The Challenge of Diffusion in Forest Plans: A Methodological Proposal and Case Study

Public participation has become an important driver in increasing public acceptance of policy decisions, especially in the forestry sector, where conflicting interests among the actors are frequent. Stakeholder Analysis, complemented by Social Network Analysis techniques, was used to support the participatory process and to understand the complex relationships and the strong interactions among actors. This study identifies the forestry training sector stakeholders in the Western Italian Alps and describes their characteristics and priorities, in relation to training activities on entrepreneurial topics for forestry loggers. The hierarchy among actors has been identified, highlighting their respective roles and influence in decision-making processes. A lack of mutual communication among different and well-separated categories of actors has been identified, while good connections between stakeholders, operating in different territories, despite the presence of administrative and logistical barriers, have been observed. Training is a topic involving actors with different roles and interests. Nevertheless, all actors consider training about how to improve yields of forest operations and how to assess investments, particularly in innovative machinery, to be crucially important and conducive to a better comprehension of the wood supply chain and the enhancement of the raw material.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Implementing Participatory Processes in Forestry Training Using Social Network Analysis Techniques

Blanc

Lingua

Bioglio

et al. 2018

“…Such a situation may entail two main consequences: The loss of valuable information during the elaboration of the plan and the origination of possible conflicts during the implementation stage [42]. Strictly connected to the issue of inclusiveness is the need for a large and effective representation of different views and interests in the planning process [58,59]. Indeed, a fair and balanced representation is difficult to attain.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualitative Assessment of Forest Ecosystem Services: The Stakeholders’ Point of View in Support of Landscape Planning

Meo¹,

Cantiani

Ferretti

et al. 2018

In the last decades, the ecosystem services (ES) concept has become one of the main challenges of study and discussion in the scientific community. The quantitative and qualitative assessment of ES is as a tool to address forest management planning on a local scale. Forest landscape management planning is the most suitable level for integrating social needs and demands in the enhancement of different forest ES. Some regions in Italy have developed forest landscape management plans taking into account the social preferences for the different ES. In this paper, we refer to five case studies in three pilot areas in Italy. A survey collected and analyzed the opinions and preferences, from 362 stakeholders, for ten ES included in three categories (provisioning, regulating and cultural services). The main aim of this study is to understand what type of variables (study area, the groups of interest and socio-demographic characteristics of respondents) most influence stakeholder preferences for ES. The results show that for the sample of stakeholders involved in the survey, the most important ES category is regulating services followed by cultural services. In addition, the results show that the group of stakeholders’ interest is the most important variable influencing their preferences for ES.

“…The graphical method is easy to use and implement, especially in comparison to other approaches serving for the determination of multiple targets in multidimensional spaces [47,78]. The visualization of results increases efficiency and transparency in multi-stakeholder decision-making [28,39,41,79,80]. Still, the assistance of experienced experts in MCDM is inevitable during the possible interactive process.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing the Tending of Forest Stands with Interactive Decision Maps to Balance the Financial Incomes and Ecological Risks according to Owner Demands: Case Study in Rakovník, the Czech Republic

Sedmák

Tuček

Levická

et al. 2020

Sustainability and the optimal provision of the various ecosystem services is an essential task in forest management. In this study, we deal with the optimization of forest tending to achieve the maximal long-term provision of financial incomes from wood at a minimal level of ecological risks for selected small ownership unit. The methods of interactive decision maps and reasonable goals (IDM/RGM) were connected with a modern forest growth simulator to investigate the four-dimensional optimization space and to produce the complete set of Pareto optimal solutions. The four different types of forest owners as potential decision-makers were simulated, and precise management goals in multidimensional target space were defined. Then, the optimal tending system for each forest owner in three stands, differing by the degree of the naturalness of the species composition, was detected. The multi-criteria analysis suggests that predominantly economically oriented forest management still prevails in the Czech and Slovak Republics, which can be as a source of conflicts among forest owners and other stakeholders. The existence of trade-offs between biodiversity, ecological stability and wood production and different owners’ demands must be taken into account. The possibility of balancing the management risks and wood provision according to the owner’s and other stakeholders’ demands with the aid of the easy-to-apply IDM/RGM methods (and the careful assistance of a specialist experienced in multi-criteria optimization) was introduced. At the same time, the application of real integrative management in small forest areas was demonstrated in practice. After the change of paradigm in forest management, the applied methods should prevent increasing conflicts among owners and society in former socialist countries, which have undergone a fundamental transformation in terms of forest ownership in recent decades.