii) providing income opportunities, and (iii) providing land tenure security or temporary land use rights to cultivate agricultural crops. The qualitative and quantitative data attained were integrated and analyzed using binary logistic regression. We observed that the communities utilized forests mainly for domestic energy supply, earning income, and regulating local weather. The respondents reported that deforestation occurred mainly because of legal and illegal charcoal making, over-exploitation of non-timber forest products, and logging. A willingness to participate in forest conservation differed in relation to the physical conditions of local communities, in the form of resource availability, remoteness of the village, and farm-land availability, as well as depending on people's awareness of the seriousness of deforestation and the need for food security. Providing income opportunities was identified as the most important incentive for peoples' participation. The results of this study suggest that forest policy makers should consider the different preferences for incentives among different communities, which vary depending on the socio-economic characteristics of the people and the physical and social conditions of the locality.

Almost all countries have imposed large-scale mobility restrictions (or lockdown) to stop the spreading of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The mobility restriction has disrupted all types of business; causing a devastating impact on countries' economies; and pushing millions of people into extreme poverty. Scientists have been assessing the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on various fronts but there is limited scholarship in the forestry sector. We navigated the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on the forestry sector by taking Gandaki Province (21,974 km2) of Nepal as a case. Employing semi-structured interviews (n = 62) with all ten stakeholder groups, literature review and media analysis, our study revealed that the COVID-19 lockdown suspended all types of forestry and ecotourism businesses; obstructed research and monitoring activities; halted capacity development and extension services; impacted forest development work; and increased incidences of illegal logging and poaching and trafficking of wildlife. Because of the complete shutdown of businesses, the forestry sector of Gandaki province lost 9.6 million USD and 3.2 million man-days of employment during the lockdown period. The economic cost of the lockdown was 1.73 million USD for NTFPs traders, 1.26 million USD for ecotourism entrepreneurs, 0.55 million USD for the community forest user groups and 0.24 million USD for the smallholder or private forest owner. We suggested four post-COVID recovery pathways, including sustainable forest management, nature-based tourism, improvement of forest products value chain and community-based natural resource management to bounce back from the loss. As the current pandemic is most likely to derail the Sustainable Development Pathways of several countries, including Nepal and necessitates the need for an immediate response, the finding and recommendation of our study may inform decision-makers to reimage post-pandemic recovery and leverage sustainable development.

The global community is currently grappling with multiple and overlapping social and environmental threats. These include the climate emergency, COVID-19 and the threat of widespread hunger, and the accelerating loss of biodiversity. All of these threats point to an urgent need to restore and sustainably manage land and forests. Studies are pointing to the critical role of tenure reform, and in particular strengthening collective forest tenure, as an effective means to reduce deforestation, mitigate climate change, restore ecosystem services and maintain biodiversity. Since the 1970s, countries worldwide have attempted to better recognize the customary rights of local communities. Yet despite over 40 years of effort, collective forest tenure reforms have yielded only moderate results. This article draws on recent assessments conducted in 23 countries by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on community-based forestry and associated forest tenure regimes based on the internationally endorsed Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (the VGGT). The findings suggest that governments are increasingly giving legal recognition to community rights to use both timber and non-timber forest products for commercial purposes. Yet, the tenure provided to collective forestry is less robust than that held by companies and smallholders in a number of ways. These include fewer legal protections, more barriers to the use of these rights, inadequate access to justice, and less administrative support in documenting rights. Furthermore, in many cases the existing community forestry legal provisions are not implemented. The relatively successful cases suggest that with robust tenure, communities and smallholders can be potent vehicles for moving towards sustainable forest management and mitigating climate change, improving local livelihoods, contributing to timber and non-timber product economies, and achieving several of the Sustainable Development Goals. But for this, governments will need to strengthen community and local rights within their legal frameworks and mainstream implementation in government policies and practices. Non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, donors, research institutions and academia can provide important support through policy implementation, research, and ensuring inclusive policy formulation processes.

Much of the discourse on the sustainability of forestry resources revolves around certified forestland. It is typically assumed that certified forestland is the hallmark of sustainable forestry. This reasoning has led to a general perception that uncertified forestlands are not sustainably managed. In this regard, the role of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Fiber Sourcing Standard is instrumental in promoting sustainable forest management on uncertified forestlands. We used an advanced spatial approach to determine the influence of the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard over space and time on Georgia's forestlands. We also assessed differences in the implementation rate of forestry Best Management Practices (BMPs) in Georgia on harvested sites located within the sourcing radius of mills certified to SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard relative to those harvest sites located outside the sourcing radius of certified mills. Our results suggest that the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard affects 80% or more of total forestland in Georgia. We also found that the average BMP implementation rate on harvested sites located within the sourcing radius (about 65 km) of certified mills is about 2% higher relative to harvested sites located outside the sourcing radius of such mills over time. Our results indicate that the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard is helping in ensuring sustainability of forestlands in Georgia, as forestry BMPs are an important indicator of sustainable forest management. We hope our results will bring clarity to the overall sustainability of uncertified forestlands in Georgia and other forested regions in North America in the context of global private forest governance systems like the SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard.

Designed as a biodiversity-maintenance concept, Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) considers not only forest for its ecological function, but also forestry workers whom play a significant role in executing the SFM program in the implementation stage. By using occupational ergonomics approach, this paper aims to examine how the Indonesian mandatory SFM certification, the so-called Pengelolaan Hutan Produksi Lestari (PHPL) positioned forestry workers in its SFM scheme. This issue is important since forestry work is a well-known profession with high occupational safety and health (OSH) risk. Content analysis on occupational ergonomics-related national policies and the mandatory PHPL Criteria and Indicators (C&I), and interviews with forest managers, PHPL auditor, and forestry workers indicate the poor performance of the instrument to assess the occupational-ergonomics-related factors at a practical level. This study reveals that PHPL is more of administrative liability obligation fulfillments rather than performance-based fulfillments (meanwhile, OSH status should be seen as an outcome of a good safety culture rather than an artifact/document). This study verifies content-overlap among the verifiers, content mismatch between the verifiers and the actual characteristic of forest operation, and the absence of distinct assessment standard. This study also discovers the existence of “ergonomics holes” in the PHPL C&I: (1) promoting a safe working environment for forestry workers, (2) distinct organization structural linkage on safety responsibility assignments, (3) emergency procedure, (4) distinct qualification for heavy machine operator and chemical technician, (5) sub-contract workers, and (6) the importance of management commitment and workers' participation. Revision on PHPL should seriously consider integrating OSH and well-being aspect as mentioned in Indonesia's national policies concerning manpower and occupational safety.

