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POLICY ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY: National Forest Case Study

Posted on: Thursday, 4 March 2004, 06:00 CST

ABSTRACT

Policy analysis contributes to sustainable forestry by defining forestry problems in social and decision contexts to generate sustainable management options through synthesis of multiple perspectives. Scale issues are accommodated by limiting analysis to a location appropriate to the problem and context, including institutional arrangements and spatial and temporal concepts of fairness perceived by stakeholders. Management policies for National Forest System lands produce some sustainability problems. Statutory changes offering improvement include legitimizing the modern integrated sustainable forest management concept and requiring inclusive, consensus-building processes for generating durable forestry project decisions.

Keywords: law; sustainability

Attaining sustainable patterns of resource use is an important social value, as are minimizing risks to human health and protecting biodiversity, wilderness, and ecosystems. Ecosystem management has become synonymous with sustainable forest management, according to a panel of scientists (NRC 2000). Oliver (2003) described the biophysical and socioeconomic values of sustainable forestry, emphasizing fairness concepts, but left undone the institutional, legal, and political factors that encourage or discourage management actions to sustain those values. The policy analysis framework presented here fills the void.

Two cases illustrate framework application. General sustainability concerns demonstrate the need to focus on a particular forestry problem, such as simultaneous biodiversity conservation and timber production, and geographic scale appropriate to the problem. Analysis of management decision policies for National Forest System lands reveals sustainability problems and options for potential improvements.

Policy analysis is more likely to reveal socially appropriate options for sustainable forestry than the alternative-reliance on policymakers' imagination, intuition, and inspiration. Developing successful environmental and resource management policies depends on the ability to synthesize different, and often competing, preferences and perspectives (Wilson 1998). Policy analysis provides an opportunity for such synthesis (demons and McBeth 2001).

Forest management is guided by pragmatic, pluralistic, and evolutionary considerations (Castle 1993). Pragmatic approaches to policy focus attention on problems rather than projects, practices, or principles (Anderson 1987). Although problem definition drives policy analysis, it is highly subjective-one person's problem is another's opportunity (Clemons and McBeth 2001). The sustainable forestry problem is meeting human needs today without sacrificing the ability to meet those of the future, including attention to actual or perceived human impacts on ecosystems. We know few, if any, ways to do this (Roe 1998; Wilson 1998). But we must try. Pluralistic concerns reflect different viewpoints or perceptions of things that should be considered in management decisions. Evolutionary capability for adapting to change presupposes a flexible analytical and decision framework, whether change stems from resource conditions or from human perceptions and values.

Framework Variables

Forest policy is part of a governance system that identifies socially desirable objectives for forests and the biophysically realistic and economically viable means for attaining them. Forest policy is complex and uncertain. Forest ecosystems, human preferences, and institutions affecting forests and people are constantly changing, often unpredictably. Several forest policy "frameworks" for analysis have been suggested. Some favor ecological considerations and ignore economics (e.g., Wilson 1998); others ignore ecology (e.g., Roe 1998).

A sustainable forest management framework includes operational goals, recognition of space and time scales, biological diversity, reserve areas, forest health, complexity, variability, change, uncertainty, surprise, human use, adaptive management, and conflict resolution (NRC 2000). Carbon sequestration and soil and water quality should be included (Oliver 2003). The intensity and stability of society's preferences for ecological ("green") objectives and willingness to bear the costs of sustaining environmental quality are uncertain, however, and forest ecosystem science and disturbance regimes are not clearly understood (van Kooten and Vertinsky 1999). Technological innovations that alter wood supply and demand add more uncertainty, as do the politics of policy instrument choice, including positive and normative arguments for technical efficiency as well as degrees of coercion and intrusiveness. Forestry politics are influenced by the relative power of different stakeholders, including the economic importance of the forestry sector, landownership and tenure patterns, and the availability of expert knowledge and information, especially as they shape citizens' knowledge. All these are components of a forest policy analysis framework.

Identifying policy framework variables is necessary but insufficient for comprehensive analysis. A conceptual framework for analyzing these variables can help the analyst identify and understand forestry problems in context through synthesis of different viewpoints regarding what forests should sustain.

Conceptual Framework

This policy analysis framework builds on different perspectives on forests: ecological and environmental (i.e., natural biophysical systems), ethical, economic, societal, and governmental. Each is depicted as a sphere encircling the globe (fig. 1). These five perspectives or spheres (table 1, row 1, p. 36) are the first of four framework dimensions. Knowledge systems and associated decision criteria are two more dimensions (table 1, column 1, see rows 2 and 3). The various criteria-one is sustainability (table 1, cell 3D)- help shape individual and group preferences. The decision system (fig. 2, p. 38) is the fourth dimension of the framework (table 1, row 4). Preferences are pressed on decisionmakers through various strategies and tactics used by advocates for different policy alternatives (fig. 2). Attention to the decision system makes policy analysis relevant.

