Criteria and indicators for the assessment of community forestry outcomes: a comparative analysis from Canada.

In Canada, there are few structured evaluations of community forestry despite more than twenty years of practice. This article presents a criteria and indicator framework, designed to elicit descriptive information about the types of socio-economic results being achieved by community forests in the Canadian context. The criteria and indicators framework draws on themes proposed by other researchers both in the field of community forestry and related areas. The framework is oriented around three concepts described as amongst the underlying objectives of community forestry, namely participatory governance, local economic benefits and multiple forest use. This article also presents the results of a field-based application of the criteria and indicators framework, comparing four case studies in three Canadian provinces. All four are community forests with direct tenure rights to manage and benefit from forestry activities. Results reveal that in terms of governance, the case studies adhere to two different models, which we name 'interest group' vs. 'local government'. Stronger participatory dimensions are evident in two case studies. In the area of local economic benefits, the four case studies perform similarly, with some of the strongest benefits being in employment creation, especially for those case studies that offer non-timber activities such as recreation and education. Two of four cases have clearly adopted a multiple-use approach to management.

Social and cultural sustainability: criteria, indicators, verifier variables for measurement and maps for visualization to support planning.

Policies on economic use of natural resources require considerations to social and cultural values. In order to make those concrete in a planning context, this paper aims to interpret social and cultural criteria, identify indicators, match these with verifier variables and visualize them on maps. Indicators were selected from a review of scholarly work and natural resource policies, and then matched with verifier variables available for Sweden's 290 municipalities. Maps of the spatial distribution of four social and four cultural verifier variables were then produced. Consideration of social and cultural values in the studied natural resource use sectors was limited. The spatial distribution of the verifier variables exhibited a general divide between northwest and south Sweden, and regional rural and urban areas. We conclude that it is possible to identify indicators and match them with verifier variables to support inclusion of social and cultural values in planning.