Introduction: Working Forests in the Tropics: Policy and Market Impacts on Conservation and Management

Abstract

Tropical forests are very rich in biological diversity and form an important economic and ecological resource. This biodiversity is of great value for communities living in or near these forests as a ready source of subsistence and cash income, and for the world at large as a source of tropical timber and non-timber products and a repository of genetic and chemical information. However, this biological complexity is diminishing rapidly. We analyze the main human (anthropogenic) actions causing loss of tropical forest biodiversity along with the strategies of management for forest biodiversity. Not only is the biophysical component important in management for biodiversity, but the active participation and support of local people, national governments, and the international community as a whole are essential to effective and sustainable development of tropical forests. This development strategy ensures that socioeconomic and environmental benefits are provided for present and future generations.     

Sustaining Tropical Forest Biodiversity

Abstract

Tropical forests are very rich in biological diversity and form an important economic and ecological resource. This biodiversity is of great value for communities living in or near these forests as a ready source of subsistence and cash income, and for the world at large as a source of tropical timber and non-timber products and a repository of genetic and chemical information. However, this biological complexity is diminishing rapidly. We analyze the main human (anthropogenic) actions causing loss of tropical forest biodiversity along with the strategies of management for forest biodiversity. Not only is the biophysical component important in management for biodiversity, but the action participation and support of local people, the national government and international cooperation as a whole, arc essential for an effective and sustainable development of tropical forests. This integrated development strategy ensures that socio-economic and environmental benefits are provided for present and future generations.     

Modern Nursery Practices in the Production of Quality Seedlings of Indian Sandalwood (Santalum album L.)— Stage of Host Requirement and Screening of Primary Host Species

Abstract

Fewer than one tenth of tropical forests are being managed on a sustainable basis. Sustainable forest management means managing the forest in such a way as to not irreversibly reduce the potential of that forest to produce all products in subsequent harvests. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio resulted in several decisions that are relevant to the future of forestry. The Conference also focused world attention on questions of the environment. One outcome of this increased awareness has been the growing support for eco-labelling, which may provide an opportunity for those countries able to prove their forest products are harvested sustainably. Other economic opportunities present themselves in the utilization for cellulose of tree crops such as rubberwood and oil palm trunks and fronds. Non-wood resources such as rattan also hold promise if we are able to grow them in conjunction with existing tree crops. The roles of tropical forests as carbon sinks require more in-depth study as does the question of what constitutes critical levels of biodiversity. Aesthetic values such as recreational use increasingly require that sufficient buffer zones of unique features be preserved. These challenges demand that the forestry profession becomes more proactive and support major policy changes to address the need for sustainable forest management.     

ITTO热带用材林的生物多样性保护与可持续利用

为把生物多样性保护纳入森林可持续经营, 发挥热带用材林在生物多样性保护中的特殊作用, 国际热带木材组织先后于1993年和2009年出版了关于生物多样性保护与利用的两个指南。文中以热带森林的主要利益相关者为线索, 通过比较两个指南的差别, 探讨了热带用材林生物多样性保护与可持续利用的研究进展。     

中国热带林资源和利用现状及2000年发展前景

中国热带林资源和利用现状及２０００年发展前景朱敏慧（中国林科院科信所,北京１０００９１）１中国热带林资源概况中国的热带林处于热带北缘,属干湿交替型的热带向干热带过渡地带,按区域划分大体可分为３个地带：（１）东部过渡性热带季雨林、雨林区,包括福建东南部...     

热带次生林群落动态研究：回顾与展望

全球的热带次生林面积正快速增加,但人们对它们的生态、经济和社会效益的了解却十分有限,不同研究对次生林的理解和所使用的定义也不一样。在简要介绍热带次生林的现状之后,着重回顾热带次生林群落动态研究的主要成果,同时简述了现有研究中存在的问题和将来研究的重点课题及展望。     

Sustainable Forest Management in Tropical Rain Forests

Abstract

In planning of sustainable forest management, economic, environmental and social demands often conflict. Forest management in Southeast Asian tropical dipterocarp forests has been particularly biased towards maximizing immediate economic return from extensive logging. Overexploitation and other forms of uncontrolled land use within these forests have led to the situation where the remaining natural forests, most of them in Indonesia, will be liquidated within the next 10-15 years at the current rate of deforestation. In this paper we present an approach for sustainable forest management planning in which economic, environmental and social sustainability are considered simultaneously in order to define an optimal management strategy from a set of available alternatives.

