Principle – Society accepts responsibility for sustainability.

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

Indicator – Original Wording: Management staff recognize the legitimate interests and rights of other stakeholders. Final Wording: Management staff and stakeholders should recognize and respect the interests and rights of each other.

This indicator was revised from CIFOR-BAG 2.2.4 to include concepts from CIFOR-BAG 2.1.3 (that contributions of all stakeholders are mutually respected and valued), CIFOR-BAG 2.1 (Effective mechanisms exist for two-way communications related to forest management among stakeholders), and CIFOR-BAG 1.1.3 and 2.3.1 (Level of conflict is acceptable to stakeholders and means of conflict resolution function without violence). The following assessment is based on this final wording.

Box B: Definition:

This indicator is designed to show the degree to which stakeholders with diverse perspectives and interests are able to maintain an on-going relationship and negotiations with management staff based on respect and necessarily valuing diverse contributions and perspectives.

Box D: Applicability to Different Landowners:

This indicator will generally be applicable to all landowners, however, different landowners will have different definitions of stakeholders or interests to which they must be responsive and different mechanisms for dialogue. Federal land managers will have the broadest definition of stakeholders (the National public) while private industrial forest lands may use stockholders as generally synonymous with stakeholder.

Box E: Overlap:

CIFOR – BAG: 2.1 2.1.3

Notes: Evaluating at the forest management unit level, the study area scale, is the most appropriate as stakeholder groups are most concerned about addressing issues at the level of the forest management unit or have most opportunities to participate at this scale.

Box I: Underlying Concepts:

Stakeholders in forest management as well as forest management staff often come from very different socio-economic backgrounds, perspectives, values, priorities and interests. This can typically result in a lack of understanding, lack of respect, hostility and even conflict among stakeholders or between stakeholders and management staff. The result is a significant barrier to effective two-way communication.

In order to have effective, open and meaningful public participation that influences management there must be open dialogue between management and stakeholders. Two-way communications is paramount to this and, in a study of US National Forest planning was preferred by citizens (Force and Williams, 1989). Effective mechanisms for two-way communication allow people to: share traditional or local knowledge; express their values, rights and preferences; clarify concepts; become informed of the interests and plans of other stakeholders and managers; and integrate their own knowledge, experience and preferences into forest management (Colfer et al., 1995).

Key to the issue of respect is that encounters between and within management staff and stakeholders are undertaken without the differences in perspectives, interests, values and positions escalating to the destruction of the resources or property, or harm to humans (CIFOR, 1998).

If forest management staff are not supportive of the concept of public involvement, the development of respectful working relationships between forest management staff and stakeholders will be hampered. A number of studies have documented forest management concern about, and discomfort with the involvement of the public in resource management decision making. Boyle and Shannon (1994) noted that in general, US Forest Service employees "have great ambivalence about accepting the public’s knowledge about what they consider a scientific-based decision". Magill (1989) noted that resource professionals may welcome public input but doubt the validity of that input. Schlager and Freimund (1994) examined institutional attitudes towards public involvement of forest managers for the ICBEMP study and found that twenty-six percent of managers, primarily Forest Supervisors and Ecosystem-Management Coordinators identified fear of public involvement as the most important barrier to implementing ecosystem management. One driver for this is a fear that a more open public decision making process may result in more appeals or litigation (Schlager and Freimund, 1994). This frequently results in a desire within agencies work out the management decisions internally before subjecting them to public involvement (Schlager and Freimund, 1994). Vining and Schroeder (1987) note that communication between resource management staff and stakeholders has become increasingly adversarial over the last several decades. Overcoming the institutional barriers or fears towards public involvement is key to the success of this indicator.