While deliberating a regional level forest management policy, one should note the probable existence of plural and independent decision-makers in the target region and the possibility that they may not fully understand or obey the intent of the regional policy. To achieve sustainable forest management, the relationships between the policy and the decisions of individual decision-makers with respect to forestry activities (for example, thinning or clear-cutting) need to be considered. The objective of this study is to determine the extent to which zoning, as a regional forest management method that affects individual management activities, influences future forest resources. A Bayesian belief network (BBN) model was used to model relationships between zoning and individual forestry activities. Through the construction of the BBN model with factors (nodes) such as zoning types, forestry activities, and forest stand conditions, a conditional probability table (CPT) was obtained. This CPT shows the degree of possibility of harvest for each forest stand. Individual forestry activities were simulated on the basis of the CPT. As a case study, this model was applied to the regional municipality of Ugo which is situated in the Tohoku district of Japan. Three types of zoning were examined: (1) no zoning covering for wood production, (2) the current zoning that is actually used, and (3) zoning planned to emphasize wood production. The volume of harvested wood and the statistics for the slope distribution where harvesting occurred were observed under each zoning type. Results showed that future forest resources varied under each zoning type. However, influencing the timing and location of individual forestry activities may enable appropriate regional-scale management to achieve sustainable forest management.

Individual approaches to sustainable forest management have to be operationalized according to the regionally specific environmental conditions and stakeholder requirements. Unique regional socio-economic conditions also significantly impact stakeholder requirements of globally acting forest sector companies. Therefore, forest-based sector decision makers have to be aware of regionally-specific and context sensitive sustainability concerns, when assessing and prioritizing sustainability issues. Sustainability research is considered to have a regional focus and a problem-driven perspective. Hence, research foci of scientific discussion on sustainable forest management can provide insight into regional differences and problems of sustainable forest management. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of 643 scientific abstracts in the context of sustainable forest management. We observed 16 different topic categories, out of which the topics of forest health and conservation and forest management practices represent the dominant foci. Furthermore, our results confirm a strong impact of geographic scope on the research foci. For example, the issues of climate change mitigation and adaptation are significantly more investigated in the Global North while social impacts of forest management are more researched in the Global South. Our findings suggest that decision makers should consider more than environmental issues when selecting corporate social responsibility activities or when making environmental policies. Otherwise, they can potentially overlook the impacts of forest management which are of high regional importance and intensively investigated by the scientific community.

Stakeholder participation in forest policy processes has over years received political and scientific attention. This empirical study brings in a dynamic element, exploring how and why participation change as policies evolve. Two Norwegian policy cases serve to contrast participation by environmental organisations (ENGOs) and forest owner organisations (FOs) over time. The policy arrangement approach (PAA) is used as analytical framework, first, to explore changes in coalitions, rules of game, power constellations, and discourses for each of the policy cases. Second, an initial exploration is offered on how changes in the PAA dimensions affect the assessments of ‘what's in it for me’ for ENGOs versus FOs. The results indicate that when standards for sustainable forest management are implemented, the value for ENGOs to participate in standard revision is decreasing, while in forest protection, the ENGOs chose to participate in a coalition requesting more money for voluntary protection, even after being excluded from identifying interesting areas for protection. Combining evolving policies and participation based on ‘what's in it for me’ help explain why participation changes over time. The findings provide alternative perspectives on former work presenting continued participation as a challenge and important messages related to future forest policy analysis.

At the global level, two Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) systems, i.e., protocols and certification, have grown significantly in standardizing forest management practices. Protocols are driven by multi-stakeholder groups that outline a series of standardized criteria and indicators agreed upon by participating countries. On the other hand, forest certification involves market-driven multi-stakeholder standardization, assessment, and recognition of a forest management entity’s compliance with standards established by the respective certification program. In this study, we compare the trends in numbers and types of changes that have taken place over two consecutive periods (1995-2005 and 2005-2015) through case studies for three protocols (International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), Forest Europe (FE), and Montreal Process (MP)) and two certification schemes (Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI)). A qualitative review of the respective systems’ institutional histories is followed by a graphical representation of the observed changes. We then compare the relative quantitative changes in the categories of criteria and indicators in the standards of the selected systems. We find that FSC may have been instrumental in other SFM systems changing the ecological types of Criteria & Indicators (C&Is) in both periods. Changes in SFI’s standards correspond to its institutional changes from a purely industry-driven system to being an independent organization. Furthermore, we find that ITTO has been more reactive in changing their C&Is as compared to MP and FE, which may have played a vital role in the standardization discourse. Nevertheless, based on our results, we argue that considering socio-economic institutional elements towards trends and developments in all the five standards is important. The selected five SFM institutions can use our findings regarding the trends in the standardization of global forest management to achieve their respective goals for ensuring the sustainability of forest resources worldwide.

The “Fit for 55” climate package adopted by the EU is intended to prepare the way for the EU's climate neutrality in 2050. It contains measures affecting the forestry and timber sector. We evaluate three instruments: the proposal for a New EU Forest Strategy for 2030, the EU Renewable Energy Directive and the Land-use, Land-Use Change and Forestry Regulation with regard to their implications for sustainable forest management. The demands that the three instruments impose on forest management are not coherent and are dominated by ecological aspects as well as by the intention to increase the forest C-pool. As they lack a holistic view, they do not meet the requirements of multifunctional, sustainable forest management.

This paper analyses timber and wood processing companies' views on opportunities and challenges for FLEGT implementation in Vietnam based on a literature review, online surveys with 56 timber and wood processing companies, in-depth interviews with 26 stakeholders from different institutions, and a consultation workshop involving 94 participants. Our paper shows that FLEGT has received increasing attention and political support from the Government of Vietnam, which has issued new policies on sustainable forest management, forest certification and financial incentives to enable timber and wood processing companies to participate in FLEGT. The active presence of civil society organizations has helped improve forest governance, which is a key aspect of FLEGT. Perceiving FLEGT as a global market trend able to generate higher profits, timber and wood processing companies see opportunities to benefit from this timber trading initiative, and are therefore more willing to comply with FLEGT requirements. However, these companies also highlight challenges to implementing FLEGT on the ground, including unclear and inconsistent policies, weak monitoring and evaluation, high transaction costs, companies' limited access to information, unclear tenure and erratic land-use planning, and the weak capacity of household and small-scale enterprises. Effective implementation of FLEGT requires regulatory changes, improved law enforcement and translation of policies on the ground, enhanced information exchange between stakeholders, and addressing underlying problems relating to land tenure and forest governance.