We carried out a case study within a rain forest logging concession in Indonesian Borneo by using a participatory planning approach involving interviews of the local people, environmental assessment and economic analyses. We used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method for resource allocation and priority setting in order to identify an optimal strategy which yields a sustained economic output from timber production, while at the same time being environmentally and socioculturally sustainable. Despite their relatively high costs, strategies involving selective harvesting combined to complete restoration of original dipterocarp stock in logged-over areas were superior in terms of economic, environmental and social sustainability. Priorities set by local communities for the strategies to meet their socioeconomic and cultural needs coincide well with those ensuring the restoration and biodiversity.     

The role of biodiversity in Asian forests

Biodiversity in Asia is reviewed here from both scientific and socio-economic perspectives. Biodiversity in Asia has been very high, for historical and climatic reasons; however, this situation has been changing rapidly, due to population growth and economic development. The forest biodiversity in this region has both global and local value, yet it is seriously threatened. As natural capital, biodiversity functions in a variety of ways: production and regulation functions have global value, while habitat and information functions have social and cultural value, as well as local importance. Sustainable forest management is dependent on the regulatory functions of the ecosystem and biodiversity. Sometimes the functions of forests or biodiversity make conflict. Moreover, biodiversity has an information function related to sustainability via local knowledge and culture. Levin’s (1999) proposals are helpful as a conceptual framework for developing sustainable management for Asian forests.     

Opportunities for Small-Scale Forestry in Carbon Markets

This paper presents an explanatory framework of how greenhouse gas emissions offsets produced from natural and planted forests (‘carbon forestry’) feature in voluntary and regulated carbon markets. An introduction to the convoluted policy malaise surrounding the use of forests in regulated carbon markets is also presented. Whilst there are many opportunities and potential benefits of using forests to produce offsets, relatively few carbon forestry projects currently exist, particularly in regulated carbon markets. This seems due to financial, institutional and administrative obstacles, with prohibitive transaction costs often cited as the most prominent constraint to expanded carbon forestry development. The papers in this special issue present a wide coverage of carbon forestry development policy issues. The special issue provides a unique insight into the state of carbon forestry globally and highlights the pressing need for policy and market reform to facilitate more sustainable carbon forestry development.     

Criteria and guidance considerations for sustainable tree stump harvesting in British Columbia

Abstract

Stump extraction for forest health has been carried out operationally in British Columbia (BC) for many years. Emerging bioenergy opportunities plus the anticipated need for more fibre because of reductions in timber supply may increase interest in stump harvesting, but there are numerous environmental, economic and policy barriers that must be overcome first before industrial-scale stump harvesting can be seriously considered in BC. The potential for a future change in practice provides an opportunity to learn from the existing literature and identify knowledge gaps. In this article we review the available literature on stump harvesting from the European Union within the context of BC's forests, economy, biodiversity, environment and policies. We provide recommendations on how the government of BC could move forward if they decide to enable stump harvesting for fibre and bioenergy, including assessment of net economic and carbon benefits and environmental effects, improvements in inventory and the scientific knowledge base needed to support policy and guidance, and investigation of operational enhancements.     

