Original:

Concerned stakeholders have an acknowledged right and means to co-manage forests equitably.

Reworded:

Concerned stakeholders have a right to participate in open and meaningful public participation processes in order to influence management.

Justify your selection of the Criterion in Box A. Please ensure you discuss its relationship to theory:

Forest management units in North American include: publicly owned common pool resources; publicly owned trust lands; and private forest lands. Each type of ownership has associated groups of stakeholders and the ability to use a range of mechanisms for allowing stakeholders to participate in management planning, decision making and operations. For public forests, common pool resource lands, the expectations and thresholds for public involvement are more substantial. The co-management concept originally included in the CIFOR-BAG 2 definition implies one specific type of participation in management. While co-management is a form of management utilized in some jurisdictions in North America (particularly Aboriginal communities) it is only one of the forms of management. Consequently this criteria was revised such that this concept could be included but not necessarily required.

Public participation mechanisms are critical to the concept of sustainability for the following reasons: i) local people/stakeholders have valuable local or traditional knowledge about the forest resource that would otherwise be unavailable to managers; ii) forest stakeholders have the potential for both positive and negative effects on local forests, and attention to their interests enhances the probability that the positive effects will prevail; iii) democracies are founded on the notion of participation in governance. In Canada and the U.S., most resource management agencies have a mandate for public participation. In the U.S., a mandate for public participation has been included in legislation such as: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act, and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (Force and Williams, 1989).

Context by Country

In North American, the philosophical and legislative approaches to public participation vary significantly by country. In Canada, mechanisms of public participation that devolve decision-making power or advice to multi-stakeholder groups are the norm. These shared decision-making (SDM) forums have been used for wide ranging land use planning from provincial or national round tables on the environment and the economy to local watershed planning initiatives. As an illustration, in British Columbia, the provincial land and resource management (LRMP) processes have endorsed the concept of shared decision-making and are seeking consensus from multi-stakeholder groups in advisory (e.g., non-binding) decision making. Provincial policy and legislation supports the mandate for, and concepts of: shared decision-making, multi-stakeholder, consensus-oriented processes. The principles of full, open, fair and transparent decision-making are inherent in these processes. The Model Forest program, a federally funded program, consists of joint decision-making groups that work together to make decisions on the model forest land that includes provincial lands, federal lands (including national parks), First Nation’s lands, freehold lands, industrial lands and other ownerships.

In the United States as in Canada, resource management agencies are required to use some form of public participation. For the U.S. Forest Service such requirement is specified in the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The U.S. Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) of 1972 (and the amendments by the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995) has imposed specific limits to the type or nature of participation that the a federal agency can be involved in. Fear about specialized access by pre-selected groups to decision making processes prompted FACA to limit public involvement to include two-way information sharing only. In contrast to the Canadian scenario, FACA limits public participation such that decision-makers cannot:

• Share decision-making authority;
• Convene a group or a mailing that includes non-government or non-tribal individuals to reach a consensus or make decisions;
• Select members of a group which will give advice;
• Imply that the recommendations will be adopted;
• Operate groups not chartered as advisory boards and involve non-government or non-tribal members where these groups are operating to jointly make binding decisions on Federal lands with taxpayer resources;
• Participate as a member of groups which are making decisions that transcend but include issues under Federal jurisdiction; or
• Participate regularly in co-management collaborative decision-making efforts involving non-Federal entities (USFS, 1998)

While the intent of avoiding backdoor access and undue influence by individual parties on the decision-making process was admirable, we feel that the constraints imposed by FACA on public involvement are not in keeping with the intent of this criteria nor the related principle.

In Mexico, only four percent of the forested land base is owned by the federal or state governments with the overwhelming majority (60%) owned by Ejido’s or communal ownerships. Ejido managers are required to file forest management plans with the federal government but while a public involvement mechanism is not required it is suggested as a strategy that could be employed. Public involvement types and levels varies across the country from strategies that are beginning to resemble US/Canadian public involvement mechanisms to mechanisms more similar to CIFOR C&I tests from other countries.

As a result of the differences between the cultural contexts for public involvement between the US, Canada and Mexico, the development of indicators that are robust and sensitive enough to truly identify public participation mechanisms that lead to sustainability and yet sensitive to these contexts is difficult. The indicators proposed for this criteria attempt to bridge this challenging situation. However, it may be appropriate for these countries to develop more specific indicators, or verifiers, in keeping with the intent of these indicators, that are more suited to these different contexts.

Definitions

Concerned Stakeholders - Concerned stakeholders include those individuals that have some interest in issues related to forest management. CIFOR narrows the definitions of these stakeholders through the concept of forest actors meant to include typically local populations and communities. For common pool resource forests the concept of stakeholders is necessarily broader. Substantial debate exists over "which" stakeholders should be counted and whether the proximity of stakeholders to the forest management area (e.g., local stakeholders) suggests they should be counted more.

Open and Meaningful - Open and meaningful are defined in the public participation literature as processes in which: i) there are mechanisms in place to accept the participation of all those interested in the concept; ii) the intent, procedures and methods by which the results of the participation process is known by participants; iii) the level of involvement in decision making is known by participants. While in non-democratic nations, merely providing a mechanism for public participation would be a substantial move towards sustainability, in participatory democracies the expectations of public participation are much higher. Arnstein (1967) along with other researchers in the public participation literature have defined hierarchies of public participation to categorize the extent to which the participation mechanism is open, meaningful and involves the stakeholder in some level of the decision making process.

For the reasons stated above, this criterion was reworded to focus more closely on the public participation processes instead of specifically on the management practice of co-management. The words ‘open and meaningful’ were added to clarify the concept ‘equitably’ that was included in the original criterion wording. ‘Open’ and ‘Meaningful’ are concepts of due process referred to frequently in the public participation literature.

Arnstein, S.R. 1969. A Ladder of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners. Vol. 35:216-224.

CIFOR Methods Testing Team. (1988). Basic Assessment Guide for Human Well-being. Draft,1998. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.

Colfer, C.J.P., Wadley, R.L., Hartwell, E. and R. Prabhu. (1997). Intergenerational Access to Resources: Developing Criteria and Indicators. Working Paper No. 18, CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.

Colfer, C.J.P., and R. Wadley. 1996. Assessing "Participation" in Forest Management: Workable methods and Unworkable Assumptions. Working Paper No. 12, CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.

Force, J.E., and K. L. Williams. 1989. A Profile of National Forest Planning Participants. Journal of Forestry. Vol. 87(1).

USFS. 1998. Public Involvement and FACA. Briefing note on the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 provided by Jeff Foss, Boise National Forest NEPA Coordinator.

Please name (give the reference of) the Criterion that overlap (come closest) to the Criterion that has been selected for evaluation:

CIFOR: 1.0 3.2 3.3 3.4

CIFOR – BAG: -

CCFM: 6.1 6.2

Idaho: -

GFE: -

Ecological /

Biophysical: -

Social: -

Economic: -

Forest Mngt: -

Yield & harvest: -

Does not fit: -

This criteria will provide information on public participation and interest or involvement in management planning or implementation that will be useful for criteria CIFOR 1.0, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4. As aboriginal involvement in forest management planning has been separated into its’ own criteria information and indicators from this criterion will be useful for CCFM 6.1/6.2.

Final version of Criterion, state only if different to definition in Box A: