Implementing Participatory Decision Making in Forest Planning

Abstract

Forest policy decisions are often a source of debate, conflict, and tension in many countries. The debate over forest land-use decisions often hinges on disagreements about societal values related to forest resource use. Disagreements on social value positions are fought out repeatedly at local, regional, national, and international levels at an enormous social cost. Forest policy problems have some inherent characteristics that make them more difficult to deal with. On the one hand, forest policy decisions involve uncertainty, long time scales, and complex natural systems and processes. On the other hand, such decisions encompass social, political, and cultural systems that are evolving in response to forces such as globalization. Until recently, forest policy was heavily influenced by the scientific community and various economic models of optimal resource use. However, growing environmental awareness and acceptance of participatory democracy models in policy formulation have forced the public authorities to introduce new participatory mechanisms to manage forest resources. Most often, the efforts to include the public in policy formulation can be described using the lower rungs of Arnstein's public participation typology. This paper presents an approach that incorporates stakeholder preferences into forest land-use policy using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). An illustrative case of regional forest-policy formulation in Australia is used to demonstrate the approach. It is contended that applying the AHP in the policy process could considerably enhance the transparency of participatory process and public acceptance of policy decisions.

Governing Competing Demands for Forest Resources in Sweden

“…When aggregation is used, deliberations among stakeholders are to some extent replaced by a mathematical method for computing a common preference. In most studies combining MCDA and participatory forest planning, the overall results have been calculated through aggregation in this sense of the word [96][97][98][99]. However, aggregation of preferences in numerical form may feel mechanistic to stakeholders.…”

A critical review of multi-criteria decision making in protected areas

“…Ananda (2007) and Ananda and Herath (2008) incorporate stakeholders' preferences to define land use in Finnish forests using AHP and MAVT. Hiltunen et al (2009) employ interactive software that uses heuristics models (MESTA) to support decision-making on sustainable forest management in Finland.…”

“…These methods provide a structured framework of discussion that may be helpful in resolving conflicts and optimizing resources. Moreover, they bring transparency to the processes of participation in the formulation of public policy for natural resource management (Ananda, 2007) and are an interesting source of information for managers.…”

Sustainable Forest Management in a Mediterranean region: Social preferences

“…Another paper shows that Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) can be a tool to formalize public participation in decision making with the same problem as an illustrative example, but they used hypothetical data and thus the results do not have any empirical validity (Ananda and Herath, 2003b). Later, Ananda (2007) and Ananda and Herath (2008) presented a real AHP application for a previous case study involving a greater number of stakeholders. Kazana et al (2003) used a multiple criteria approach to support decisions in forest management at a tactical level in a National Forest Park in Scotland.…”