Standards of Sustainable Forest Management

First introduced by the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) and accepted at the UNCED, standards of SFM (often referred to as criteria and indicators or C&I) provide a tool, which can be used to conceptualise, evaluate and implement sustainable forest management, at the global, national and management unit levels. Forest management is defined in many dimensions - economic, social and environmental, and it involves stakeholders from widely different backgrounds and beliefs. What exactly constitutes SFM is therefore a matter of agreement between these stakeholders, both about the scope and the content of the concept. Criteria and indicators are the "language" in which these stakeholders express their common understanding of SFM. However, just as it is unlikely that a single standard will apply uniformly across the globe, it is equally unlikely that a set developed for the national level will be applicable at the forest (management unit) level. Forests, institutions and people involved in forest management vary to such an extent, that different standards are required fitting each different situation.

UNCED set off several international and regional initiatives to develop standards for SFM. These initiatives involve more than 100 countries organised in regional groupings. Each of these initiatives represents government-led efforts of regional stakeholders to agree on what is SFM in the regional context. In addition, standards were developed by international organisations and, importantly, in the context of the certification of forest products, by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and other similar organisations operating mostly in temperate and boreal forests. More and more countries are in the process of developing and implementing their own national standards, either based on the government-led international processes (mainly northern temperate countries), on the ITTO standard (Malaysia) or certification standards (usually FSC - many countries).

A SFM standard consists of several elements, called principles, criteria, indicators and norms. They have a hierarchical relationship to each other in which these elements are organised in a coherent way. In everyday usage, much confusion exists about these terms, and their imprecise application leads to poorly defined standards. Well-defined standards allow stakeholders, to communicate effectively about sustainable forest management, even if they are very different or never see each other: for example local communities and concession holders; producers and buyers in remote markets, and governments and international bodies. The Tropenbos Hierarchical Framework provides a systematic and rational system to relate the elements of a standard to each other:

Other standards use slightly varying definitions of principles, criteria, indicators and norms, and other terms may also be used (such as verifiers (CIFOR), which are more or less equivalent to indicators).

Overview of existing standards with relevance to the tropics is provided below:

TBI sources

Lammerts van Bueren, E.M. and Blom, E.M. (1997). Hierarchical framework for the formulation of sustainable forest management standards.

Further reading:

Other definitions of C&I:
ITTO
CIFOR