森林认证助推世界私有林及我国非公有制林业的发展

世界上绝大部分森林是私有林, 而随着我国集体林权改革的深入和国家政策的支持, 我国非公有制林业发展迅速。森林认证对促进世界私有林和我国非公有制林业的发展和可持续经营发挥了重要作用。在分析世界私有林和我国非公有制林业认证发展现状、模式和作用的基础上, 对如何推动我国非公有制林业认证提出了意见与建议。     

中国热带次生林生产潜力与经营模式研究

在完成对中国热带地区次生林现状、经营情况的相关资料分析和重点地区的实地调查后认为：从目前次生林的生态效益来看,对比人工林,次生林在涵养水源、保持水土、维持地力等方面表现出较好的效益;与原始林比较,次生林在吸收CO2和释放O2和改良土壤的功能相对强,而固土效益和蓄水效益则较低。在经济效益方面,通过样地的调查分析,由于缺乏经营,次生林的木材生产能力相当低,单位面积平均蓄积量约仅78m^3／hm^2,为世界平均森林蓄积水平的68％左右。通过经营,中国次生林有较大的生态和经济潜力开发空间。由于中国经济仍然比较落后,特别是在农村,环境保护和生存问题都很突出。因此,要保护和发展次生林,只有选择生态和经济效益同时兼顾的经营模式,才能实现其可持续性。通过一年的调研,根据中国的经营传统和结合现实状况,归纳出目前在中国可以普遍推广的三个主要经营模式,即：社区综合经营模式、天然林的恢复与重建模式和经济物种套种经营模式。     

National assessment of the fragmentation, accessibility and anthropogenic pressure on the forests in Mexico

Forest managers and policy makers increasingly demand to have access to estimates of forest fragmentation,human accessibility to forest areas and levels of anthropogenic pressure on the remaining forests to integrate them into monitoring systems,management and conservation plans.Forest fragmentation is defined as the breaking up of a forest unit,where the number of patches and the amount of expose edge increase while the amount of core area decreases.Forest fragmentation studies in Mexico have been limited to local or regional levels and have concentrated only on specific forest types.This paper presents an assessment of the fragmentation of all forest types at the national level,their effective proximity to anthropogenic influences,and the development of an indicator of anthropogenic pressure on the forests areas.Broadleaf forests,tropical evergreen forests and tropical dry deciduous forests show the greatest fragmentation.Almost half(47%) of the tropical forests are in close effective proximity to anthropogenic influences and only 12% of their area can be considered isolated from anthropogenic influences.The values for the temperate forests are 23% and 29% respectively.Anthropogenic pressure in the immediate vicinity of anthropogenic activities is much higher in the tropical forests(75 in a scale 0-100) than in the temperate forests(30).When considering these results jointly,the tropical forests,and more specifically,the tropical evergreen forests and tropical dry deciduous forests are under the greatest pressure and risks of degradation.     

Agroforestry policy issues and research directions in the US and less developed countries: insights and challenges from recent experience

Efforts to improve the performance of agroforestry systems, and to expand the land area and number of people able to benefit from this integrative approach to agriculture and natural resource management, are constrained throughout the world by non-supportive land use policies. A growing sense of urgency that policy change is needed to enable agroforestry to flourish has contributed during the past two years to an unprecedented level of agroforestry policy assessment and planning activity.In the US, agroforestry has emerged from academia, where it has incubated since the mid-1980s, into the professional resource management arena. A multi-organizational agroforestry evaluation process has driven national policy and program formation to the forefront of the agenda of the agroforestry community, as it seeks to influence the 1995 Farm Bill. Internationally, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and collaborators fostered a sequence of policy issue identification activities as a basis for setting strategic research priorities for forestry and agroforestry.Following a brief review of forces driving agroforestry development in industrialized and less developed countries, the paper highlights recent policy assessment initiatives in each sphere. Observations on the issues driving and the priorities emerging from these processes are offered, to lend perspective to the critical challenges facing the agroforestry policy research community. An explanation for pervasive constraints and inconsistencies in policy effectiveness is then explored, from which a promising approach to research intervention is forwarded.It is argued that social scientists might influence agroforestry policy most favorably at this critical juncture, as perceptions of inter-dependence increase among different stakeholders in the policy system, by employing interventionist, actor-oriented perspectives and participatory methods to facilitate policy innovation and evaluation. The approach is consistent with participatory technology design processes that earlier helped to establish agroforestry as a prototype for sustainable development.     

