The National Forest Programme in the light of Austria's law and political culture

This paper analyses the existing legal framework and political culture in Austria with regard to the procedural elements and output of a National Forest Programme (NFP). The procedural elements of a NFP have been defined by international organisations in the Rio follow-up process. The output of a NFP relates to the goal of the sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of forests. At present there is no NFP in Austria. For the procedural elements of participation, intersectoral co-ordination and long-term, iterative and adaptive planning a weak legal framework exists that has so far impeded NFP formation. Regarding the output of a NFP, the Austrian Forest Act and other forest regulations focus strongly on timber production rather than ecological, social and cultural goals. On account of these shortcomings, the process and output of a substantive NFP requires some changes in Austria's legal framework and political culture. The corporatist structure of the Austrian forestry sector appears to be the central explicative variable for the weak shaping of most of the NFP elements in legislation and practice.     

Do “stakeholders” represent citizen interests? An empirical inquiry into assessments of policy aims in the National Forest Programme for Germany

Participatory National Forest Programmes (NFPs) intend to democratise forest sector policy, but they may suffer from a fundamental democratic legitimisation deficit since the stakeholders involved are neither democratically authorised nor accountable to the population. In order to scrutinise the empirical relevance of this problem in the case of the German NFP, it is analysed how the German population on the one hand and the NFP participants on the other hand assess central forest policy aims of the NFP, and how far both assessments coincide. Two surveys based on identical questionnaires are used as the data base. The respondents assessed the importance of the respective aims as well as at their implementation. Results show that the population considers the majority of the NFP aims to be generally relevant, but assesses the majority of the aims significantly differently from the stakeholders. The formal legitimisation deficit of the German NFP therefore also matters in terms of content. Discussing the NFP among the elected representatives and in the public seems indispensable.Moreover, the differences in the assessment of some policy aims are significantly dependent on how people judge the image of forest enterprises between the opposing poles of profit orientation and nature protection. Public acceptance of those aims could be furthered more appropriately by adjusting the partly incorrect image of forestry rather than by providing more information about the particular aims and their background.     

Participation and deliberation in Swedish forest governance: The process of initiating a National Forest Program

Over the last two decades intergovernmental organizations have supported the initiation of National Forest Programs (NFPs): forums for joint deliberation by the state, private companies and NGOs that are intended to resolve conflicts over forestry and enhance sustainability. However, NFPs do not always reconcile conflicting perspectives or produce legitimate strategies for sustainable forestry. Thus, further analysis of NFPs' organization and processes is required, including exploration of effective means to address such challenges in early stages. These are key concerns of this paper, focusing on the first process to establish a Swedish NFP. Possibilities for an NFP to constitute a new arena for deliberation and consensus-building, producing forest policy statements and action plans considered legitimate by various stakeholders, are discussed. A number of key challenges are identified through a theoretical framework based on notions regarding the input and output legitimacy of collaborative governance. Analysis of official documentation, records of public hearings and stakeholder comments from the establishment phase in 2013–2015 suggests that the process will continually face a number of challenges, including balancing production and conservation values in the new bio-economy and securing equal stakeholder participation. The paper concludes with some remarks on the future of the NFP process.     

National Forest Policy in India: Critique of Targets and Implementation

For any country, the forest policy is an important guideline to maintain forest resources and their interaction with other land uses. India devised its first National Forest Policy (NFP) back in 1894. There has been a paradigm shift from timber production to forest conservation followed by community-based agroforestry and social forestry bringing a change in perspective towards forest resources. This change has been socio-economic, cultural and ecological. Since the 1952 NFP, there has been an advocacy for 33% forest cover with a 60% forest cover in mountainous and hilly regions. This objective was reiterated in the NFP 1988 and also confirmed in the National Forestry Commission report in 2006. This paper reviews the probable reasons for these targets. This paper also analyzes forest cover trends at state level and assesses the likelihood of meeting the prescribed policy targets under present perspective of land use practices. Only three Indian states meet the prescribed policy, while three more have the potential to do so, if their state wasteland area is afforested. Among the rest, a few states may achieve the 33% goal provided land conversion to tree cover is not hindered, and adequate resources are available at state level. The Planning Commission (XI Five-year Plan, 2007–12) has emphasized inclusion of other natural ecosystems (including treeless areas and trees outside forests) to forest cover. The paper also examines the above prescribed targets in light of the Planning Commission recommendations. It is argued that that the NFP should be re-visited and revised to meet the targets, along with setting a more realistic and attainable target for Indian forest and tree cover.     