Sustainable forest management is a universally desired goal to provide ecological, economic, and social benefits. Sustaining forest benefits across the landscape in Arkansas depends on nonindustrial private forest landowners (NIPF) who own 58% of forestland in the state. Forest certification is an effective “market based” mechanism for improving forest management to achieve sustainability. A mixture of mail and online surveys collected data on Arkansas NIPF landowners' demographic and forestland characteristics, ownership motivations, and attitudes regarding perceived benefits and drawbacks of forest certification. A binary logistic regression model revealed that age, gender, education, timber harvest intentions, motivations for owning forestland, and perspectives regarding the potential benefits of forest certification influenced landowners' awareness and interests in forest certification. These findings provide insight into NIPF landowners' attitudes in participating in a forest certification program. The findings are useful for developing outreach and education programs promoting NIPF landowners' participation in forest certification in Arkansas and other southern states.

Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) seeks to achieve an equilibrium in the economic, social and environmental value of all types of forests. This practice contrasts with the conventional view of managing forests, in which the focus is productivity. Thus, discussions about conventional forest management versus sustainable forest management play a central role in the political and scientific agendas. However, knowledge production and its direction can be biased by different contextual factors such as the way funding is assigned by each country, institutional priorities, and constraints on international cooperation. With this paper, we aim to analyze the contribution of scientific knowledge produced in Latin America within the sustainable forest management research landscape by applying a literature review method (Scopus database for 2015–2018 period). Our results show a similar contribution of national and foreign funds and institutions supporting scientific knowledge about SFM in Latin America. Foreign funding comes mainly from United States of America, and Europe. Latin American authors lead high proportion of scientific articles, and authorship gender was more equitable between male and female researchers. The studies were mostly focused on conservation combined with productivity goals, as well as pure conservation goals, although social studies and restoration goals were also present. Our findings highlight a significant contribution to the paradigm shift in half of the scientific articles. Some studies provided recommendations (specific or general) derived from their results, but we did not detected a clear relationship with funding origin. Moreover, we found that the high contribution to the paradigm shift (studies supporting SFM instead of traditional management) came from institutions based in Latin America. This article aims to contribute to discussions related to scientific funding in Latin America, the North-South scientific relations, and the future of forest in times of climate change.

In Ukraine, the timber volume harvested from sanitary cuttings is increasing, while the state of national forests is decreasing. These trends have focused the attention of public authorities and increased public debate on the role of forests for society. A forest policy reform process needs to build on a sound understanding of the relevant stakeholders, their mutual relationships and interests in the forestry sector. In this paper, a stakeholder analysis based on a network theoretical approach was implemented in a case study in Ukraine (Yavoriv region) to support the forest policy reform process. The study is based on experts' opinions and was structured in three stages: identification of the experts; questionnaire survey and identification of local stakeholders; classification of stakeholders. The results identified 15 stakeholders thus distributed: (1) eight stakeholders belong to the ecological coalition and seven to the economic coalition; (2) three are key stakeholders, four primary stakeholders, and eight secondary stakeholders. The proposed method of stakeholder analysis is aimed to balance the number of stakeholders from each coalition to include all interests at stake in the participatory process. The stakeholder analysis marks the first step in the implementation of sustainable forest management in the Yavoriv region and could serve as a model for the other Ukrainian regions.

Although the global literature suggests stronger forest tenure is associated with better forest condition, several recent meta-analyses of this relationship have found inconclusive results. There are numerous factors influencing these mixed econometric results, including selection biases and inconsistent definitions or methods, and the global literature is limited to selected geographies. This paper seeks to address these gaps by analyzing an original data set collected as part of a prospective impact evaluation of a reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) program in eastern Zambia funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Drawing on survey data from 2822 households and supplemented with contextual and spatially-derived statistics, we seek to answer two questions: (i) what household and village characteristics explain variation in perceived forest tenure security, which we define to mean relatively unchallenged access to forest resources? and (ii) is more secure forest tenure, as perceived by forest users, associated with better reported forest condition? We aim to contribute more reliable evidence to the global literature linking community-level land tenure and forest condition by using improved proxies for (de facto) local forest tenure and land governance and filling a gap in the geographic coverage. Overall, we find that more secure de facto forest tenure is associated with localized (village level) customary governance. We also find that more secure de facto forest tenure is associated with better reported forest condition. Our results highlight the need to understand local accountability in existing customary governance structures in the context of designing and enforcing REDD+ agreements. We expect our more nuanced assessment of de facto forest tenure security to inform policies to promote sustainable forest management, including through REDD+ and community-based forest management, particularly in forest contexts where customary rights remain relevant.

The media plays a vital role in raising public awareness and concerns. This study analyzed media attention to the policy, opportunity and impact of REDD + towards enhancing sustainable forest management and mitigating climate change. Content analysis, case study and e-Delphi methods were employed. We collected 178 news articles from four media outlets in Cambodia and examined the media discourses led by the National REDD + Program Secretariat, TVK and Radio FM102 for the period of 2011–2016. The findings revealed that the media attention led by the Secretariat in collaboration with two media outlets spread the REDD + message nationwide and journalists gained knowledge and jointly set the media agenda with the government institutions. Four other reputable national media outlets published few news articles on REDD +. The e-Delphi survey of experts found that the key challenges limiting media discourses on REDD + were that the responsible institutions did not share information about REDD + events with the general media and that journalists had limited knowledge of REDD + and found the technical issues difficult. The study strongly highlighted that media framing is the most comprehensive choice to gain attention from policy makers and the public on REDD + policy, opportunity and impact.

Several international regimes provide numerous recommendations for sustainable forest management and there is a growing interest in knowing more about the potential and actual effects of such regimes and improving their effectiveness. National implementation of such regimes go through different stages of development, from changes ‘on paper’ in regulations and guidelines (labelled output), to behavioural changes among target groups (labelled outcome) before responses are seen on the natural environment (labelled impacts). The main purpose of this paper is to apply a quantitative bio-economic model for analysing the potential impacts on Norwegian forestry of two international regimes (the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and an extended version of the Kyoto Protocol), and to discuss the weak and strong points in using this kind of method in policy analysis. Our findings imply that: (i) The CBD regime has rather limited impacts on the forest structure and harvest as long as it is practised with an intensity corresponding to the forest certification schemes used at present in Norway, or with lower intensity. (ii) Practiced with maximum consideration to biodiversity the potential impact of the CBD regime on the forest structure and harvest is strong, and it can reduce the income from timber production by 30% or more compared to present forestry practices. This reduction is highest when forest climate mitigation is given low consideration. (iii) There is a significant mutual relationship between the two regimes analysed, in the meaning that the weaker one of them is implemented, the stronger marginal impact has the other. (iv) Using quantitative bio-economic modelling in policy impact analyses like this contributes to the methodological literature on regime effectiveness, and has several advantages. But due considerations should be given to underlying basic assumptions related to agent behaviour and the ecosystem detail level required.