Tropical Forestry

An overview of the forestry sector in Costa Rica was undertaken to determine whether the existing management practices of timber resources hold the potential to meet the country's demands for timber in the immediate decades to come, and to identify changes that might be needed in the management of forested lands. To meet these goals, we examined the present status and potential future contribution of the two newest forest sectors: the management of natural forest and plantation forestry. Rcsults indicate that the present management of Costa Rica's timber resources does not hold the potential to meet the country's demands for timber for more than the next ten years without severe loss of its forests. Substantial progress is occurring, but at an insufficient rate. Moreover, despite the considerable headway made in conservation in recent years, the rate of deforestation remains high. A number of factors limit advancement in natural forest management and plantation forestry, both of which have the potential to deaccelerate deforestation. In natural forest management, constraints are the rate at which forests are being brought under management, lack of budgetary provisions for fiscal incentives to private owners who alone cannot be expected to bear the cost of benefits of natural forest management that are national or even global in their distribution, and the weak infrastructure, extension services and research support to meet management goals. In the case of plantation forestry, the capability of this sector to produce commercial timber is not known. Moreover, inadequate management and extension services together with the misuse of the incentive system by private owners is likely to limit the potential of plantations. Institutional constraints include outdated legal and bureaucratic framework, market interventions, absence of clear policy toward natural forest management and plantation forestry, poor investment in infrastructure, extension and research support, and inadequate interaction among various agencies responsible for the development of the forestry sector. Such institutional constraints have allowed the proliferation of disincentives against the development of a sustainable timber sector. If the Costa Rican government's objective is to encourage sustainable forestry, it must first clearly articulate the policy and then create the appropriate legal, economic and institutional framework for implementation of the policy. Costa Rica, with its enlightened public administration system, vast technical and scientific knowledge about its forest ecosystem and extensive assistance from international organizations, must succeed, otherwise prospects for sustainable forestry in thc less fortunate tropical countries would be bleak.     

中国热带地区次生林经营现状和技术

文章分析了中国热带地区次生林经营相关资料,在对广东、海南、广西和云南重点热带次生林林区或典型经营区进行实地调查的基础上,分析和总结了中国热带次生林经营管理政策、经营现状和经营技术。中国的热带次生林经营在中华人民共和国成立后不久的1951年开始提出,但在20世纪50至80年代中期,主要以利用为目的,经营方式以封山育林为主。到了80年代后期,经济相对发达的地区如广东开始从木材生产为主向生态营林方向转化的大规模经营活动,自然保护区建设规模加大。1998年发生严重的洪涝之后,中央政府加强了以林业为主题的生态环境建设,热带次生林开始得到有效的保护,这一阶段的经营特点是生态建设,经营方式以政府主导的生态公益林、天然林保护等工程建设为主。经营技术除封山育林外,强调了退耕还林、提高物种的多样性和地带性乡土树种的开发利用。但是,中国的热带次生林经营始终未能走出木材利用或是生态防护的两个极端,缺乏既提高生态效益又提高经济效益、能满足生态和林区居民生存经济需求的可持续经营技术和实践。     

A comparative analysis of spatial, temporal, and ecological characteristics of forest fires in seasonally dry tropical ecosystems in the Western Ghats, India

The Western Ghats in India is one of the 25 global hotspots of biodiversity, and it is the hotspot with the highest human density. This study considers variations in the regional fire regime that are related to vegetation type and past human disturbances in a landscape. Using a combination of remote sensing data and GIS techniques, burnt areas were delineated in three different vegetation types and various metrics of fire size were estimated. Belt transects were enumerated to assess the vegetation characteristics and fire effects in the landscape. Temporal trends suggest increasingly short fire-return intervals in the landscape. In the tropical dry deciduous forest, the mean fire-return interval is 6 years, in the tropical dry thorn forest mean fire-return interval is 10 years, and in the tropical moist deciduous forest mean fire-return interval is 20 years. Tropical dry deciduous forests burned more frequently and had the largest number of fires in any given year as well as the single largest fire (9900 ha). Seventy percent, 56%, and 30% of the tropical moist deciduous forests, tropical dry thorn forests, and tropical dry deciduous forests, respectively have not burned during the 7-year period of study. The model of fire-return interval as a function of distance from park boundary explained 63% of the spatial variation of fire-return interval in the landscape. Forest fires had significant impacts on species diversity and regeneration in the tropical dry deciduous forests. Species diversity declined by 50% and 60% in the moderate and high frequency classes, respectively compared to the low fire frequency class. Sapling density declined by ca. 30% in both moderate and high frequency classes compared to low frequency class. In tropical moist deciduous ecosystems, there were substantial declines in species diversity, tree density, seedling and sapling densities in burned forests compared to the unburned forests. In contrast forest fires in tropical dry thorn forests had a marginal positive effect on ecosystem diversity, structure, and regeneration.     

