Use of Criteria and Indicators for Forest Management

Presented by

Bhagya Karunathilaka

Forests are managed for maintaining a healthy forest compatible with the owner objectives to maximum utilisation of the land ensuring the continuous outcome. In 1992 the Earth summit, the United Nations Conference Environmental Development focused on the importance of Sustainable Forest Management as a key component of sustainable development under its Chapter 11: Forest Principles for Sustainable Development in Agenda 21

Sustainable Forest Management addresses forest degradation and deforestation while increasing direct benefits to people and the environment. Criteria and Indicators are powerful tools in promoting Sustainable Forest Management by defining, guiding, monitoring and assessing the progress towards Sustainable forest management in a given context. In 1990, International Tropical Timber Organization initiated these Criteria and indicators

A criterion is a standard that a thing is judged by and an indicator is any variable can be used to infer performance which indicates the change in a direction of a criterion. Indicators can be defined in Quantitative, Qualitative or Descriptive manner. Present global initiatives of Criteria and Indicators are ITTO, Pan-European Forest, Montreal, Tarapoto, Dry Zone Africa, Near East, ATO and Central American processes.

Roles of criteria and indicators can be identified in International and/or regional scale, National and sub-national level and in Forest management unit level such as Supporting international forest policy deliberations and negotiations on issues related to Sustainable Forest management; Providing a basis for collecting, categorizing, analyzing, reporting, and  representing information the state of forests and their management; Describing, monitoring and  reporting on the national forest trends and changes; Assessing progress towards Sustainable Forest Management and identify emerging threats and weaknesses; and A basis for developing forest certification systems, etc.

There are seven common themes of Criteria and Indicators as Enabling Conditions for Sustainable forest management; Forest Resource Security; Forest Ecosystem Health and Conditions; Flow of Forest Products; Biological Diversity; Soil and water and Economic, social and culture aspect.

In the Asian context, Bhutan Has formulated general principles to guide its forest management plans but has no yet developed detailed Criteria and Indicators. China, A member of both ITTO and the Montreal process, is actively developing national and sub-national-level Criteria and Indicators. In India, The Institute of Indian Forest Management lead in developing Criteria and Indicators and Launched the Bhopal-India process in 1998 Collaboration with other international organizations, such as ITTO and CIFOR. Mongolia uses “environmental reporting indicators”.

Sri Lanka has prepared Management Plans for each natural forests consistency with international Criteria and Indicator processes. By the Forestry Sector Master Plan 1995, the Main former objective of the Forest Management: Wood production was replaced by current management strategies tending towards sustainable forest management for multiple purposes while Incorporating input from local communities. The Forest Department monitors a traditional array of basic forestry indicators in Sri Lanka because proper criteria and indicators have not been prepared in the national level.

Mother Tree Selection and Nursery Practices

Presented by

Dinusha Prasadi

Seeds from straight and vigorous trees produce straight and vigorous trees and twisted or stunted trees may produce the same deformities. Therefore mother tree selection is very important in forest plantation establishment. The characteristics of a good mother tree should be: healthy and free of diseases and insects, nearly mature, good producers of the desired product and growing in the midst of a healthy stand of the same species.

There are many seed collection methods such as collecting from natural seed fall, shaking the tree, pruning off seed bearing branches, throwing a rope with weighted end to break off a seed bearing branch, climbing trees to collect seed or collecting seed from felled trees.

The seeds should be new, mature, healthy and well-dried and they are stored in air-tight containers in dry and cool place. Seeds should be protected from attacks of insects, fungi and birds. Seed storage condition is very important and it should be maintained in accordance with the seed requirements. The viability of many seeds is reduced by half within six months under ordinary room conditions. Thus, to improve the storability conditions of seeds, relative humidity and storage temperature should be maintained. The storage conditions of the seeds are varying with the type of species.

A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to usable size before planting in the field. It is the foundation for tree planting success for reforestation and agroforestry. There are many nursery practices. They are nursery establishment, site selection such as location and required nursery area, site preparation and drainage, preparation of seed beds, seed testing, seed pretreatment and growing media preparation, seed germination, transplanting, tending operation of transplanted seedlings and establishment of seedlings nurseries.

The seedling stock should be managed properly to get the good plantation by considering shading, watering, spacing, root pruning, shoot pruning, weeding, fertilising, pest and diseases, grading and culling, hardening-off and seedlings transport in to the plantation site.

Role of Conservation Perspectives in Commercial Forestry

Presented by

Samurdi Dias

Commercial forestry aims obtaining maximum production of timber, fuel wood and other forest products as a business. Even though it aims on maximum benefits, conservation is also a major requirement. Conservation is the “practice of planning and maintaining forest areas for the benefit and sustainability of future generations”. It is important because forests provide versatile ecosystem services such as hold water, prevent erosion, ensure quality of surface and groundwater, High carbon reserve, clean the air, protection from storm damages, as a buffer against desertification, produce food, offer recreational possibilities, improve mental well-being and protects biodiversity. Also conservation is important to preserve natural beauty, increase recreational value, provide additional income sources, increase total economic value, for social benefits, to get forest certificates.

