Economic Development Prospects of Forest‐Dependent Communities: Analyzing Trade‐offs Using a Compromise‐Fuzzy Programming Framework

Abstract

Many aboriginal communities look to forest resources for short-and long-term employment, adequate timber for mills, an even flow of wood fiber for community stability, and financial returns for economic diversification. We address these conflicting objectives using multiple-objective programming. We show how compromise programming can be used to set bounds on fuzzy membership functions, and illustrate the difference between crisp and fuzzy weighting of objectives. Economic development outcomes obtained using compromise and fuzzy programming greatly improve upon those associated with the even-flow of timber rule of thumb. Yet, timber extraction is an inadequate driver of economic development in rural communities.

Striving for Sustainability and Resilience in the Face of Unprecedented Change: The Case of the Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak in British Columbia

“…That is, sustainability means there should be no prolonged gaps in the provision of forest goods and services; one cannot over-exploit the resource in the hope that it will recover "eventually" and still claim the mantle of sustainability. The goal of achieving a non-declining and evenly flowing timber supply is intended to ensure employment and community stability, as well as environmental integrity [11], although declining timber supplies are frequently accepted during the period of converting any high-volume old-growth forest to faster growing plantations [12]. A commitment to an even flow of values is implied, if not explicitly stated, in the 5th criterion (on multiple benefits to society) for sustainable forest management originally endorsed by the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers in 1995, namely that "forests must continue to provide the flow of wood products, commercial and nonmarket goods and services, and environmental and option values over the long term" [13].…”

Measuring technical efficiency of dairy farms with imprecise data: a fuzzy data envelopment analysis approach

“…() who proposed a fuzzy contingent valuation approach to measure uncertain preferences for nonmarket goods. Duval and Featherstone () compared compromise programming and fuzzy programming to a traditional mean–variance approach, and Krcmar and Van Kooten () developed a compromise‐fuzzy programming framework to analyse trade‐offs of economic development prospects of forest dependent aboriginal communities. The contribution of this paper is to allow an agricultural economist to expediently reach an introductory understanding of fuzzy data envelopment analysis.…”

Integrated Scenario Planning and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Framework with Application to Forest Planning

“…Minimizing a distance between the current criteria values and the target values is a basis for compromise programming and similar MCDA techniques (Romero et al, 1987). Compromise programming has been used for forest management with timber, carbon, biodiversity and socioeconomic objectives (Krcmar et al, 2005;Krcmar & van Kooten, 2008), for harvest scheduling and paper industry problems (Diaz-Balteiro et al, 2009;Diaz-Balteiro et al, 2011).…”

“…Forest management planning is a complex decision-making challenge that needs to account for long time horizons, uncertain biophysical and socioeconomic parameters, and multiple stakeholders' preferences with often conflicting objectives (Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], 2002;Karjalainen et al, 2003;Leslie, 2009;Khadka et al, 2013). Such complex problems have been typically examined using different approaches-from public consultation, scenario planning, simulation and optimization to multiple-criteria decision analysis (Bolte, et al, 2006;Krcmar & van Kooten, 2008;Diaz-Balteiro & Romero, 2008). In supporting the decision-making process, qualitative approaches used in public consultations are just as important as the quantitative methods often applied by forestry professionals (Stirling, 2006;Wollenberg et al, 2000).…”