Testing Criteria And Indicators For The Sustainable Management Of Forests

Forest: sustainable management, methods used in generating and evaluating criteria and indicators sets of criteria and indicators resulting out of the tests and future steps.

Preparing for C&I testing. C&I testing procedures. Follow-up analysis. The conceptual basis of C&I development. Three case studies. Literature and further reading.

The concept of criteria and indicators (C&I) for sustainable forest management (SFM) is suitable for defining, measuring and assessing sustainability in forestry. Within this study, the concept was developed further to a C&I system for application at the local level and tested as a case study at the Haliburton Forest & Wild Life Reserve Ltd. in Canada. The research involved: development of a generic set of local level C&I, identification of verifiers and norms, field testing the C&I, development of indicator measurement databases, assessment of the state of the forest and its management, and the application of adaptive management procedures. Based on the generic C&I system for SFM and the comprehensive field test, the study provides a model for evaluating sustainability in the management of temperate forests around the world.

The CIFOR set of Criteria and Indicators (C&I) together with other sets prepared by organisations (ITTO, WWE, SmartWood, LEI) formed the basis for the present evaluation of C7I for the use sustainable management of Acacia mangium plantations. Field testing of C7I was conducted at two sites in Sumatra (Riau and Subanjeriji) and one site in Kalimantan (Pulau Laut) during 1997 and 1998. The C&I identified for each site are summarised in this report.