A sustainable forest future?

Abstract

If it can be shown that forest land is best retained as forest - where 'best' needs to defined the further issue arises of what kind of forestry is to be preferred.. Here the issue is clouded in terminological confusion because the words used in reference to forestry have come to mean different things to different people. But, in order to focus the debate we choose three archetypes familiar in the literature: conventional logging (CL), sustainable timber management (STM) and sustainable forest management (SFM). We adopt this terminology not because we think it is free from misinterpretation, but because the literature on the role of forestry in deforestation has adopted it, making it extremely difficult to elicit the lessons from that literature without using that language. We devote some time to explaining what we mean by the terms below and why, in an ideal world, we would prefer a different terminology. For the moment, we take CL to be more short-term in focus, less concerned with forest regeneration through management, and often lacking in government control. We take STM to be a forest management system that aims for sustained timber yields. We take SFM to be a system of forest management that aims for sustained yields of multi-products from the forest.