Figure 1. Perspectives on natural resources.

Policy analysis is depicted in layers within each framework dimension (table 1, column 2). Beginning with perspective, the purpose of policy analysis is identifying alternatives for improving a forest-related problem through multidisciplinary synthesis of information. The "policy sciences" (SPS 2003) create knowledge by defining a problem within its social and decision contexts, using multiple methods to identify options and consequences appropriate to policy problem scale, and continually redefine the problem in context. Policy options or alternatives are viewed from different . perspectives through criteria associated with various branches of knowledge.

The need for multidisciplinary policy analysis can be illustrated by linking each sphere or facet within one of the four dimensions. For example, policy choice in this framework is a product of the interacting facets or components of decision systems (fig. 2), with the goal being sustainable patterns of resource use developed by considering decision criteria. Each interlinked sphere in this dimension is also conceptually linked with each sphere in every dimension.

To summarize the framework (table 1): Ecosystems provide the resources people and society desire. Economic systems allocate benefits and costs associated with patterns of resource use as market-driven forces interact with public programs and budget allocations in the political arena. Justice and fairness perspectives of different people provide checks and balances on private market and public budget allocations. Values expressed by individuals or groups drive decisions and are brought to decisionmakers' attention by advocates for particular policy choices. The political part of the decision system allocates conflicting values and creates governing institutions, including programs and agencies to administer resources; laws and courts to adjudicate disputes; and revenue-generating and spending processes to support institutions. Policy analysis links the decision system to resource knowledge through criteria and synthesizes policy choice options with respect to resource use patterns and management technologies as well as environmental and socioeconomic impacts. All these are components of the policy decision system (fig. 2), one of the four framework dimensions (table 1, row 4).

Policy Criteria

No fewer than five types of criteria (table 1) need to be considered in forest policy: biophysical feasibility, equity in distribution of benefits and costs, economic efficiency, social acceptability, and administrative practicality (Clawson 1975). Using multiple criteria, the policy analyst functions as a "partisan of the neglected perspective" (Anderson 1987). Synthesis is incomplete without considering politics (Clemons and McBeth 2001). Political feasibility is closely related to social acceptability and allied with administrative practicality, depicted as a subset of political acceptance in the government criteria sphere (table 1, cell 3E). Administration of public purpose is part of the political facet of the decision syst\em dimension (table 1, cell 4E).

Criteria and associated indicators are generated from various perspectives associated with different bodies of knowledge or disciplines. Four of the five perspectives in the framework are connected to the policy problem through science, which can develop defensible standards or norms for criteria and indicators for different forests. Because science offers no moral or ethical guidance in the political process for adjudicating conflicts over values and preferences, a sphere for ethics (table 1, column B) represents philosophical beliefs associated with rights, equity, fairness, and justice.

Table 1. Framework for forest policy analysis.

No single criterion is more important than any other. Without considering biophysical feasibility, forestry objectives may be unrealistic; without economic viability, unimplementable; without social acceptability, undesirable; and without any one of the three, unsustainable. Equity and government are subsets of the complex set of social aspects of sustainable forestry, as is economics. A fair and equitable distribution of benefits and costs is used by many people, viewed from their perspectives as stakeholders or interested citizens, to judge acceptability as well as efficiency. Differences among these perspectives are reconciled by government, which weighs forest policy on balance with other public purposes.

Ecological risk assessment is an additional criterion central to many sustainability problems, especially conserving species at risk of extinction. When the Supreme Court judged that "Congress intended endangered species to be afforded the highest of priorities...[t]he plain intent of Congress in enacting this statute was to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost" ( TVA v. Hill, 437, U.S. 174, 184 [1978], emphasis added), traditional benefit-cost analysis became irrelevant in Endangered Species Act applications. The act's command-and-control approach, however, has not achieved some necessary habitat conservation; collaborative approaches offer promise of improvement (Steelman 2002). Changes in habitat conditions can pose risks to resources and human communities, so the framework considers risk criteria in the economic and social as well as ecological sphere (table 1, row 3).

Sustainable Forestry: General Case

Sustainable development is the end toward which forest policy is aimed; the "common interest" is to expand resources and improve the quality of life for as many people as heedless population growth will place on the earth (Wilson 1998). Forests should sustain healthy, resilient ecosystems, not just timber production. Sustainable forestry assumes that if ecological processes remain intact, the products of forests will remain available for human consumption.

Table 1. Framework for forest policy analysis.

For the highly uncertain and complex problem of sustainable forestry development, Roe (1998) chose the "triangulation" model from among 10 approaches for integrating multiple perspectives and methods. Triangulation is analogous to "multiple search lights intersecting in the night's sky," searching to converge on what to do generally, while recognizing that complex problems are best understood when approached with case-by-case specifics (Roe 1998).