Collaborative participatory policy approaches based on foresight methodology have recently been proposed as promising governance tools to achieve sustainability in general, and address and manage challenges of integrating competing demands on forest land use (e.g., timber production, nature protection, recreation) in particular. Their main argument is that participatory processes will bring policy actors together. Based on long- and short-term future-oriented thinking and actions, they will overcome their previous value-laden and interest-based conflicts through informed communication, deliberation, policy learning and mutual cooperation. But do policy actors learn when they are thinking, debating and shaping the ‘forest futures’ they want to achieve or avoid? To what extent are current beliefs, values, worldviews, and conflict structures projected onto the future? What are their impacts on policy learning today? This paper addresses these research questions from a knowledge-based perspective of relevant policy learning theories. We trace changes and stability in beliefs, values (perception) and behavior (cooperation/conflict) among the involved policy actors. We assess to what extent future-oriented thinking and discussions contribute to, or inhibit, policy learning today. Empirically, the paper is informed by three case studies of regional ‘forest futures’ processes in Germany. They include forest landscapes in Upper Palatinate and South of Munich in Bavaria, and the Black Forest National Park in Baden-Wurttemberg. They represent different cases in terms of levels of stakeholder conflicts, integrative/segregative forest land use approaches, and the rural/urban divide. The paper is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews and documents about past and future forest land use, and observation of participatory scenario-building and back-casting workshops during 2011–2014. In our analysis, we found that forest policy actors adhered to their pre-existing beliefs and remained divided in terms of present and future aspects of sustainable forest management. That is, we observed no substantial or only strategic policy learning among the involved policy actors. We explain these findings in terms of competing actors' belief systems and worldviews that lead to competing understandings and expectations of ‘forest futures’. We discuss our research against the theoretical propositions and in view of the state-of-the art. We draw conclusions relevant for scholars and policymakers interested in collaborative policy learning processes, and suggest possible topics for further research.

Over the years, the Concessionary Forestry Business Model in Africa has largely driven the production of tangible forest products such as timber. There are concerns, however, that this approach does not include local communities as important stakeholders of the decision-making process. Little regards are also given to environmental sustainability, which would ensure inter-generational equity. This paper develops options for addressing these issues, thereby greening the Concessionary Forestry Business Model in Africa. Firstly, socioeconomic, environmental and technological challenges facing concessionary forestry businesses are discussed by reference to country case studies. The paper then continues to provide the core elements of a greener Concessionary Forestry Business Model, with more emphasis on business infrastructure, value propositions, customer interfaces, and profit models. The paper concludes by examining the necessary policy tools that will promote the integration of eco-innovations into Africa's forestry sector.

There are currently no spatially explicit, openly accessible data available on forest certification below national level, so understanding the drivers of certification in the past, examining the scope for further certification and using this information for development of future sustainable forest management strategies is challenging. Hence, this paper presents a methodology for the development of a global map of certified forest areas at 1 km resolution in order to satisfy this information need. Validation of the map with certified areas in Russia showed reasonable results, but the lack of openly accessible data requires broadening the strategy for improving the global certification map in the future. Thus, the second aim of the paper is to present an online tool for visualization and interactive improvement of the global forest certification product through collaborative mapping, aiming at a range of stakeholders including third-party certifiers, green NGOs, forestry organizations, decision-makers, scientists and local experts. Such an approach can help to make more accurate information on forest certification available, promote the sharing of data and encourage more transparent and sustainable forest management, i.e. both producers and users can benefit from this online tool.

Mitigating international trade in illegally harvested wood (products) is an international priority. To support this priority, the European Timber Regulation prohibits placing illegally harvested or traded timber on the EU market, requiring companies to undertake due diligence in sourcing wood (products). To take effect, this regulation needs to be implemented in all European member states. Although Germany is one of the first member states to transpose and enact the regulation's provisions, its implementation has recently been portrayed as “weak” and ineffective. This article aims to answer why this perception emerged. It scrutinizes implementation performance of the EUTR in Germany. Based on rich empirical data from stakeholder interviews, documents, and participant observation, this study argues that EUTR performance in Germany is not generally perceived as ineffective. Instead, stakeholder perceptions vary. As stakeholders face major uncertainties connected to market structure and company behaviour, they tend to base their assumptions about the implementation process on two major heuristics. Both focus on the question how to change company behaviour. One stresses the need to pursuade companies to comply, the other stresses the need to coerce them. These heuristics are based on the two larger objectives pursued by different stakeholder groups during policy making of the EUTR: (1) global sustainable forest management and (2) image improvement of the EU wood importing industry. Based on these different policy objectives, the EUTR does not provide clear guidance on which policy instruments should be given priority. As a consequence, national implementation is turned into a policy-making process. The outcome of this struggle will likely affect the future trajectory of EUTR implementation in other EU member states and in countries exporting wood into the EU.

Private woodland owners (PWOs) in the U.S.A. often do not actively manage their forests, and forest policies appeal to a small subset of owners that have management plans and participate in incentive programs. We address this policy disconnect by considering a new possible explanation; PWOs perceive forest management as an abstract and distant concept. Psychological distance (PD) is built on the premise that an individual's mental representations of objects and activities depend on four dimensions of distance between the individual and the object: spatial, temporal, social, and hypothetical. There are few applications of PD in natural resource and environmental research. Our objectives were to: 1) Understand the PD of private woodland owners; and 2) Evaluate how the four dimensions of PD are specifically related to the timber harvesting decision. We interviewed 32 PWOs in Maine, U.S.A. to understand their timber harvesting decision. Results suggest that PD can be described using frequency of harvesting, absentee ownership, co-ownership structure, and harvesting knowledge. PWOs with distant representations of harvesting require different policy mechanisms than those who are psychologically closer. PD is a useful theory in understanding forest management behavior by describing the extent to which timber harvesting is relevant to a private woodland owner. Social, temporal, and hypothetical distance can be shortened by offering frequent opportunities for woodland owner engagement like peer-to-peer networking and learning events and a deeper understanding of how timber harvesting promotes sustainable forest management.

