Innovative Software for Forest Assessment Updated
How does sustainable
forest management move from fuzzy concept to reality? CIFOR has been helping to answer
that question through its pioneering work on ‘criteria and indicators’, or
C&I. The C&I Toolbox, launched in 1999, provided the first practical and
comprehensive set of materials to aid the development of C&I for forest assessment.
Demand for the kit has been strong. The release of a more user-friendly version of
its key software package, CIMAT II, in October 2000 will make the materials for C&I
development even more accessible. CIMAT is shorthand for the Criteria and Indicators
Modification and Adaptation Tool. It consists of a CD-ROM with a design
‘template’ and step-by-step instructions for creating sets of C&I tailored
to a particular forest. Within two months of its release, CIMAT II had already been
distributed to users in 26 countries.
C&I are benchmark policies, biophysical conditions and management practices
that provide a foundation for determining whether a given forest is likely to survive for
the long term under its current use. C&I make it possible to quantify changes over
time, ‘flagging’ actual or potential problems in need of attention. A decline in
water quality or decreased populations of targeted species, for example, may signal
serious ecological damage.
CIMAT was developed for a variety of users—certification bodies, government
officials, forest managers, donors, project managers, scientists, citizens and anyone else
interested in sustainable forest management. CIFOR’s Programme on Adaptive
Co-Management is using a simplified version of C&I in many of the methods being
developed to strengthen local participation in forest management.
English-and Indonesian-language versions of CIMAT II are available, and editions in
other languages are scheduled. An especially innovative feature of the software is its
ability to produce customised sets of C&I suitable for different kinds of forests. A
user can begin with any of several sets of C&I developed in recent years by various
organisations, including a ‘generic’ set from CIFOR, modify it in accordance
with local conditions and priorities.
Among those keenly interested in CIFOR’s C&I products, for example, is the
African Timber Organisation. The group’s member countries met in December to review
progress and map out further steps in the ATO’s efforts to produce a set of C&I
that can guide sustainable management of forests in Africa and possibly provide the basis
of a Pan-African certification system.
Ravi Prabhu and other CIFOR specialists in the development of C&I are also
working with other organisations and a number of national governments to develop and test
sets of C&I appropriate for a variety of forest types.
Seeking Wide
Acceptance of Tropical Plantations for Multiple Benefits
Large-scale plantations
have expanded rapidly in Southeast Asia over the past 15 years, as logging and
deforestation have depleted natural forests that were once the region’s sole source
of wood for industry. A number of challenges must be overcome, however, to make plantation
forests in the tropics viable and attractive to investors.
Some of the constraints stem from biophysical problems such as nutrient-poor soils
and the need to restore degraded land to productivity. CIFOR’s Plantations Programme
conducts a wide range of research to tackle technical problems such as these. Equally
important, it is addressing social and environmental factors associated with the expansion
of plantations, such as conflicts between companies and local communities over access to
land.
One component of research is seeking ways of making tropical plantations mutually
acceptable to various stakeholders—to companies, which need the steady supply of
wood; to local communities, whose residents want access to land and forest resources
needed for their livelihood; and to governments and conservation groups seeking an
alternative to the continuing loss of natural forests.
In Riau, Sumatra, CIFOR and Bogor Agricultural University are working with a large
plantation company, PT Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper, to explore management options that
would simultaneously meet timber production goals, provide local economic benefits and
protect local wildlife, which includes threatened populations of elephants and several
primate species.
Plantations in Indonesia are required to set aside 15 percent of their concessions
as conservation areas or corridors. Yet this allows for very limited conservation of
biodiversity. Adding to the problem, local people—displaced by the plantations and
denied company jobs—are cutting down trees in the conservation areas and corridors,
degrading wildlife habitats.
System dynamics modelling and other tools have suggested alternative ways for the
company to plan and manage the corridors to reduce illegal logging while allowing local
people to collect firewood, medicinal plants and other products for their livelihood. The
studies have also demonstrated that conservation efforts could be strengthened at low
marginal cost to the company.
In another stream of plantations research, CIFOR is continuing its work to develop
effective criteria and indicators for assessing the sustainability of plantations. These
efforts are modelled on the centre’s widely influential C&I for natural and
community-managed forests. In 2000, a three-year C&I development and testing project
at plantations in India and Indonesia ended, and the results of both case studies were
published by the end of the year.
The programme also made headway in 2000 in a project that aims to ultimately help
maximise the production of round wood by smallholders—known in the industry as
‘outgrower’ schemes. Because the competition for land in Southeast Asia and
other tropical regions is intense, there is growing interest in establishing smaller scale
plantations on marginal agricultural land. Through a series of case studies in Indonesia,
Malaysia and the Philippines, CIFOR and several research partners have been investigating
the kind of conditions and partnerships that are needed to increase support for this
approach. A report on the preliminary findings of the work was under preparation at the
year’s end.
Wanted: More
Holistic Research to Solve Natural Resource Problems
As society and the
scientific community increasingly recognise the need to balance improved agricultural
production and environmental conservation, there is growing demand for more integrated
approaches to natural resource management. CIFOR has been a leader in efforts to better
define integrated natural resource management (INRM) and to encourage the integration of
INRM approaches into the CGIAR’s research programmes.
