Are sustainability indicators appropriate for planted forests?

EFI’s new Discussion Paper, Are MCPFE Indicators Suitable for Planted Forests?, analyses the value of indicators for assessing sustainable forest management in the context of cultivated forests. It shows the diversity of indicators, the weaknesses of existing ones, and the benefits of new indicators tested during the FORSEE project. The paper also demonstrates the variability in the quality of indicators, and the limits of their comparability.

The paper provides a summary and comparative analysis of the FORSEE project results. The FORSEE project, which ran from 2003-2006, studied indicators for sustainable forest management at a regional scale. A full set of internationally agreed criteria and indicators from MCPFE (now known as FOREST EUROPE) was tested over a network of pilot zones in eight Atlantic regions: Aquitaine, Castilla y Leon, Galicia, Basque Country, Ireland, Portugal Centre (Lousa), Navarra, and Portugal Centre (Sousa Valley).

The FORSEE project was co-funded by the INTERREG IIIB Atlantic area and regional donors: Conseil regional d’Aquitaine, Gobierno de Navarra, Govierno vasco, Junta de Castilla y Leon and Xunta de Galicia.

EFI Discussion Paper 16, Are MCPFE Indicators Suitable for Planted Forests? by Jean-Louis Martres, Jean-Michel Carnus and Christophe Orazio is available to download as a pdf file here.

Further information: Christophe Orazio (firstname.lastname@efi.int)