The protection of forest soil is an issue of increasing concern to Central European forestry. The focus lies on the impact of forest harvesting machinery on soil and the resulting risks to the forest ecosystem in general and to soil fertility in particular. The economic dimension of the issue becomes increasingly apparent when wet weather hampers the planning and execution of forestry operations. Public interest has also increased: damage to the forest floor is negatively perceived by the population as well as nature conservationists, and attracts media attention. With the overall sustainability of forest management at stake, the issue entails major ecological as well as economic and political challenges. The article examines physical soil protection from various economic perspectives, focusing on (i) production economics, (ii) industrial economics and (iii) institutional economics. The findings of this comprehensive approach contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of this private and public good. Possible challenges in the future are posed by climate change and increasing demand for forest resources. These could massively exacerbate the problem of forest soil protection and drive up its costs. Further economic analysis is needed to improve decision making in soil protection to ensure sustainable forest management.

Forest ecosystems worldwide are increasingly subjected to human intervention, leading commentators to argue that forests should be viewed as anthropogenic ecosystems. REDD+ is an emerging inter-governmental policy instrument aimed at both reducing deforestation and forest degradation and combatting climate change, whereby developed countries pay developing countries to reduce their forest-based emissions. The paper details a five-year research project to evaluate REDD+ quality of governance and develop governance standards for the mechanism. Quality of governance was evaluated in five key international institutional elements: the REDD + related negotiations in the global climate talks; the support and funding agencies UN-REDD, Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), Forest Investment Programme (FIP) and the REDD + Partnership. This research was complemented by national level governance assessments and related standards setting initiatives in Nepal and Papua New Guinea. The researchers conclude that REDD+ confronts a number of challenges, notably around resources for capacity building, and benefit sharing. In addition, the lack of provisions for changing behaviour and solving the problem of forest-based emissions in the current safeguards render them inadequate to the task of delivering quality of governance. In the absence of consistent governance standards, REDD + will only partially be successful in combatting climate change in the Anthropocene.

Criteria and indicators (C & I) have proven an essential tool for managers implementing sustainable forest management, but have been less effective for communication with the wider community. We demonstrate a new bottom-up approach to developing socially relevant C & I using social analysis and psychology-based concepts and methods. Our conceptual framework links the concepts of valued attributes and environmental cues with, respectively, criteria and indicators. We illustrate our approach using thirty-six semi-structured interviews of individual members of the general public and of stakeholder groups in Victoria, southern Australia. The interviews included a modified cognitive mapping task to identify attributes of forests valued by the interviewees, as well as cues used by them to know if a valued attribute was present or had changed. Seven broad valued attributes of forests were identified: Natural; Experiential; Productive; Setting; Social/Economic; Learning; and Cultural. Four broad categories of cues were identified: Biophysical; Social/Psychological; Economic; and Management/Planning. Cues were translated into a set of measurable ‘socially relevant’ indicators of forest management. Comparison with existing frameworks revealed some similarities, but that an important component of public evaluations, Experiential and Setting valued attributes, was largely absent from C & I used in Victoria, which are based on the Montreal Process framework. Some socially relevant indicators aligned with existing indicators, but others were poorly represented, particularly sensory indicators that are concerned with subjective experiences of forests. Our approach demonstrates a new way of developing C & I and has a strong conceptual basis that enables more explicit consideration and communication of a comprehensive range of social values and cues in environmental management systems.

China has been implementing the world's most ambitious afforestation and forest conservation programs and undergoing rapid forest expansion since 1990s, thus, understanding the forest dynamics in China has global implications for sustainable forest management. Through analyzing forest area, biomass dynamics, and factors influencing deforestation and forest restoration, we found that the natural disasters and economic development drove forest dynamics and transition in China. The growth of the economy and population drove up demand for forest products, facilitating deforestation. The booming economy also boosted government's investment in forest restoration and conservation programs. Natural disasters damaged and frequently destroyed forests, but they also served as stimuli for the authorities to adopt remedy forestry policies and programs that ultimately led to forest increase. Nationwide, increasing peaks of annual afforestation were observed in the late 1950s, early 1980s, and early 2000s, and the newly increased area closed for forest restoration reached the peak in 1998. All these peaks were closely associated with peaks of natural disasters (i.e., floods, drought, and dust storm events). Based on the dynamics of forest area, biomass and forest consumption over the past 40 years, forest transition occurred during the late 1980s to the early 1990s, and it also strengthened the carbon (C) sink function of forests in China (with an increasing rate of 0.137 Pg C yr.−1 during 1994–2008). Overall, our study highlighted the influences of natural disasters and economic development on the forestry policies and forest C dynamics in the newly industrialized country.

Several forest related EU policy instruments have set forest relevant quantitative or qualitative targets. We identify the forest relevant targets in current EU policy instruments, and examine whether the pan-European Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management (Forest Europe, 2015a) are sufficient to satisfy the information needs of EU policy makers when monitoring progress towards these targets. We apply a computer-based quantitative analysis of forest related EU policy instruments, using key words. In the policy instruments we analysed, forest relevant targets are completely integrated with targets for other sectors in a wider context. Relatively few of the identified forest relevant targets are quantitative; qualitative targets are predominant. In our analysis we show that the pan-European Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management, as they stand, would require adjustments to several of the indicators to provide information on progress towards the identified forest relevant quantitative and qualitative targets. Our results can contribute to reporting on progress towards forest-relevant targets in EU forest related policies, notably by identifying what parameters could be measured and might facilitate forest related target setting in revisions and development of policy instruments, particularly the revision of the EU Forest Strategy.

Traditional forest-related knowledge (TFK) is under the risk of disappearance in many parts of the world, even though it can be an important source of knowledge for sustainable development. This study aims to assess the status of TFK retention and further identify the factors contributing to the erosion of TFK. A case of Dengcen, an ethnic village located in the Guizhou province of Southwest China was investigated. The degree of TFK retained by the village inhabitants of different generations was measured using a quantitative approach, with a vitality index of traditional environmental knowledge (VITEK). We found that age, gender, experience with urban life, and formal education level of an individual were influential factors that explained TFK retention in rural societies in China. In particular, formal education and urban expansion were found to be the main drivers of accelerating the deterioration of traditional forest-related knowledge. These findings have implications regarding sustainable forest management for policy makers that formal and informal education systems should be integrated in order to ensure traditional forest knowledge of local communities to contribute to sustainable development.