Capacity building to advance the United Nations sustainable development goals: An overview of tools and approaches related to sustainable land management

The United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) provide an ambitious and comprehensive framework for addressing the development needs on a global, regional, and national scale. In order for the SDG targets to be obtainable, diverse stakeholders need the technical, institutional, and organizational capacity to implement the wide variety of initiatives covered under these goals. Inspired by a 2016 workshop, this article synthesizes capacity-building themes and strategies for the following approaches to sustainable development, specifically related to forestry, restoration, agriculture, and other forms of land management. Using three case studies from the authors’ experience, we present approaches to building local capacity for sustainable land management (SLM) in the tropics. These projects have taken different steps in order to build technical and leadership capacity as well as develop management or financial skills, and offer insight into various approaches that may be used in order to improve the effectiveness and long-term impact of SLM efforts. By presenting a range of tools and approaches to capacity building, the authors hope that this synthesis can serve as a valuable guide for the development of diverse capacity-building initiatives required to meet the SDGs.     

Succession and management of tropical dry forests in the Americas: Review and new perspectives

Understanding tropical forest succession is critical for the development of tropical forest conservation strategies worldwide, given that tropical secondary forests can be considered the forests of the future. Tropical dry forests (TDF) are among the most threatened tropical ecosystems, there are more secondary forests and forest restoration efforts that require a better understanding of successional processes. The main goal of this synthesis for this special issue on the ecology and management of tropical dry forests in the Americas is to present a summarized review of the current knowledge of the ecology and management implications associated to TDF succession. We explore specific issues associated to tropical dry forest succession with emphasis on the use of chronosequences, plant diversity and composition, plant phenology and remote sensing, pollination, and animal–plant interactions; all under the integrating umbrella of ecosystem succession. We also emphasize the need to conduct socio-ecological research to understand changes in land-use history and its effects on succession and forest regeneration of TDF. We close this paper with some thoughts and ideas associated with the strong need for an integrating dimension not considered until today: the role of cyberinfrastructure and eco-informatics as a tool to support sound conservation, management and understanding of TDF in the Americas.     

An approach to achieve sustainable development goals through participatory land and forest conservation: a case study in South Kalimantan Province,Indonesia

The delivery of sustainable development goals (SDGs) through a participatory land and forest conservation initiative was evaluated in South Kalimantan Province, Indonesia. The initiative focused on the rehabilitation of a 410 ha forest that was managed by local villagers. A forest rehabilitation and management initiative was developed through participatory action, establishing a well-managed rubber plantation that provided new livelihood opportunities. Poverty reduction was promoted, evidenced by a reduction in inequality amongst the local community. Between 2010 and 2018 the Gini coefficient of inequality declined from 34.6% to 31.3%, demonstrating a contribution to SDGs 1 (No Poverty) and 10 (Reduced Inequalities). In addition, forest rehabilitation resulted in improved carbon stock and biodiversity management contributing to SDG15 (Life on Land). This was attributed to successful forest rehabilitation and the reduced incidence of forest fires. Cooperation amongst local villagers categorized as living in poor households was improved, facilitated by capacity building. This focused on rubber plantation management, cooperative action, and firefighting activities. This capacity building contributed to the delivery of SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). Results from a socio-economic survey demonstrated that group activities and cooperation amongst stakeholders were essential to improve both livelihoods and forest management practices.