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This
issue of the International Program News focuses on how
criteria and indicators of forest sustainability are
being used in the United States at national, State,
and local scales. Until the early 1990's, there was
little agreement worldwide on how to characterize or
assess sustainability. Building on the Rio Forest Principles
developed at the Earth Summit in 1992, a number of countries
began to develop criteria and indicators to facilitate
the dialog on forest sustainability.
Common
to each of these various efforts are the three fundamental
elements of social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
As a member of the Montreal Process, the United States
has been actively engaged in developing national level
criteria and indicators. The Montreal
Process began in 1994 in Montreal, Canada, and resulted
in the signing of the Santiago Declaration in 1995,
which confirmed the commitment of participating countries
to use the Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators
in decisionmaking to assess the sustainability of their
nations' forests.
Twelve countries are members of the Montreal Process
Working Group: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chili,
China, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea,
the Russian Federation, the United States, and Uruguay.
These 12 countries contain over 90 percent of the world's
temperate and boreal forests. In concert with national
level work on criteria and indicators, CIFOR began to
examine a number of criteria and indicators that could
be used at the field management unit level, particularly
for tropical forests. The Boise test adapted the CIFOR
criteria and indicators for use in temperate and boreal
forests. In this newsletter, the LUCID article describes
efforts to refine further these field management unit
level criteria and indicators and to link them with
Montreal Process implementation efforts at the national
level.
This
issue contains articles describing national and State
efforts by the USDA Forest Service and the State of
Oregon to implement the Montreal Process Criteria and
Indicators, as well as the USDA Forest Service's efforts
to establish criteria and indicators for sustainable
management of rangelands and minerals.
A
variety of groups across the United States are interested
in our Nation's forests. To reach any kind of basic
agreement on how to monitor sustainability across our
diverse ownership, as well as geographic and political
boundaries, we must have broad representation in the
dialog. The Sustainability Roundtable, described in
the accompanying article, provides a forum at the national
level for interested forest stakeholders, including
State foresters, environmental groups, Federal agencies,
private forest owners, forest products companies, State
and local elected officials, tribal organizations, professional
foresters, labor organizations, and academic institutions,
to implement the Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators.
Despite
the divergence of perspectives on many issues, there
remains a shared commitment to our Nation's forests
and to creating a common framework for planning and
decisionmaking. The criteria and indicators provide
an opportunity for the forestry community to show leadership
in applying this practical tool and to realize the compelling
goal of sustainable forest management.
Phil Janik is Chief Operating Officer at the USDA
Forest Service, Washington, DC.
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