Forest policy and management are subject to various and often conflicting demands, which internationally have led to distinct policy responses and related management paradigms. These range from a strong focus on commodity production complemented by economic rationalities – e.g. focusing on plantations – to community-based or social forestry approaches highlighting local participation and stakeholder engagement, to a focus on ecosystem services and conservation. A major challenge involves the potential orientation of the overall forest policy and management paradigm either towards integrating manifold demands more or less evenly across an area, or towards dividing the land base into forest areas with different management priorities. The specific reconciliation and integration of both sides of the spectrum have been at the centre of scientific and political discussion on forest policy and management for several decades. In this context, the “German model” of integrative and multifunctional forest management has received international attention. It is regarded as an example for integrating diverse (societal and ecological) demands into a timber-production-oriented management approach. At the same time, the model's primary focus on timber production has been criticised by some. In this paper, we analyse the political dimension of the German model by tracing the birth and evolution of the so-called LÖWE programme, a much noticed governmental forest management programme in the German state of Lower Saxony. LÖWE has frequently been presented as a particularly successful example of multifunctional forestry. We first assess the specific societal and political circumstances that led to the establishment of the programme 20 years ago. Subsequently, we assess its political function in forest policy debates about various demands on Lower Saxony's public forests. We show that the evolution of the programme can be interpreted in two distinct but non-exclusive ways. On the one hand, LÖWE was a strategic success story for the Forest Service because it aligned (and also appeased) conflicting demands in line with the changing political priorities. On the other hand, it also embodied a learning process towards environmental policy integration. By underlining LÖWE as an example of the German model of integrative multifunctional forest management, we reiterate the strategic importance of this model in the German context and also highlight future challenges and related research needs.

Over the past 40 years, China's forestry has undergone rapid change. Forest coverage and stocking have improved significantly, and forestry output value has increased tremendously. Moreover, China has established a modern industrial system for the manufacturing and sale of forest products driven by market and institutional forces, and the economic structure of forestry has changed with the secondary and tertiary industries now dominating the primary. Additional adjustment in this structure is seen in the fast growth of forest recreation and tourism and non-timber forest products. China has also become the world's major trader of forest products. Even though the country's forestry and forest products industry have made great achievements, there remain a series of problems, as reflected in the poor quality and productivity of forests, especially its plantations, and the expanding gap between domestic timber production and consumption and between the provision of other forest ecosystem services and their demand. Further reforms are necessary to improve the management governance and incentive for the collective and state-owned forests. China's forestry reform and development model can be an important reference for the international community.

Soil biodiversity is crucial for maintaining forest health and safeguarding forest ecosystem services delivery, but it is under increasing human pressure. Forest management puts pressure on soil biodiversity, but has also the potential to support soil biodiversity recovery, depending on which decisions forest managers make. These decisions are highly influenced by managers' perception and understanding. Nevertheless, insights into forest managers' understanding of soils and their biodiversity are largely lacking. This paper addresses this gap by studying private and public forest managers' understanding of soil biodiversity and comparing their level of knowledge with scientists' knowledge. In addition, this paper assesses the effects of context on understanding by comparing between two regions (NW of Flanders, Belgium, and NE of Romania). Specifically, knowledge was elicited using semi-structured interviews based on an integrated framework. The interviews were coded and analyzed using a Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping approach. In total, 24 interviews were conducted after selecting respondents using a purposive sampling design. Our results indicate that forest managers are aware of the crucial role of soil biodiversity and possess practical and context-specific understanding, but lack in-depth knowledge related to ecosystem processes and functions and soil state variables, compared to scientists. In addition, managers did not seem to explicitly consider soil biodiversity in their management decisions, but instead seemed to treat soil more as a black box. While scientists had a more detailed understanding, their understanding also depended on their background as researchers and mostly overlooked practical, site-specific implications. Moreover, we found that local context influenced respondents' understanding, especially related to drivers and pressures that affect soil biodiversity. Hence, communication strategies oriented towards forest managers seem suitable to maximize adoption of adaptive management practices that support soil biodiversity. These strategies should go beyond awareness raising and specifically explain ecosystem processes and functions linked to forest soil biodiversity to improve managers' in-depth understanding, while taking their socio-economic and forestry context into account. Further, policy design should enhance conditions for knowledge exchange and discussion about soil biodiversity. The methodology presented in this study might help such knowledge integration of scientists and forest managers in order to combine in-depth understanding of soil biodiversity and applicability of management practices in specific forest contexts.

Forest education is confronted with the challenge of modernizing teaching approaches and methods, particularly so in light of changing employment and societal needs. Many innovative teaching methods are developed by multiple instructors and can be found at the local scales. They have a great and largely untapped potential for being recognized, further developed, and up-scaled. In order to facilitate this social innovation process, a global competition on the best teaching practices in forest education was conducted. The competition attracted 71 applications from 23 countries addressing primary to tertiary education levels. A selection process, which was based on pedagogical criteria, innovation, and demonstrable results, yielded ten short-listed finalists, and ultimately two winners. In this article we provide insights into the teaching innovations of those finalists, with special emphasis on the following two winners: “FOREST 101” programme, Korean Forest Welfare Institute, from the Republic of Korea, focused on stimulating the interests and creativity of vulnerable teenagers through forest-related activities. The other winner was “The Asia Pacific Forest Education Coordination Mechanism (AP-FECM)”, a tertiary level initiative, which featured among others, a series of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) on sustainable forest management, and increasing access to e-learning to a wider audience. Both initiatives demonstrated commitment to developing strong pedagogical practices and networking beyond their frontiers through collaborations among institutions and individuals. The results of the best practices competition and this article can be useful to inform and inspire teachers and education policy-makers in other localities about different ways of teaching forest-related subjects, developing a community of innovative teaching practice, and exchanging teaching methods globally.

This study systematically reviews 146 publications on the socio-economic importance of natural and planted walnut forests in the 15 countries of the Silk Road in order to comprehensively assess the current state of knowledge, identify knowledge gaps and define priorities for further research. Despite widely spreading natural and cultivated walnut forests along the Silk Road, which are intensively utilized and make significant contribution to local livelihoods, we found that existing socio-economic research was still relatively limited and unequally distributed among the Silk Road countries, especially for Central Asia and Iran. As evidenced by the significant decline of walnut forests and their continued degradation, past forest conservation policies and programs were often not effective and, therefore, novel strategies and implementation models are urgently needed to achieve sustainable forest management objectives. Our review has shown that conducive economic policies, well-funded national walnut breeding programs and economic incentive schemes could effectively promote the establishment of walnut plantations, which both considerably contribute to the reclamation and rehabilitation of degraded lands and the diversification of farming systems. At the same time, further efforts are needed in walnut research and practice to improve existing value chain arrangements, develop novel products from J. regia and other underutilized forest species, and to more effectively monitor resources and enforce existing legal frameworks. While country-level research gaps seem often to be driven by national agendas and donor interests, we also identified more general topics that did not have received appropriate attention in the literature across all the investigated countries. This includes research on the impact and effectiveness of walnut plantations in reducing pressure on natural walnut forests under land sparing strategies; investigations on the role alternative forms of tourism can play in walnut forest conservation and development; and consumer studies that can provide useful guidance to enterprises in the food processing, cosmetics, handicraft and other industries to improve the quality, value-added and profitability of products derived from the walnut forests. These points illustrate the need for more systematic studies in the walnut forests of the Silk Road countries.

