Aesthetics: Are we neglecting a critical issue in certification for sustainable forest management?

Abstract

Current forest certification programs may be neglecting aesthetics and related public perception and acceptance issues, concentrating on more easily quantified socioeconomic and ecological criteria. Because aesthetics is an important value for forest users, and to avoid potential conflicts between certification status and public perception, we suggest that forests should be certified for aesthetic performance. Current forest certification programs weakly address aesthetics, if at all. Those systems that do consider aesthetics tend to be procedural rather than outcomes-based and generally do not encourage solid or consistent approaches to the problem. Visual resource management approaches provide some precedents that are not as yet widely used in certification, but they also have their limitations. We recommend that more effort be put into developing more robust indicators for aesthetics as part of certification programs.