Developing an objectives hierarchy for multicriteria decisions on land use options, with a case study of biodiversity conservation and forestry production from Papua, Indonesia

Abstract

A framework was developed for the construction of an objectives hierarchy for multicriteria decisions in land use planning. The process began through identification of fundamental objectives; these were iteratively decomposed into a hierarchy of subobjectives until a level was reached at which subobjectives had measurable attributes. Values were derived for attributes through a variety of methods and weights assigned to objectives through preference elicitation.The framework assumed that the objectives could be incorporated into a linear value function; this required attributes to satisfy preference and difference independence conditions. Strategies were developed to address typical features that distinguish land use decisions from many other multicriteria decisions. The methodology was illustrated with a case study of land use planning in a forestry concession in the Merauke region of Papua Province, Indonesia. The problem involved severe hard constraints; the analysis showed how these can be accommodated within the framework. Results integrated interests and preferences of a diverse set of stakeholders (resident peoples, developers, and conservation professionals) and were intended for implementation. This methodology is extendible to other land use problems.

Impact of Habitat Loss and Mining on the Distribution of Endemic Species of Amphibians and Reptiles in Mexico

“…Protected areas are keystone initiatives to conserve biodiversity worldwide [61,62]. Thus, their adequate management, to ensure their long-term viability and to support the strategic development of conservation area networks, is essential [63,64]. Worldwide, these areas have helped to protect more than 2000 million ha [65] and in Mexico they protect around 25 million ha, representing more than 12% of the Mexican territory [66].…”

Estate Crops More Attractive than Community Forests in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

“…We assert that governance processes in the form of a landscape approach must be applied to enable this process because it provides a framework and guidance on good practice for landscape processes. Multi-criteria assessments can provide tools for achieving spatially optimal solutions that empower adat management through a landscape approach process [62,63]. Landscape scale governance learning processes could adhere to new measurement principles that ensure societal beneficial landscape outcomes [28].…”

Restoration planning to guide Aichi targets in a megadiverse country

“…Eight criteria, represented by 10 indicators (Table & Supporting Information) and accounting for statistical independence of indicators and mutual independence of preferences, were selected through a discussion of whether the preference scores on one criterion could be assigned independently without knowing the preference scores on other criteria (Dyer ; Sarkar et al. ) (Table & Supporting Information). We tested the relationships among indicators with Spearman rank correlation analyses in R version 3.1.3 (R Core Team 2015; Supporting Information).…”