In August 2000, representatives from most of the CGIAR centres and several partner
institutions met at the International Center for Living Aquatic Resource Management in
Penang, Malaysia, to consider ways of bringing the CGIAR’s research agenda more in
line with INRM approaches. The workshop followed one held in September 1999 in the
Netherlands. Both were organised by CIFOR Director General Jeffrey Sayer and sponsored by
the CGIAR’s Center Directors Committee.
The earlier workshop—the first system-wide CGIAR meeting on INRM—produced
a statement known as the ‘Bilderberg Consensus’. In it, the participants agreed
that the approach is highly suited to combining the CGIAR’s important crop
improvement efforts with broader research on agro-ecological systems.
INRM works much like modern ‘systems thinking’. It involves looking at
the interactions between all the natural resources within a given landscape—land,
water, biological and atmospheric resources—instead of trying to address a specific
problem isolated from its broader context. Moreover, INRM is more responsive to social and
cultural perspectives than traditional research approaches.
In Penang, the conferees made several important conceptual breakthroughs. Among
these, they developed a clearer definition of INRM research approaches and produced a
framework suggesting how the impacts of INRM-based research could be could be assessed.
The participants also examined several case studies from Asia, Africa and Latin America
that illustrated how several GCIAR centres are already employing INRM methods to
successfully address real-life problems.
Meanwhile, the scientists who manage the GGIAR’s genetic resources programmes
have been thinking about what integrated resource management approaches mean for the
nature of their work on germplasm improvement and conservation. In June 2000, several
dozen geneticists and natural resource specialists met at CIFOR to discuss the
implications. John Poulsen of CIFOR’s Biodiversity Conservation Programme headed the
planning process for the meeting, which was organised under the CGIAR’s System-wide
Genetic Resources Programme.
The genetics specialists are exploring the issue in part because the parties to the
Convention on Biological Diversity, at their fifth meeting, endorsed an ecosystem approach
to biodiversity conservation and sustainable use. To play a role in implementing the
global biodiversity agreement, the CGIAR centres will, therefore, have to pursue
integrated and ecosystem approaches to resource management.
At their meeting at CIFOR, the group made inroads in defining the interrelationship
between genetic resource issues and other areas of natural resource management.
Within the CGIAR, more and more people are endorsing the idea that integrated
management of genetic resources and of natural resources overall should be linked, with
INRM providing the context for integrated gene management. The CGIAR Task Force on
Integrated Natural Resources Management will meet in Cali, Colombia, at the International
Center for Tropical Agriculture in 2001 for related discussions on this issue.
Integrated Resource Management and Research: What Is It?
Representatives of the
CGIAR centres who met in Penang, Malaysia in August 2000 defined integrated natural
resource management as ‘a conscious process of incorporating multiple aspects of
natural resource use into a system of sustainable management to meet explicit production
goals of farmers and other users (e.g., profitability, risk reduction) as well as goals of
the wider community (sustainability)’.
A report published by CIFOR in October, INRM Research in the CGIAR, 2000, describes
the main developments at the meeting. Among the areas of focus, the participants
identified the following features of INRM-based research:
• Follows systems and process-oriented (instead of
empirical) methods
• Works at multiple scales and involves multiple
stakeholders
• Addresses the inevitable tradeoffs of different resource
management options
• Employs new tools and methodologies for implementation and
assessment
• Is amenable to scaling up
• Leads to measurable impacts
FLORES: Out of the Lab and into the Field
New tools and
techniques are needed to aid the complex decision making and planning processes that are
inherent in more integrated approaches to natural resource management. In 2000,
CIFOR’s development of one such tool, a computer-based modelling system known as
FLORES, moved from the research laboratory to the field.
FLORES, for Forest Land Oriented Resource Envisioning System, enables users to
simulate the scenarios that are likely to occur as a result of different options for
managing natural resources. As part of field studies in Zimbabwe, researchers were
introduced to the system, which can be modified in accordance with local conditions and
priorities. They practiced applying it to real-life natural resource problems. Several
participants constructed similar models for use in their own work. One researcher, for
example, linked it with efforts by the World Wide Fund for Nature to build a model of
fuelwood resources and alternative sources of domestic energy.
The field work provided an opportunity to test a new component of FLORES that is
designed to aid adoption of the tool by people with little or no experience in modelling.
Called the FLORES Adaptation and Calibration, or FLAC, it is a support package that
instructs users in the concepts behind FLORES, which is based on systems thinking, and how
to customise it for individual situations and requirements.
These advances followed a number of modifications made by the design team in 2000.
Most of the computer-based work on FLORES is being done at the University of Edinburgh by
Mandy Haggith and Jasper Taylor. Laxman Joshi of the International Centre for Research in
Agroforestry is heading field- and computer-based testing, while a coalition of research
and development organisations is also aiding the development of FLORES. The UK’s
Department for International Development has been a key funder of the work.
Initially, the design team had sought to build the ‘best representation’
of a decision-making tool—rooted in a much more comprehensive picture of
relationships between people and the landscape around them. The testing indicated,
however, that resource managers favoured a more pragmatic and less detailed approach that
enabled them to focus more directly on critical aspects of a particular resource problem.
Based on that and other findings,
Robert Muetzelfeldt and his colleagues adapted the Simile modelling package on which
FLORES is based and improved the user interface.
FLORES-type models are also being developed in other locations, including Cameroon,
Central America and Bulungan Research Forest in Indonesia. The team in Zimbabwe has been
working with villagers and resource managers in the Mafunagautsi area to make sure the
content of the model reflects the thinking of local people.
|