Like synthesis, triangulation integrates different bodies of knowledge. Consider the general case of sustainable forestry (fig. 3, p. 39). The policy analyst at the framework's center triangulates on a policy problem, using knowledge and decision criteria from different disciplinary perspectives. Each is a searchlight, illuminating facets of the problem and revealing partially workable solutions. Different perspectives on sustainable development produce far too many different answers to expect convergence on a common ground (Roe 1998), or what Wilson (1998) called a "unity of knowledge." Instead, triangulation describes complexity in a way that something can be done about it. Sustainable development must accommodate differences, at levels below the global or general, and particularly at the local level. What to differentiate? Each case has its own merits, to be evaluated as such (Roe 1998).

The multiple methods underlying different triangulation perspectives cannot shed much light on a problem of global complexity. Sustain which forest resources? Where? Until a more specific case is identified, the problem resides at a global scale, where complexity overwhelms movement toward improvement. This is partly because the problem has not been well defined and partly the lack of effective institutions for international forest resource governance. What is the social and decision context in which the sustainable forestry problem is embedded? Again, not much can be said without specifying a case.

Sustaining Values on National Forests

Sustaining timber output and other values from the 191 million acres of National Forest System lands administered by the USDA Forest Service demonstrates problem definition and option generation in a multidisciplinary framework (fig. 4, p. 40). For illustrative purposes, facets of the problem can be described as follows. National forest timber harvests have declined 80 percent nationwide since 1987, for various reasons. Not among them is the traditional sustained-yield criterion-harvest no more than the forest grows. The level of annual harvests in 1987, a peak year for national forest timber output, was roughly one-half of net timber growth that year, and is now only one-fifth (O'Laughlin and Cook 2003).

Figure 2. Decision systems.

The main reason for harvest reductions since 1987, according to Forest Service analysts (Haynes 2002), was habitat conservation for the northern spotted owl, a species protected by the Endangered Species Act. Reductions also stemmed from conflicting perceptions of environmental quality that affect institutions through the strategies and tactics of what Kagan (1991) called "adversarial legalism," including administrative appeals and litigation. For example, national forest supervisors in Idaho identified the Forest Service appeals process as second only to endangered species conservation as a factor reducing timber harvest levels (Haminishi et al. 1995). As advocacy demands are pressed on decisionmakers, one result of adversarial legalism in the government sphere is conflict between the Forest Service and Congress over management direction and budget-what political scientists call "gridlock." Another is the corrosive effect of distrust (Kagan 1991).

Today some interest groups actively campaign to eliminate all national forest timber sales. Meanwhile the accumulating annual growth increment, which can be an asset or a liability, creates forest health and hazardous fuel problems (O'Laughlin and Cook 2003). In western forests, where national forests predominate, the acreage burned each year has trended upward since 1979. In drought years-2000 and 2002, for example-fuel loads fed intense and widespread fires, often producing severe ecological, economic, and social effects. A panel of ecologists stated, "Proposals to ban all timber harvesting on National Forests would leave managers without a valuable tool that can be used selectively to restore early successional habitat, reduce fuel loads, and contain pest and pathogen outbreaks in some forests" (Aber et al. 2000). Public finance issues raise economic viability questions that a national forest timber sale program can partially address.

Figure 3. Sustainable forestry: general case.

National forest policies require public involvement in decisions. The right stakeholders need to be included. After triangulating on controversial conservation efforts for the California spotted owl, Roe (1998) concluded that topdown versus bottom-up project planning does not matter as much as outside-in versus inside-out planning. By driving planning from the inside out, causal processes and understandings become clearer. Local leaders and residents are the relevant sustainability experts, and they should initiate and guide the planning process from within the local ecosystem. The developer, environmentalist, and state environmental official would not be excluded from participation but would be recognized as outsiders (Roe 1998). Current policies, however, encourage outsiders to challenge project decisions through administrative appeals and litigation without having been involved in planning the project being challenged.

Democracy, implemented through civic engagement, is the policy analyst's foremost ethical challenge (Clemons and McBeth 2001). All parties participating in policy processes, especially planners, need to become more skilled at recognizing who needs to be present, how cooperation can be encouraged, and how workable outcomes can be mediated (deLeon and Steelman 2001). Collaborative learning processes can facilitate communication and understanding by depicting various concerns on a "situation map" (Daniels and Walker 2001) or "conceptual map" (deLeon and Steelman 2001; SPS 2003) developed by stakeholders in facilitated forums.

Figure 4. Sustainable forestry: National Forest System case study.

