Sustainable Forest Management in a Mediterranean region: Social preferences
Abstract
Aim of study: There is a lack of empirical research that deals with sustainable forest management in Mediterranean regions, among the most vulnerable ecosystems. The main purpose of this work is to define the strategic criteria and objectives for sustainable forest management and aggregate the preferences of stakeholders in a Mediterranean region, using AHP and Goal Programming.
Area of study: Valencian Community (Spain).
Material and Methods: Firstly, we identified forest stakeholders and structured a decision hierarchy. Then a workshop was carried out to test and validate the proposed criteria and objectives, as well as a survey to determine social preferences. Secondly, another survey was conducted amongst experts to prioritize action plans.
Main results: Stakeholders’ preferences gave the greatest importance to the environmental criteria (hydrological regulation and erosion, climate change mitigation and biodiversity) with an average weight of 40%. Social criteria (employment, recreational activities and landscape) had a weight of 38% and 22% the economic criteria case (wood, hunting and fishing, livestock, renewable energies, rural tourism and mining). The results showed that new products and services such as tourism, renewable energies, landscape, hydrological regulation and erosion control, biodiversity or climate change mitigation are very relevant objectives. We also prioritized action plans comparing them with the distribution of the administration budget.
Research highlights: The environmental and social criteria are much more important than the economic ones in the regional planning of the Mediterranean forest, regardless of the method used to aggregate the social preferences and if the forest is public or private.
Key words: Multiple Criteria Decision Making; Goal Programming; Analytic Hierarchy Process; Preferences Aggregation.Downloads
References
Ananda J, Herath G, 2003a. Incorporating stakeholder values into regional forest planning: a value function approach. Ecological Economics 45: 75-90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0921-8009(03)00004-1
Ananda J, Herath G, 2003b. The use of Analytic Hierarchy Process to incorporate stakeholder preferences into regional forest planning. Forest Policy and Economics 5: 13-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1389-9341(02)00043-6
Ananda J, 2007. Implementing participatory decision making in forest planning. Environmental Management 39:534-544. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-006-0031-2 PMid:17318695
Ananda J, Herath G, 2008. Multi-attribute preference modeling and regional land use planning. Ecological Economics 65: 325-335. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2007.06.024
Ananda J, Herath G, 2009. A critical review of multi-criteria decision making methods with special reference to forest management and planning. Ecological Economics 68: 2535-2548. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2009.05.010
Belton V, Stewart TJ, 2003. Multiple criteria decision analysis – An integrated approach. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. 372 pp.
Díaz-Balteiro L, Romero C, 2008. Making forestry decision with multiple criteria: a review and assessment. Forest Ecology and Management 255: 3222-3241. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2008.01.038
Díaz-Balteiro L, González-Pachón J, Romero C, 2009. Forest management with multiple criteria and multiple stakeholders: an application to two public forests in Spain. Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research 24: 87-93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02827580802687440
FORSYS, 2011. Forest management decision support systems [on line]. Available in http://fp0804.emu.ee/wiki/index.php/Participatory_processes [September, 2011].
González-Pachón J, Romero C, 2004. A method for dealing with inconsistencies in pairwise comparisons. European Journal of Operational Research 158(2): 351-361. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2003.06.009
González-Pachón J, Romero C, 2007. Inferring consensus weights from pairwise comparison matrices without suitable properties. Annals of Operational Research 154(1): 123-132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10479-007-0182-4
Hiltunen V, Kurttila M, Leskinen P, Pasanen K, Pykäläinen J, 2009. Mesta: an internet-based decisionsupport application for participatory strategic-level natural resources planning. Forest Policy and Economics 11: 1-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2008.07.004
Hjortsø CN, 2004. Enhancing public participation in natural resource management using Soft OR –– an application of strategic option development and analysis in tactical forest planning. European Journal of Operational Research 152: 667-683. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0377-2217(03)00065-1
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Climate Change 2007, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Synthesis Report. Summary for Policymakers. www. ipcc.ch.
Kangas J, Kangas A, 2005. Multiple criteria decision support in forest management – the approach, methods applied and experiences gained. Forest Ecology and Management 207: 133-143. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2004.10.023
Kangas A, Kangas J, Kurttila M, 2008. Decision Support for Forest Management, Springer. 222 pp.
Kangas A, Saarinen N, Saarikoski H, Leskinen LA, Hujala, T, Tikkanen J, 2010. Stakeholder perspectives about proper participation for Regional Forest Programmes in Finland. Forest Policy and Economics 12: 213-222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2009.10.006
Kazana V, Fawcett R, Mutch W, 2003. A decision support modelling framework for multiple use forest management: the Queen Elizabeth Forest case study in Scotland. European Journal of Operational Research 148: 1002-115. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0377-2217(02)00348-X
Martell DL, Gunn EA, Weintraub A, 1998. Forest management challenges for operational researchers. European Journal of Operational Research 104: 1-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0377-2217(97)00329-9
Mendoza GA, Martins H, 2006. Multi-criteria decision analysis in natural resource management: a critical review of methods and new modelling paradigms. Forest Ecology and Management 230: 1-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2006.03.023
Nordström EM, Romero C, Eriksson LO, Öhman K, 2009. Aggregation of preferences in participatory forest planning with multiple criteria: an application to the urban forest in Lycksele, Sweden. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 39: 1979-1992. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/X09-107
Nordström EM, Eriksson LO, Öhman K. 2010. Integrating multiple criteria decision analysis in participatory forest planning: Experience from a case study in northern Sweden. Forest Policy and Economics, 12, 562-574. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2010.07.006
PATFOR, 2011. Plan de acción territorial forestal de la comunitat valenciana, Generalitat Valenciana [on line]. Available in http://www.cma.gva.es/web/indice.aspx?nodo=72266&idioma=C [May, 2011].
Petrokofsky G, Brown ND, Heremy GE, 2010. A participatory process for identifying and prioritizing policyrelevant research questions in natural resource management: a case study from the UK forestry sector. Forestry 83(4): 357-367. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/forestry/cpq018
Saaty TL, 2006. Fundamentals of decision making and priority theory with the analytic hierarchy process. RWS Publications, Pittsburgh, USA. 478 pp.
Saaty TL, 2008. Decision making with the analytic hierarchy process, Int J Services Sciences 1(1): 83-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJSSCI.2008.017590
Saaty TL, Peniwati K, 2008. Group decision making: drawing out and reconciling differences. RWS Publications, Pittsburgh, USA. 385 pp.
Saaty TL, Shih H, 2009. Structures in decision making: on the subjective geometry of hierarchies and networks. European Journal of Operational Research 199: 867-872. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2009.01.064
Schmoldt DL, Mendoza GA, Kangas J (ed), 2001. Past developments and future directions for the AHP in natural resources. The analytic hierarchy process in natural resource and environmental decision making. Dordrecht, The Netherlands. pp: 289-305.
Sheppard SRJ, Meitner M, 2005. Using multi-criteria analysis and visualisation for sustainable forest management planning with stakeholder groups. Forest Ecology and Management 207(1-2): 171-187. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2004.10.032
SuperDecisions, 2010. http://www.superdecisions.com/ [October 2010].
XU Z, 2000. On consistency of weighted geometric mean complex judgement matrix in AHP. European Journal of Operational Research 126: 683-687. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0377-2217(99)00082-X
© CSIC. Manuscripts published are the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, and quoting this source is a requirement for any partial or full reproduction.
Forest Systems is an Open Access Journal. All articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. You may read here the basic information and the legal text of the license. The indication of the license CC-by must be expressly stated in this way when necessary.