In recent years, the concept of sustainable forest management has evolved into a number of Criteria and Indicators schemes that are designed to guide the practice of sustainable forestry. One such mechanism is the Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators, which identifies seven criteria and 54 indicators associated with these seven criteria. While there is sufficient basic forest data available through the FAO's Global Forest Resource Assessment (2015), it is unclear how big forest countries compare in the key parameters surrounding sustainable forest management as defined by major Criteria and Indicator schemes. To accomplish this, we performed analyses of the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 (FRA) country report data to provide insights into the current status and trends in the period 1990–2015 in eight jurisdictions, namely Australia, Canada, China, Japan, the European Union, New Zealand, the Russian Federation and the USA. This study found that Canada has performed well against several key sustainable forest management parameters of the Montreal Process, including forest area designated for multiple use, and protective functions such as soil and water conservation and ecosystems services. Forest area in Canada remained stable over the past 25 years, although a relatively small area of forest had been lost. Compared to other countries, the rate of deforestation (which involves a change in land use) in Canada is small and has declined from 65,000 ha per year in 1990 to 48,000 ha per year in 2010. Forest area was also compared in the category of primary forest. Canada lost 741,000 ha of primary forest from 1990 to 2015, although this does not necessarily imply a change in total forest area. Our findings show that Canada, has some of the most stringent forest management legal and policy frameworks. While most other jurisdictions have only national and state level policies and a legislative framework to support sustainable forest management, Canada has comprehensive policies and a legislative framework in place at the national, provincial and local levels. In terms of social parameters, stakeholders are allowed to be involved in the planning, operations and review of almost all forest areas in our selected jurisdictions. This study demonstrates that the forest management and conservation regime in Canada, within the studied domains i.e. legal framework, management plans, national forest inventory and stakeholder involvement, incorporates a sophisticated understanding of the global, national and local interests linking economic, environmental and social issues.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international non-state forest certification system. FSC has been developed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private business in order to mitigate forest conflicts. As a result, NGOs and the private sector have taken responsibility for sustainable forest management and forest conservation in many regions of the world. Incorporating Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) into the FSC standards could involve expansion of such responsibilities to local communities. FPIC provides local communities with a tool for granting or refusing consent to forestry operations conducted by timber companies. In Russia, such FSC-driven multi-level forest governance is developing against the background of exclusive state ownership of forests and the domination of state-led top-down governance approaches. FSC can encourage the development of a responsive dialogue between local communities and timber companies. However, our study in Northwest Russia, on the basis of interviews and literature analysis, shows that one of the main risks of the application of FPIC within the framework of FSC is ‘responsibilization’ - the transfer of the responsibility of state governance structures to private companies and communities without adequate attention to the latter's capabilities. FPIC can lead to situations where communities acquire new forest governance duties that they are unable to bear. This is especially so in cases where community representation remains unresolved. We argue that FPIC under FSC should not be understood as a transfer of decision-making by formal governance structures to community representatives. Rather, FPIC could be considered as a way to achieve mutual consent around forest management issues and mitigate conflicts between communities and timber companies.

We study the potential of tropical multi-age multi-species forests for sequestering carbon in response to financial incentives from REDD+. Following existing carbon crediting schemes, the use of reduced impact logging techniques (RIL) allows a forest manager to apply for carbon credits whereas conventional logging (CL) does not. This paper is the first to develop a Hartman model with selective cutting in this setting that takes additionality of carbon sequestration explicitly into account. We apply the model using data for Kalimantan, Indonesia, for both private and government forest managers. The latter have a lower discount rate and are exempt from taxes. RIL leads to less damages on the residual stand than CL and has lower variable but higher fixed costs. We find that a system of carbon credits through REDD+ can increase carbon stored per hectare by 15.8% if the forest is privately managed and by 22% under government management if the carbon price equals the average 2015 price in the European Union's Emission Trading Scheme. Interestingly, awarding carbon credits to carbon stored in end-use wood products does not increase the amount of carbon stored, nor Land Expectation Value.

Sustainable forest management delivers ecological benefits critical to mitigating climate change impacts and can produce carbon offset credits tradable at the market price, generating additional income to forest landowners. However, due to high uncertainty in the climate policy of the United States, the economic potential of sustainably managing forests for offset credits is uncertain, discouraging landowners from participating in such practices. Also uncertain are the ecological consequences, especially in terms of forest carbon stocks. Here a conceptual framework was proposed which, with a regime-switching process, modeled the price of carbon credits as a proxy of the climate policy. Uncertainty in policy was translated into a limited number of scenarios regarding the timing and magnitude of policy regime switches. This model was then incorporated into a Markov decision process model of forest management, which accounted for multiple forms of risk and uncertainty affecting forest functioning and management. Using linear programming, this framework quantified the economic and ecological potentials of forest carbon management in various policy scenarios and determined optimal harvesting rules adaptive to policy shifts. A simple numerical example was provided to demonstrate the application of this framework.

Community based forestry is seen as a promising instrument for sustainable forest management (SFM) through the purposeful involvement of local communities. Globally, forest area managed by local communities is on the rise. However, transferring management responsibilities to forest users alone cannot guarantee the sustainability of forest management. A monitoring tool, that allows the local communities to track the progress of forest management towards the goal of sustainability, is essential. A case study, including six forest user groups (FUGs), two from each three community based forestry models—community forestry (CF), buffer zone community forestry (BZCF), and collaborative forest management (CFM) representing three different physiographic regions, was conducted in Nepal. The study explores which community based forest management model (CF, BZCF or CFM) is doing well in terms of sustainable forest management. The study assesses the overall performance of the three models towards SFM using locally developed criteria (four), indicators (26) and verifiers (60). This paper attempts to quantify the sustainability of the models using sustainability index for individual criteria (SIIC), and overall sustainability index (OSI). In addition, rating to the criteria and scoring of the verifiers by the FUGs were done. Among the four criteria, the FUGs ascribed the highest weightage to institutional framework and governance criterion; followed by economic and social benefits, forest management practices, and extent of forest resources. Similarly, the SIIC was found to be the highest for the institutional framework and governance criterion. The average values of OSI for CFM, CF, and BZCF were 0.48, 0.51 and 0.60 respectively; suggesting that buffer zone community forestry is the more sustainable model among the three. The study also suggested that the SIIC and OSI help local communities to quantify the overall progress of their forestry practices towards sustainability. The indices provided a clear picture of forest management practices to indicate the direction where they are heading in terms of sustainability; and informed the users on issues to pay attention to enhance sustainability of their forests.

