Regulating forestry — Experience with compliance and enforcement over the 25years of Tasmania's forest practices system

Abstract

Tasmania's forest practices system, one of the most prescriptive globally and the most comprehensive in Australia, has evolved over the last 25 years in response to public demands for high standards of governance, accountability and transparency of forest regulation on both public and private lands. The system was developed in the context of strong contestation, in Tasmanian and Australian civil society and politics, about appropriate forest policies and practices in Tasmania. The system is governed by a Forest Practices Act, which provides for a co-regulatory approach administered by an independent statutory body, the Forest Practices Authority. All forest operations must be undertaken in accordance with a certified forest practices plan, prepared and certified by accredited Forest Practices Officers employed by forest managers. These co-regulatory components of the system are supported by independent monitoring and enforcement by the Forest Practices Authority. This paper describes the genesis and evolution of the Tasmanian forest practices system, and summarises the range of measures employed to foster high levels of compliance, with an emphasis on training and education, self-monitoring and reporting by the industry, independent monitoring by the Forest Practices Authority, and corrective actions, backed by enforcement provisions. Compliance monitoring over 27 years demonstrates rapid improvement in the decade following establishment of the system, with consistently high levels of achievement subsequently. However, larger corporate forest managers consistently achieve higher rates of compliance than do small-scale forest owners, and redressing this imbalance has been a recurrent theme in Tasmania's forest practices system. Experience of implementation of Tasmania's forest practices system suggests that well-designed and implemented co-regulatory approaches, with high levels of transparency, can be effective in delivery of good technical standards of forest practices and high levels of compliance. However, these will not in themselves mitigate public concern about forest management practices unless the policies governing those practices have broad support in civil society.

Forest Offence Types, Trends and Lapses: Case Study of the Nkawie Forest District of Ghana from 2005-2010

“…According to the same author, they respond to the perceived injustice by 'a culture of conspiracy' and by violating forest laws, 'as either an act of defiance or a desperate attempt at achieving subsistence' [17:16]. As indicated in the literature, policy implementation is always challenged because it is not just a mechanical translation of stated goals into activities, but rather influenced and mediated by multi-stakeholder perceptions and attitudes [18].Lessons could be drawn from Tasmania's Forest Practices Act, which uses a co-regulatory approach complemented by training and education, self-monitoring and reporting with enforcement powers being the last resortto improve compliance and enforcement in the sector [8]. The documented forest offences revealed eight forest offence types with prevalent cases being chainsaw milling, illegal logging and illegal farming.…”

“…Furthermore, weak forest law enforcement is attributed to (i) the remoteness of forested areas, (ii) the absence of a road network, or a deficient road network, which impedes movement, and (iii) a closed canopy that hinders direct observations [7]. Nevertheless, Tasmania's forest practice systems in their Forest Practices Act has recorded higher compliance and enforcement through well-designed and implemented co-regulatory approaches with emphasis also on training and education and with enforcement powers like penalties as last resort [8]. In 2008, when Ghana committed itself to the Non-Legally Binding Instrument on All Types of Forests (NLBI), one of the four key policy objectives stakeholders recommended for urgent policy consideration in order to start realizing sustainable forest management was strengthening law enforcement.…”

Regulatory Tools, Effective Markets, and Private Sector Participation in the Forestry and Wood Products Processing Sectors

“…Such challenges are well known and documented in the forestry sector, including in both developed and developing countries. For instance, in the Australian state of Tasmania, research shows that only 15 percent of noncompliance cases were intentional; the rest were due to deficient management systems, lack of knowledge about regulations, and human errors (Wilkinson et al 2014).…”

A proposed strategy for maintaining mature forest habitat in Tasmania's wood production forests

“…Implementation of the MHMA and updating of the underlying MHA map could be monitored via established procedures (Wilkinson et al . ; FPA ; Koch et al . ).…”

“…This is particularly important for the MHMA given the degree of uncertainty around whether the management proposed is effective. Implementation of the MHMA and updating of the underlying MHA map could be monitored via established procedures (Wilkinson et al 2014;FPA 2016;Koch et al 2018). The effectiveness of the MHMA in meeting its objective could be assessed through monitoring the level and distribution of mature forest over time and projects on species with varying life histories and ecological characteristics.…”