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is one of the major forest certification bodyin the world. FSC certification ensures that products come from well managed forests that provide environmental, social and economic benefits. It provides benefits such as access to new markets and there are 10 FSC principles; Compliance with laws and FSC Principles, Tenure and use rights, Indigenous peoples’ rights, Community relations and worker's rights, Benefits from the forest, Environmental impact, Management, Monitoring and assessment, Maintenance of high conservation value, Plantation. Principle 3, 5, 6, 9 are related to conservation. Principle 9 tlaks about high conservation value forests, which can be defined as the forests possesses one or more of the following attributes. forest areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity values (e.g. endemism, endangered species) and / or large landscape-level forests, forest areas that contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems, forest areas that provide basic services of nature in critical situations (watershed protection, erosion control), forest areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities and/or critical to local communities' traditional cultural identity.

Conservation can be done by sustainable forest management. Seven thematic areas of sustainable forest management are extent of forest resources, biological diversity, forest health and vitality, productive functions and forest resources, protective functions of forest resources, socio-economic functions and legal, policy and institutional framework. 

Other practices are less-destructive methods of logging such as make a forest inventory and map prior to logging, use of less impact machinery in logging, reduce machine operating time, train loggers in proper logging techniques, exclude clear cutting. Establishing stream buffer zones and watershed protection areas, specially design roads for transport, use fertilizer and pesticides in less harmful manner, protect fire prone areas, combined plantations, protect wildlife and nature based tourism.

Conservation practices use in Sri Lanka; in up country of Sri Lanka there is no complete removal of vegetative cover in site preparation, arrange roads along contours, avoid uprooting plant species which help to prevent soil erosion (Eg: Mana), Pine and Eucalyptus tree felling is prohibited. In intermediate zone no tree felling in some of the plantations due to water quality issues.

Another method is nature based tourism this is currently practiced in government Khaya plantation in Sigiriya. Part of the plantation is giving as camping site for tourists. The land was leased to private owner under 30 year agreement and the owner pays rental for forest department. This has high demand from tourists due to high recreation value.

Practical issues of conservation in commercial forestry are high demand for timber, illicit felling, lacks of knowledge about conservation and its importance and less concern on conservation.

Recommendations to improve conservation are law implementation, offer income tax benefits to owners of plantations, offer insurance scheme for plantations, Carbon trading, introduce value addition methodology for plantations, develop ecotourism activities in plantations located in areas like Nuwara Eliya, Knuckles, Kanneliya as there is high aesthetic value and urge private forest plantations to do conservation activities.

Market Demand and Export of Timber

Presented by

Piyali Dias

World timber market is mainly based on primary timber products such as industrial round wood, sawn timber, wood based panels, paper, paper board and wood pulp. Moreover furniture and builder’s wood work and joinery also play an important role in the world timber market. United States, Canada and the Russian federation are the leading timber producers in the world who makes the largest contributions to the global timber production which is more than 3.4 billion m³ annually. However, more than half of this timber production is gone for wood fuel while the rest of the amount used for timber and paper products where the Europe and the United States act as the world leading timber consumers. According to the recent findings the most demanded timber product was softwood industrial round wood which was produced more than 400 million m³ of timber in the year 2013 in North America. However the highest softwood roundwood flow is going from New Zealand to China where China acts as the main importer of many timber products. Though the tropical timber market is much lower than temperate timer, industrial round woods are the most demanded item among those tropical timber products. The second most demanded item was softwood sawn wood which had a production as well as a consumption of about 96 million m³ in 2013 which was recorded from the European Union. However the wood base panels, paper, paper products and wood pulp have comparatively lower demand in global timber situation where Europe dominate the production of those products in year 2013. Among those products, particle boards have the highest production which is nearly equals to the 35.5% of the total wood based panel production. Moreover the most demanded secondary processed timber product was furniture which had recorded more than $124 million by value in the European Union flowed by the US, Italy and Germany. World furniture production is dominated by Asian countries where China appears as the highest furniture producer in the world. Sawn soft woods are the main exported product which leads the world timber exports in 2013. The Europe was the all-round exporter in each and every type of timber product including round wood, sawn wood, paper, paper board, wood pulp and wood based panels. European exports are increased by 5.6% in 2013 with 46 million m³ by volume of sawn softwood exports to the overseas markets mainly to China and North African countries. However, though the prices of timber products are slightly changing from country to country the highest market prices were recorded for paper and paper boards which is around $ 900 per metric ton while the least prices were recorded for industrial round wood as nearly $ 100 per cubic meter throughout the time period of last fifty years. In temperate region, Hem Lock, Pine, Cypress and Swedish spruce are the main traded timber species while Shorea, Dipterocarpus, Teak and Ceiba leading the tropical timber market. Though Sri Lanka is not playing any important role in the world timber situation by not exporting any timber product instead of re exporting treated, imported Kempus timber by STC while private sector is involving in exports up to some extent. But here they have to overcome some of the legal barriers such as Forest act, Import Export act and Customs act as well as some international standards which set up by world reputed certification systems such as Forest Stewardship Certification, when entering to the global export market.