Sustainable forest management is a key to maintaining the economic, social, environmental and cultural benefits and services of forests for the long term. In Turkey, all forestry activities, such as regeneration and stand tending, are carried out according to forest management plans, which are used as a tool for achieving sustainable forest management goals. An intermediate yield harvest plan, which is a part of management plan, is used for stand tending. Every year, the compartments (stands) within the same stand tending block are thinned. Decision support systems have not been used so far in order to designate the size and location of these stand tending blocks. In this study, we used multi-objective goal programming to designate stand tending blocks for an entire decade. We developed two models: a linear goal programming model and a nonlinear goal programming model. To design these models, we only considered wood flow and distance between the centroids of compartments as the objectives. Then, we used a working circle of the Golcuk forest sub-district, which is a planning unit in Turkey, as a case study. The linear model worked very well, and for reference scenarios, the deviation in volume scheduled for the entire decade was only 16.8 m 3 and the deviation in total distance between compartments was 172 km. Scenario 3, with weights of 0.2 for distance and 0.8 for volume, produced the best results. The nonlinear model, which in theory would better represent the problem, was not as useful due to a combination of the time required to produce a solution and the quality of the solutions. The linear model can be developed by including other factors and used by forest planners.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, sustainable forest management, enhancement of forest carbon stocks and conservation (REDD+) aims to reduce the 12–17% of global greenhouse gas emissions attributable to forest loss worldwide. As tropical countries undertake REDD+ readiness, vital questions arise around the equity of REDD+ interventions. In particular, there has been much critique of the impact of REDD+ on local forest communities, and whether these interventions serve to entrench or address existing inequalities and the structural causes of poverty. Taking Ghana's REDD+ process as a case study, McDermott et al.'s (2013) ‘equity framework’ is used to systematically examine the contextual, procedural and distributive dimensions of equity, based on fieldwork carried out from July 2014 to March 2016. br This study draws on stakeholder perspectives and document analysis to draw conclusions about the equity of Ghana's REDD+ process. Our study shows that Ghana's national REDD+ strategy, legal texts and documents aim to ensure that all actors, including local forest communities, are considered ‘subjects of equity’. However, according to stakeholder perspectives and general forest laws and policies, there are multiple barriers to realizing the intended goals of equity. Firstly, the complex, multiple and unclear tenurial arrangements inhibit distributive equity. Secondly, uneven stakeholder knowledge and capacity hamper effective engagement in decision-making and limit procedural equity. Thirdly, contextual factors that are remnants of colonial structures and systems, and that serve competing political and economic interests through resource exploitation impact distributive equity. The ‘equity framework’ reveals that historical contextual factors impact the achievement of equity through REDD+, even with right government policies and strategies in place.

Tropical forests are at the center of any global debate on climate change and sustainable forest management because of their twin roles in climate change adaptation and mitigation and for resilient development. However, in the countries of the Congo Basin forests receive very little attention in national planning and policies. Climate change is not currently considered in decisions and long-term forest management plans in these countries. This paper demonstrates that: (1) Congo Basin forests are needed for adaptation because they can help to decrease human vulnerability to climate change; and (2) Congo Basin forest management practices need to be adapted to accommodate climate change because these forests are vulnerable to climate change. A framework for facilitating adaptation in forestry is discussed and a review of adaptive actions presented. The paper recommends the adoption of sustainable forest management approach that includes a climate change focus. Such management should not only avoid any adverse effects on the forest resources and conservation of biodiversity, but also provides opportunities for greater, more sustainable rural development and poverty alleviation through income generation and employment opportunities.

This paper draws on a case study of the Brazilian Amazon to assess how two widely promoted strategies to govern tropical forests – non-state certification and state-based legality initiatives – interact with tropical wood production systems and the implications this holds for reducing deforestation and degradation and for local benefit-sharing. The assessment is guided by an analytical framework that predicts the relevance and receptiveness of different timber supply chains to current systems of trade-based governance. We find that Brazil's efforts to control illegal deforestation through satellite monitoring have contributed significantly to reducing deforestation, but the effects on degradation are less clear. Efforts focused on the timber supply chain, including certification and legal verification of traded timber, have been limited by the fragmented nature of Amazonian wood production. Both certification and legality verification favor large producers and concentrated supply chains destined for external markets (e.g. pulp and paper and high-value tropical sawnwood), while extensive legal requirements inhibit local benefit-capture. In order to prevent the means of forest governance (i.e. certification and law enforcement) from trumping its commonly stated ends (sustainable forest management and local welfare), there is a need to prioritize the generation of local benefit from locally adapted production systems.

Carbon markets have the potential to reward landowners for improved forest management and forest conservation. To date, the Over the Counter (OTC) voluntary market represents the greatest opportunity for forest landowners to participate in carbon transactions. However, lack of a consistent carbon price signal and sporadic demand coupled by high transaction costs has prevented widespread participation from family forest landowners. Adoption of a U.S. based cap-and-trade program reduces price risk and may provide incentives for sustainable forest management across large areas. Yet few studies have examined the supply side of carbon offsets and factors affecting project financial viability. To address this gap, we assessed how (1) property characteristics (i.e. stocking level, forest type, size etc.); (2) silvicultural treatments; and (3) protocol and legislative requirements affect the financial viability of compliance forest offset projects, focusing on California's Air Resource Board (ARB) program due to its significance as the world's second largest carbon market. We used forest inventory data from 25 properties in the northeastern United States to examine the viability of the sites as ARB offset projects. We utilized the U.S. Forest Service Forest Vegetation Simulator for our growth and yield simulations. To examine the factors that influence project viability, we used a classification and regression tree analysis performed in S-Plus software. Results indicate C stocking and property size are the most important property characteristics driving return on investment. However, protocol requirements and legislative assumptions impacting long-term monitoring costs are also important factors. While reduced price risk in a compliance carbon market has the potential to improve forest management in North America; high initial project development costs, long-term monitoring obligations, and legislative uncertainty are significant barriers that will limit family forest landowner market participation. The model developed here can be used by U.S. landowners to assess the financial viability of their property as a compliance offset project and can be utilized by policymakers to develop cost-effective climate change policy.