Box J: Relevance to Sustainable/Unsustainable Management:

This indicator is relevant to sustainable management because maintaining respect for the contributions of diverse stakeholders forms one of the keystones to effective public participation. If stakeholders and management staff are able to respect each others’ contributions despite differences, then stakeholders will be far more able to provide meaningful input that will have an opportunity to influence management decisions. Similarly, conflict will likely be reduced and justice enhanced. Conflict and associated violence is relevant because violence against people and property resulting from resource use decisions impacts on human-well being, which is a dimension of sustainability (Prabhu et al., 1996). Violence or conflict may also result in destroyed resources, thereby decreasing people’s access to them, and their ability to manage sustainably (Prabhu et al., 1996).

Box K: Measurement Methods :

Assessing the status of this indicator requires the examination of several different dimensions:

1. willingness by management staff to accept public involvement as a necessary aspect of forest management;
2. the type and nature of interactions within and between management staff and stakeholders and the perception of the acceptability of these interactions (two-way communications and respect); and
3. the degree of conflict, the acceptability of that level of conflict and the conflict resolution processes in place within and between management staff and stakeholders.

Force and Williams (1989) and Shannon (1992) have both assessed the views of USFS forest managers towards public involvement using interviews and surveys. Schlager and Freimund examined these same issues within the geographic scale of the ICBEMP area although this study was not a scientific or representative sampling of professionals at this scale. Similar studies could be conducted at the scale of the forest management unit to assess dimension #1.

Dimension two, the type and nature of interactions with specific focus on two-way communications and respect, is much more difficult to assess. Force and Williams (1989) note that data to help "analyze the most appropriate and effective methods to involve the public in resource decision-making are scarce" (p. 33). Participatory observation techniques or other qualitative techniques used previously by CIFOR-BAG are indicated below. Quantitative assessments of perceptions of forest managers and stakeholders regarding these issues and with the conflict issues in dimension #3 could also be conducted. One proxy measure for two-way communications could be simply conducted by assessing the type or style of public involvement technique used by the forest management unit. Several standard hierarchies or typologies of public involvement (see for example Arnstein, 1969; LRMP, 1993 or Vance, 1990) contrast these techniques by dimensions including the degree to which they allow for two-way communication.

To assess these issues qualitatively, CIFOR-BAG suggests the use of the Iterative Continuum Method (ICM) focus group studies as well as participatory card sorting techniques and the Pebble Distribution Method (CIFOR, 1998). These techniques do not give direct insight into interactions between stakeholders but do give perceptions of stakeholders about themselves and other stakeholders. Other qualitative techniques that can be used to address this indicator include participant observation.

Scaling methods to examine this indicators adequacy need yet to be developed. Negative case analysis, however, can be used to identify areas needing improvement.

Box L: Data Required:

Data required include:

• Forest manager assessment (interview/survey) of perceptions on the role of public involvement.
• Stakeholder assessment or satisfaction with public participation techniques (public participation evaluation forms)
• Inventory of public participation techniques used categorized by public involvement type.
• Documentation of conflicts or violent incidents on record.

To use CIFOR-BAG techniques listed in Box K, data needed for direct measures include observed examples of the quality of relationship between stakeholders and management, specifically of respect for one another’s perspectives and contributions. These measures may be difficult to obtain as interactions between stakeholders and management are often numerous and not always public. In addition, stakeholders and management staff are likely to act differently in the presence of an observer than with each other naturally. Data needed for indirect measures include descriptions of stakeholder perceptions of the value of other stakeholders’ input. Qualitative, indirect measurement data should be relatively easy to collect and relatively accessible.

Box M: Data Used for the North American Test:

Data sources included:

• USDA-FS. 1998. Southwest Idaho Ecogroup (Boise, Payette and Sawtooth Forests) Forest Plan Revision and Amendment in Brief.
• USDA-FS. 1990. Public Comments on the Boise National Forest Plan. Chapter VI of the EIS. Boise National Forest.
• USDA-FS. 1990. Record of Decision: for the Land and Resource Management Plan Final Environmental Impact Statement Boise National Forest Plan.
• BNF. 1998. Schedule of Proposed Actions
• Vance, J.E. 1990. Tree Planning: A Guide to Public Involvement in Forest Stewardship. British Columbia Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Vancouver, B.C.
• Boise National Forest. 1998. Appendix B: Southwest Idaho Ecogroup Forest Plan Revision Public Involvement Strategy. Scoping.