Public Participation in Forest Landscape Management Planning (FLMP) in Italy

In the early 1990s, public involvement in forest planning was recognized and implemented both at a political and technical level in Europe, whereas in Italy, the participatory approach in forest planning, particularly at landscape level, has become widespread over the last decade. Several actors have been involved and the need to consider the objectives and targets expressed by different stakeholders has progressively increased. More consideration has been given to the outcomes of this involvement for the decision-making process. In the first part of the article, the forest-planning framework in the Italian context is presented, illustrating the role of the different levels of planning: the National Forest Programme (NFP), the Forest Landscape Management Plan (FLMP), and the Forest Unit Management Plan (FUMP). In the second part, the public participation process model, developed by the authors in Italy for the landscape scale, is analyzed by underlining four key attributes: procedure, moment of participation, learning interaction, and delegation of power. Regarding procedure, the five stages of participation adopted—communication and information, stakeholder analysis, first consultation stage, synthesis and preparation of the scenarios, and second consultation stage—are presented in order to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the methodological approach.     

Goals for public participation implied by sustainable development, and the preparatory process of the Finnish National Forest Programme

Since the UNCED in 1992, National Forest Programmes (NFP) have been widely acknowledged as a means to implement internationally agreed upon sustainability goals for forest management. However, national forest programmes are prepared and implemented in national political, social and ecological contexts, which vary significantly between countries. Finland has a long tradition of “forest programming”, starting from the 1950s, which has contributed to the institutions and culture of preparing such programmes. These programmes have traditionally been prepared in governmentally facilitated committees and working groups in close collaboration with interest groups and representatives of research and administration.In this paper, we develop goals for participation in a policy decision-making process. These goals, based on sustainable development definitions and policies, include: (1) generating new relevant information, (2) incorporating all relevant interests, and (3) contributing to reaching public agreement.Demands for increasing public awareness, inclusion of different views as well as respect for procedural citizen rights were obvious expectations also behind Finland's National Forest Programme 2010 that was made in 1999. The new forms of participation applied in the already well-developed interest-group-integrating policy preparation system provided an opportunity to take the participation goals more seriously. According to our analysis, the arguments arising from the new forms of participation were strongly in line with those already previously present in Finnish forest policy discourse, and the new forms of participation functioned merely as legitimating and awareness raising systems.     

Sustaining Multifunctional Forestry Through the Developing of Social Capital and Promoting Participation: A Case of Multiethnic Mountain Communities

Communities with multicultural, ethnically diverse populations located in forest areas of the Carpathian Mountains often face serious social and economic problems, including high unemployment rates, weak social support and institutions with little stakeholder participation in decision-making. In this paper, we apply participatory scenario processes to address the development of multifunctional forestry in these mountains by taking as an example the case study of Slovensky Raj National Park and specifically focusing on the involvement of local communities, particularly the Roma minority, in sustainable forest management (SFM). The paper argues that development of local institutions and promotion of horizontal and vertical participation to increase social capital is necessary for addressing social and economic problems, managing potential conflicts and sustaining multifunctional forestry development. The results suggest that the way forward is the integration of multi-purpose forest management with community development, and that learning, repeated stakeholder interaction, trust-building and cooperation between and within multiethnic local communities are important preconditions for success. The scenario process applied turned out to be beneficial for both the majority and the minority populations, particularly allowing for discussions about future development of mountain regions, their local economies and communities, and for providing some guidance about what are the preferred actions for participation in multifunctional SFM.     

Institutional assessment in natural resource governance: A conceptual overview

Natural resource governance is enhanced and structured by rules, norms and strategies which make institutionalism quintessential in the natural resource governance discourse. Adopting a retrospective analysis of classical theoretical literature and recent empirical experiences of natural resource institutions, this paper discusses institutional analysis as pertains to the natural resource governance context. Synthesizing from relevant literature, this review designs and discusses an analytical framework to illustrate how formal and informal institutions structure natural resource governance. The key elements in the framework are: biophysical element, process and institutional element, behavioral choice element, enforcement mechanisms and an outcome element. The paper argues that for formal rule to be more effective, it greatly depends on its relationship with the informal institutions and more importantly their enforcement complementarities. The study, consequently, discusses key elements that influence the effectiveness of natural resource rule enforcement. This review concludes that both formal and informal institutions serve as catalysts to reinforce natural resource governance; however, the two could also combine to form a clandestine network to facilitate unethical resource exploitation. The paper puts forward that, it is not institutions per se but the “nature of interaction” between formal and informal institutions together with the “enforcement mechanisms” which will to a large extent determine the kind of resource outcomes.     

Moroccan Forestry Policies and Local Forestry Management in the High Atlas: A Cross Analysis of Forestry Administration and Local Institutions

This paper examines how local forestry management has evolved in the Aït Bougmez Valley (Central High Atlas, Morocco) in the last three decades and how this evolution has affected forest ecosystem conditions. It focuses on the impact of the forestry administration on ‘traditional forestry management’ since its introduction in 1985, and of recent innovation in forestry policy. The relatively new Strategic Environmental Management Analysis (SEMA) framework is applied, rather than a more ‘classical’ new institutional framework. This approach allows for a more comprehensive understanding of both strategic interactions between various actors and ecological consequences of these interactions. An interesting empirical findings is that instead of a quite simple opposition between the forestry administration and local populations, negotiation opportunities exist that are taken by the actors. This leads to specific actor configurations and sometimes unexpected environmental outcomes, even if from a global point of view, forest stands have been seriously depleted over the last 40 years mainly due to exploitation by local population and the absence of economic alternative to forest exploitation. On the other hand, the implementation of a new policy tool in such a context has to be understood as an opportunity for new actors to take part in forest management rules definition.     

Natural Resource Policy and the Paradox of Public Involvement

Summary

Immersed in natural resource policy approaches such as ecosystem management is the expectation that the best available science will be applied so that the best policy management decision will result. Citizens, like scientists and land managers, want natural resource management decisions based on good science rather than special interest group politics. Yet citizens also want to be involved in the decision process and are skeptical about the very science they claim must be the basis for policy actions.

Herein lies an apparent paradox. Citizens' want the best science to guide natural resource management decisions, but not to the exclusion of their input. Similarly, there seems to be a paradox in the sentiments expressed by natural resource management agency administrators and specialists. Agency personnel know they need meaningful citizen involvement in their management decisions, but they also want citizens to trust their scientific expertise.

This paper is about that paradox and innovative ways to work through it. We first discuss the nature of natural resource conflict, then address the paradox in some depth. A discussion of traditional public participation precedes innovative methods for working through the paradox.     

Creating trust in institutions in Russian forest localities

Russia is a country with a low level of trust. In consequence, companies working in Russia have to emphasize the development and maintenance of trust with all their interest groups. In this paper we study how trust is built up at the local level with municipalities and local communities. Local level interest groups, however, seem to be less significant for companies in contemporary Russian countryside. This paper will provide an analysis of why local level interest groups are weak and what the consequences are. The paper also discusses legislation and regulations affecting social structures in the Russian countryside showing why and how much social responsibility is transferred to companies. In addition, the paper discusses whether private governance regulation, such as forest certification, will help local communities to be heard.The paper applies Douglass North's approach to economic development with formal and informal institutions, and also the literature on trust and the social responsibility of enterprises. Formal institutions such as national legislation and international privately controlled rules of FSC certification are compared with informal practices at the local level.Cooperation with companies and environmental organizations has complemented traditional Russian social responsibility and increased cooperation between the different interest groups. NGOs can also help local communities to be heard, but since companies are more concerned with the trust of their clients, weak municipalities remain humble receivers of aid. Globalization also makes companies pay more attention to their competitiveness, which will exert pressure on the government to arrange social security and strengthen municipalities. Structural changes in Russia will, however, take time, since Russia not only has to tackle the construction of new formal institutions but it must also deal with the increasing effects of globalization as it changes the traditional structures of democracy and a market economy.     

Learning from self-initiated community forest management in Orissa,India

There is growing recognition in tropical countries that safeguarding forests requires the active involvement of local communities, but knowledge of how best to do this is limited. Orissa's extensive experience of community forest management (CFM) provides some valuable lessons and insights regarding: (a) how and why communities manage their forests; and (b) the sustainability of CFM initiatives. The paper discusses the following aspects of CFM in Orissa: (a) the conditions that give rise to the initiation of CFM; (b) the size and nature of the benefits and how they are distributed among the various sub-groups of a community; (c) the factors affecting its sustainability, including conflicts and their management; and (d) communities’ support needs. The principal research activity was a survey, primarily socio–economic, of 43 forest-dependent communities. CFM was examined in the context of people's livelihood systems as a whole, since these can affect the size and nature of any benefits they derive from forest protection and also their main reasons for deciding to protect. The authors conclude that CFM has made an important contribution to the regeneration and sustainable management of Orissa's forests and argue that the formal balance of control of forests be shifted further towards communities. They highlight the plurality of institutional and management arrangements that communities have developed and caution against forest departments imposing a standardised, blueprint approach, as has tended to happen in government Joint Forest Management (JFM) programmes. Several weaknesses are identified in India's JFM programmes and reforms are recommended.     

尤溪县生态公益林建设问题与对策探讨

介绍了尤溪县"两类林"划分、生态公益林分布等生态公益林建设和保护情况,分析当前公益林建设存在的问题主要有:社会重视不够,管理不到位;补偿机制不完善,林农经营积极性不高;管护责任难落实.提出了建立生态公益林建设政策保障体系,探索建立生态公益林经营管护模式,研究采取相适应的生态公益林经营措施,建立完善的森林生态效能补偿机制和提高全民生态公益林建设与保护意识的对策和建议.     