Public policy is problematic, and the decision system is broken and tending toward gridlock. The closest thing to a Nation Forest System sustainability mandate is sustained yield of goods and services, a statutory direction since 1944. Congress could legitimize sustainable forestry as a management goal and specify a process for balancing ecological, economic, and social considerations. Local communities have been affected by loss of employment and associated economic activity resulting from reduced timber availability and mill closures, creating unrest and uncertainty. These concerns sometimes conflict with regional and national perspectives on national forests driven by the Endangered Species Act, biodiversity conservation, environmental quality con\cerns, and recreation and tourism interests. Some analysts (e.g., Steelman 2002) believe that through collaborative processes we can learn how national standards can coexist with decentralized community discretion for sustaining a range of forest values, including biodiversity. The alternative is continued adversarial legalism.

If multiple perspectives are considered, policy changes are more likely to improve resource conditions and sustain a full range of forest values. An increase in timber harvests might appear to be a win-win solution from fire hazard reduction and local economic development standpoints, but the Forest Service is unable to reduce fuel loads or improve forest health because of "analysis paralysis" and gridlock. National forest policy relies on public trust, which has diminished not only from past actions of national forest managers but also because of adversarial legalism directed at established project decision processes.

To improve the situation, policymakers can rely on either inspiration or analysis. This analysis says, Legitimize the modern concept of sustainable forestry, balancing ecological, economic, and social concerns by specifying the conditions under which timber harvests are permissible, and provide meaningful forums where differences regarding individual cases of timber harvesting on public lands-that is, project-level decisions-can be ironed out through collaborative learning processes, producing durable forestry project decisions that are unlikely to be challenged (fig. 4). Although involving people directly in public land management decisions presents numerous pitfalls and paradoxes (see Ascher 2001; Walker and Daniels 2001), not the least of them sharing power, other approaches seem less likely to be sustainable.

Literature Cited

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ANDERSON, C.W. 1987. Political philosophy, practical reason, and policy analysis. In Confronting values in policy analysis: The politics of criteria, eds. F. Fischer and J. Forester, 22-44. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

ASCHER, W. 2001. Coping with complexity and organizational interests in natural resource management. Ecosystems 4:742-57.

CASTLE, E.N. 1993. A pluralistic, pragmatic and evolutionary approach to natural resource management. Forest Ecology and Management 56:279-95.

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CLEMONS, R.S., and M.K. McBETH. 2001. Public policy praxis- Theory and pragmatism: A case approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

DANIELS, S.E., and G.B. WALKER. 2001. Workingthmugh environmental conflict: The collaborative learning approach. Westport, CT: Praeger.

DELEON, P., and T.A. STEELMAN. 2001. Making public policy programs effective and relevant: The role of policy sciences. Journal of Polity Analysis and Management 20:163-71.

HAMINISHI, C.M., F.G. WAGNER, J. O'LAUGHLIN, and T.M. GORMAN. 1995. Idaho's timber harvest projections by ownership to 2000: An issue-based survey of resource managers. Western Journal of Applied forestry 10:109-13.

HAYNES, R. W. 2002. An analysis of the timber situation in the United States: 1952-2050. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-560. Portland, OR: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station.

KAGAN, R.A. 1991. Adversarial legalism and American government. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 10:369-406.

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (NRC). 2000. A framework for sustainable forest management. In Environmental issues in Pacific Northwest forest management, eds. N.L. Christiansen et al., 171-98. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

O'LAUGHLIN, J., and P.S. COOK. 2003. Inventory-based forest health indicators: Implications for national forest management. Journal of Forestry 101(2):11-17.

OLIVER, C.D. 2003. Sustainable forestry: What is it? How do we achieve it? Journal of Forestry 101(5):8-14.

ROE, E. 1998. Taking complexity seriously: Policy analysis, triangulation, and sustainable development. Boston: Kluwer Academic.

SOCIETY TOR THE POLICY SCIENCES (SPS). 2003. What are the policy sciences? Available online at www.policy-sciences.org/what.htm; accessed by author july 2003.

STEELMAN, T.A. 2002. Community-based involvement in biodiversity protection in the United States. In Biodiversity, sustainability and human communities: Protecting beyond the protected, eds. T. O'Riordan and S. Stoll-Kleeman, 142-67. New York: Cambridge University Press.

VAN KOOTEN, G.G., and I. VERTINSKY. 1999. Introduction: Framework for forest policy comparisons. In Forest policy: International case studies, eds. B. Wilson, G.G. van Kooten, I. Vertinsky, and L. Arthur, 1-22. New York: CABI.

WALKER, G.B., and S.E. DANIELS. 2001. Natural resource policy and the paradox of public involvement: Bringing scientists and citizens together. Journal of Sustainable Forestry 13:253-69.

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Jay O'Laughlin (jayo@uidaho.edu) is professor, Department of Forest Resources, and director, Policy Analysis Group, College of Natural Resources, Sixth and Line Streets, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-1134.

Copyright Society of American Foresters Mar 2004

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