Minimum requirements for sustainable use of forests in national forest programmes. Elements and principles developed for a study of Swiss forest policy

Abstract

Both the United Nations Conference on Economic Development in 1992 and the European Union have called for the creation of national forest programmes (NFPs) as a means of ensuring the sustainable development of forests. In recent years, international organizations have also discussed and defined several elements that such NFPs should incorporate. Different concepts prevail, however, and policy experts have not yet reached a uniform and coherent understanding of the concept. In this paper, we develop minimum requirements for a Swiss NFP on the basis of a discussion and comparison of different definitions of NFPs and national environmental plans. We argue that a range of process, content and objective-oriented elements should be included. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment

Development of the Concept and Implementation of National Forest Programs with Reference to Croatia

“…Aside from the reason of increasing the rationality of management of forests resources, other reason could be expansion of influence of international organizations onto the national forest policy domain, which should be viewed in the context of failure to produce so far an internationally binding document on forests. And yet another reason could be the inclusion of interests of environmentalists groups onto the national forest policy formulation [13].…”

“…Same commitment was further on developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF), The Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF), the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF; all succeeding one another) and the Commission for Sustainable Development's (CSD) first working group for forests. The basic message was that NFPs should be a national framework for the implementation of forest-related commitments stemming out of UNCED [13]. The most comprehensive product of these efforts is the 270 IPF/IFF Proposals for action [27] that were produced between the years 1995 and 2000.…”

“…The reduction of conflict among coalitions by a national "policy broker" (mediators of policy process who channel information among stakeholders and directly influence the output, do not have strong policy beliefs or abandon their preferences; [73]) is also not a dominant strategy, since scientific and state administration organizations can also be seen as a parts of the advocacy coalitions. A possible strategy would be mediation through an international policy broker, which is a viable option -especially since the NFPs are a potential subsidy target of the EU [13]. The assistance of external donors could also facilitate the harmonization of the NFP with respective inter-national legislation both in its outcomes and in the process itself (i.e.…”