Box N: Example Results:

Data was generally not available to assess this indicator, however a proxy measure for one aspect of the type and nature of interactions was examined.

Type and Nature of Interactions

Box O: Assessing the Practicality:

This indicator includes several dimensions which vary in difficulty of assessment or cost. Assessing the typologies of public involvement is a relatively simple and very low cost aspect of this indicator to measure. Examining forest management staff acceptance of public involvement is similarly relatively straightforward to measure on a repeated basis at a relatively low cost.

Measurement of the type and nature of conflict between and within forest managers and stakeholders is much more difficult, particularly to assess quantitatively.

Box P: Assessing the Information Value:

Information value also varies by dimension. Examination of the typologies of public involvement used as a proxy for an assessment of the nature of two-way communication is useful although it does not yield particularly high information value. More direct assessments of the quality of two-way communication would be needed to increase the information value. The assessment of forest manager perception regarding the role of public involvement should yield relatively high quality information.

Box Q: Overall assessment:

Accepted.

This indicator was accepted as critical to the achievement of sustainable well being and sharing in management and benefits. Weaknesses are the current methods for testing some aspects of this indicator particularly conflict and perceptions of the nature of interactions.

Box R: Did you rewrite or revise to a new indicator. If so what?

Yes. Management staff and stakeholders should recognize and respect the interests and rights of each other.

Box S: References:

• Arnstein, S.R. 1969. A Ladder of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners. Vol. 35:216-224.
• Boyle, B.J., and M.A. Shannon et al. 1994. Policies and Mythologies of the U.S. Forest Service: A Conversation with Employees.
• Colfer, C.J.P., Prabhu, R., and E. Wollenberg. 1995. Principles, Criteria and Indicators: Applying Ockham’s Razor to the People-Forestry Link. Working Paper No. 8, CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia
• CIFOR. 1998. Criteria and Indicator Resource Book. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.
• CIFOR Methods Testing Team. 1998. Basic Assessment Guide for Human Well Being. Bogor, Indonesia.
• Force, J.E., and K. L. Williams. 1989. A Profile of National Forest Planning Participants. Journal of Forestry. Vol. 87(1).
• Land Use Coordination Office. 1993. Land and Resource Management Planning: Public Participation Guidelines. http://www.luco.gov.bc.ca/lrmp/
• Magill, A.W. 1991. Barriers to Effective Public Interaction. Journal of Forestry. Vol. 89(10).
• Prabhu, R., C.J.P., Colfer, P. Venkateswarlu, C.T. Lay, R. Soekmadi and E. Wollenberg. 1996. Testing Criteria and Indicators for the Sustainable Management of Forests: Phase 1 Final Report. CIFOR Special Publication, Bogor, Indonesia.
• Schlager, D.B., and W.A. Freimund. 1994. Institutional and Legal Barriers to Ecosystem Management. Unpublished paper submitted to the Eastside Ecosystem Management Project.
• Vance, J.E. 1990. Tree Planning: A Guide to Public Involvement in Forest Stewardship. British Columbia Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Vancouver, B.C.
• Vining, J., and H.W. Schroeder. 1987. Emotions in Environmental Decision Making: Rational Planning Versus the Passionate Public. In: Miller, M.L. et al (eds.) Social Science in Natural Resource Management Systems.

Appendix:

Informal Ethnographic Interviews

CIFOR Principal Scientist and Anthropologist, Carol Colfer conducted a series of ethnographic interviews as part of the Boise test of C&I. While Dr. Colfer was only able to participate in the study for a few days, the interviews she conducted provided valuable insight into the indicators from local people’s perspectives. To retain confidentiality, individual respondents are identified only with a set of initials (m=male, f=female). Comments obtained relevant to this indicator are summarized here below.