菲律宾“国家造林计划”实施进展及政策启示

菲律宾“国家造林计划”是世界十大重点生态工程之一。为了遏制森林破坏，恢复退化的热带林和红树林，改善生态状况，提供就业机会，促进乡村发展，菲律宾于1987年启动“国家造林计划（NFP）”。该计划到2010年完成造林202.6万hm2。为加大生态建设力度，2011年又开展了二期的“国家绿化计划（NGP）”（2011—2022年），计划造林270万hm2，而2011—2020年实际完成造林200多万hm2。“国家造林计划”和随后的“国家绿化计划”总目标为造林510万hm2（去除重叠部分），到2020年底实际完成造林410万hm2。在计划实施中，采取了促进人工造林、加强社区森林管理、坚持高层推动、完善规划和政策等多项措施，在生态、经济和社会方面都取得了良好成效。菲律宾“国家造林计划”对我国的主要政策启示包括谋划新的工程、实行依法治理、坚持共建共享、强化科技支撑、重视宣传发动。     

Participation,public policy-making,and legitimacy in the EU Voluntary Partnership Agreement process: The Cameroon case

This paper discusses how participatory policy-making processes such as the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) negotiations are and should be organised to foster political legitimacy and support. The VPAs are bilateral agreements between the European Union (EU) and timber producing countries. VPAs constitute a cornerstone in EU's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) programme, the most important tool for the EU to address illegal logging problems. The EU requires that national VPA negotiations include participation by the relevant stakeholders. Based on primary data, we compare the VPA negotiations in Cameroon (2006–2009) with three different ‘ideal’ models of participatory policy-making: the rationalist, the communicative incremental and the mixed model, which we expect have different implications for legitimacy. We conclude that the Cameroonian process is closest to a rationalist model with elements of the mixed model, and that this has increased legitimacy and support only to a limited extent. For future processes in other countries, we recommend stronger elements of the mixed model, and more careful considerations about stakeholder identification processes; how to adapt policy-process to specific contexts; and how to strengthen communication and information flows. Considerations about these elements could also strengthen the applicability of the ideal models.     

气候谈判、木材产品国际贸易及其关系研究现状

文中介绍气候谈判产生的背景、谈判机制设计、影响谈判进程的因素等方面研究现状, 分析贸易政策与环境、资源禀赋、汇率变动等对木材产品国际贸易的影响; 在此基础上, 讨论气候谈判与木材产品国际贸易之间的关系。现有研究文献表明:气候谈判通过关税直接对木材产品国际贸易产生影响, 通过非关税措施包括森林认证、进口产品检验检疫、森林碳汇等对全球木材产品国际贸易产生直接或间接影响。然而, 这些研究主要还是基于简单的逻辑推理, 对于涉林气候谈判影响木材产品国际贸易的机理并没有进行深入剖析, 更没有通过大样本实证检验涉林气候谈判对木材产品国际贸易的影响。     

基于全球气候变化谈判的森林碳汇研究

为进一步了解森林生态系统的碳汇功能和国际气候谈判,通过查阅资料,对全球气候变化以及CO2的温室效应、气候谈判的现状、实质以及主要发达国家温室气体的减排动态进行了简单的总结.就森林生态系统的碳汇潜力,碳汇作用的非持久性问题进行了探讨.综述了不同时期森林生态系统碳汇研究的成果以及国际森林碳汇项目的动态.分析了森林碳汇项目实施过程中存在的主要问题,并提出我国在国际气候谈判、温室气体减排和造林、再造林等林业碳汇项目中应采取积极立场和应对措施.     

澳大利亚国家公园社区共管模式与经验借鉴

澳大利亚国家公园社区共管模式是基于平衡原住民使用资源的权利和保护生物多样性的义务而建立的机制,其规划建设的过程、经验和思路对于探索我国国家公园社区管理制度具有重要参考价值。文中梳理了澳大利亚国家公园社区共管的历史脉络与演变过程,将其分为由排斥而引发利益冲突、由谈判而达成共管机制以及由发展而完善保护体系3个阶段,分析其典型的社区共管模式,总结其权利保障制度、社区参与机制和社区引导政策3个方面的社区共管经验,并结合中国自然保护地建设情况提出了对中国国家公园社区共管的建议。     

林火研究综述(Ⅲ)*——ENSO对森林火灾的影响

阐述了厄尔尼诺、拉尼娜及ENSO循环的概念。还分析了厄尔尼诺和太阳黑子对林火的影响途径，发现厄尔尼诺引起的暖冬和干旱会导致春季火灾严重，太阳黑子引起的气候变化也会影响到我国森林火灾的发生。最后，对我国森林火灾的预防进行了讨论。