Traditional Knowledge Of Local Community-based Criteria And Indicators Framework For Forest Management

Since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, sustainable forest management (SFM) has been worldwide recognized. As one of the three most important forest governance trends in the 21st century, community-based forest management has also become a"hot"issue in the contemporary SFM era. Especially in rapidly developing China, after twice forest tenure devolution reforms, success or failure of local community forest management determines not only the fate of biodiversity and regional environmental safety, but also the quality of life for hundreds of millions forest dwellers, as well as the national social stability. However, criteria and indicators (C&I) for SFM, as primarily used instrument for forest sustainability assessment, are suffocating in the community-based forest management. It is because that current C&I are failed to address the particular values and needs of traditional forest management which is globally noted. Hence, the goal of this study was to address local forest values by developing a local C&I framework based on traditional forest use and management concerns.In this study, three Tibetan communities represented three different developing trends were selected from Deqin County in Northwest Yunnan. Totally, 61 households were visited in the fieldwork. Data about their forest perceptions were collected by a semi-structure interview of specific use, practical strategies, and management standards in the sclerophylous evergreen oak forest, on which local livelihood has highly depended. An indigenous forest values exploring approach, the Aboriginal Forest Planning Process (AFPP)developed in Canada to elicit goals, objectives, criteria, and indicators from aboriginal partners, was adopted. In addition, local forest concerns were coded and compiled according to criteria themes by qualitative research software (Nvivo 8.0).The condensed information had been further developing to a local forest management C&I. In the end, there three management principles, 10 criteria, 30 indicators, and 107 local concerns were identified. It was found that tourism developing has resulted in significant difference of local forest concerns amongst communities. Moreover, local ecological goals have corresponded well to official C&I frameworks, yet indigenous people have paid more attention on social-economic sustainability. The examination of local forest use values offers additional details that meet local needs and desires, as well as contributes to future assessment research in sustainable community-based forest management.