Forest management has evolved from a mercantilist view to a multi-functional one that integrates economic, social, and ecological aspects. However, the issue of sustainability is not yet resolved. Quantitative Techniques in Participatory Forest Management brings together global research in three areas of application: inventory of the forest variables that determine the main environmental indices, description and design of new environmental indices, and the application of sustainability indices for regional implementations. All these quantitative techniques create the basis for the development of scientific methodologies of participatory sustainable forest management.

'At last a really useful book telling us how all the rhetoric about ecosystem approaches and sustainable forest management is being translated into practical solutions on the ground? CLAUDE MARTIN, WWF INTERNATIONAL For too long, foresters have seen forests as logs waiting to be turned into something useful. This book demonstrates that forests in fact have multiple values, and managing them as ecosystems will bring more benefits to a greater cross-section of the public? JEFFREY A. MCNEELY, CHIEF SCIENTIST, IUCN This book demonstrates that ecosystem approaches and sustainable forest management] are neither alternative methods of forest management nor are they simply complicated ways of saying the same thing. They are both emerging concepts for more integrated and holistic ways of managing forests within larger landscapes in ways that optimize benefits to all stakeholders? ACHIM STEINER AND IAN JOHNSON, FROM THE FOREWORD Recent innovations in Sustainable Forest Management and Ecosystem Approaches are resulting in forests increasingly being managed as part of the broader social-ecological systems in which they exist. Forests in Landscapes reviews changes that have occurred in forest management in recent decades. Case studies from Europe, Canada, the United States, Russia, Australia, the Congo and Central America provide a wealth of international examples of innovative practices. Cross-cutting chapters examine the political ecology and economics of forest management, and review the information needs and the use and misuse of criteria and indicators to achieve broad societal goals for forests. A concluding chapter draws out the key lessons of changes in forest management in recent decades and sets out some thoughts for the future. This book is a must-read for practitioners, researchers and policy makers concerned with forests and land use. It contains lessons for all those concerned with forests as sources of people's livelihoods and as part of rural landscapes. Published with IUCN and PROFOR

Provides an assessment of the international forest regime, in reponse to calls from many quarters, including the UN Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (IFF) and the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development, as well as several NGOs. The focus is mainly on action taken by countries at the global level, in the framework of legally binding instruments and institutions. It builds on previous analyses of the international forest regime by looking beyond the legal mandates to begin exploring the actual performance of the components against their mandates. With the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF) Proposals for Action as the point for departure, the effectiveness and impact of individual legal instruments and global instutions are analyzed, as is the potential for synergy between them.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue Participatory Forestry: Involvement, Information and Sciencethat was published in Forests

This paper reports on three regional assessments carried out to identify and draw lessons from on-the-ground initiatives in multiple-use forest management in the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia. In all three regions, information was collected through interviews with country-based forestry experts, forest managers and technicians. A complementary, web-based questionnaire further examines the reasons for the successes and failures of multiple-use forests management initiatives.