Forest communities: New frameworks for assessing sustainability

Abstract

k o~a n h i s~In both Canada and the United States, there has been a growAu Canada, c o m e aux ~t a t s -~n i s il y a un intCrEt grandissant ing interest in the sustainability of forests and forest comrnunipour assurer la durabiitC des foSts et des communautCs forestikres. ties. Policy makers and scientists have attempted to understand Les scientifiques et les gestionnaires des for& tentent de comhow forest management practices can enhance or harm the future prendre les effets de la gestion et de I'amCnagement des fo&s sur of such communities. Although many studies have historically used l'avenir de ces communautCs. Traditionnellement, les rechercheconomic indicators as measures of community stability, more es sur les communautCs forestikres adoptaient une perspective recently researchers have demonstrated that the relationship Cconomique. Toutefois, plusieurs ktudes ont dkmontn5 que la relabetween communities and forests goes far beyond simple economic tion entre une communaut6 et la forst va bien au-delh de la dependency. Thus, recent frameworks for assessing forest comdCpendance Cconomique. Aussi, des cadres thkoriques qui inclumunities have also addressed the need for broader social and instient les dimensions sociales et institutionnelles des communautCs tutional components. In this article, we briefly review three of these sont apparus rkcemment dans la 1ittCratue forestikre. Cet article recent concepts -community capacity, community well-being prCsente brikvement trois de ces concepts: la capacitC des comand community resiliency -and examine what each of these terms munautCs, le bien-&tre des communautCs, et la rksilience des has to contribute to the assessment of forest communities.communautCs. Nous examinerons la contribution potentielle de ces concepts h 1'6tude des communautCs forestikres.

Indicators of forest-dependent community sustainability: The evolution of research

“…While these vary somewhat, efforts to measure these constructs involve combinations of process and profile indicators, and they involve quantitative and qualitative assessment tools. We describe each in brief detail below, for a more thorough review of these concepts see Nadeau et al (1999) or refer to the original broad-scale ecosystem assessment work that led to the merger of these concepts with the subject of resource-dependent communities (Kusel 1996, Quigley et al 1996, Harris et al 1998.…”

“…The combination of process and profile indicators is increasingly used to create indexes or aggregate pictures of rural communities that focus on community capacity, community well-being, and community resilience (Nadeau et al 1999). These constructs reveal important insights into the sustainability of rural communities.…”

Toward a Pluralistic Civic Science?: Assessing Community Forestry

“…Community forestry is Pluralistic Civic Science and Community Forestry 595 one example, defined here as ''an integrative enterprise that seeks to re-order relations between forest-dependent people and communities; between them and the forests they depend on, in a manner that advances equity (especially within contexts of historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities) and promotes investment in both natural and community capital'' (Baker and Kusel 2003, 8). Community forestry promotes local involvement in forest decisions and management (including resource access, harvest decisions, forest restoration) for direct benefit of the whole community (Brendler and Carey 1998;Duinker 1994;Nadeau et al 1999). According to Mark Baker and Jonathan Kusel, community forestry seeks to ''conserve or restore forest ecosystems while improving the well-being of the communities that depend on them'' (Baker and Kusel 2003, 8).…”

Critical Analysis of the Relationship between Local Ownership and Community Resiliency*

“…Overlapping with this term is the notion of community capacity, or the ''the collective ability of a group to combine various forms of capital within institutional and relational contexts to produce desired results or outcomes,'' (Beckley et al 2001:7), and community wellbeing, or the economic, social, cultural and political assets a community has to meet its needs (Kusel and Fortmann 1991). Community resiliency has been associated with concepts such as community capacity and community well-being because they each address a community's ability to adapt to change (Nadeau, Shindler, and Kakoyannis 1999).…”