Aux origines des indicateurs de gestion durable des forêts

The approach to criteria and indicators was proposed by Canada in 1992 as the operational demonstration of the integrative capability of the term sustainable development upheld by forestry negotiators at the UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) to resolve the ambiguities of the concept of sustainable developed as applied to forests. The implementation of resolution H1 (dealing with sustainable development) at the second Ministerial Conference for the Protection of Forests in Europe (Helsinki, 1993) provided scope for experimenting this approach on the European scale. The list of criteria and indicators adopted by the Helsinki process is a compromise steered by State foresters and scientists. It reflects a consensus on the scale of the European continent at a given point in time. This approach provided inspiration to other regional intergovernmental processes, which consistently associated countries that believed they shared not only similar problems in relation to sustainable forest development but also a similar culture for solving them with the criteria and indicators not considered as having any value per se ; only for action taken within a given societal context. As early as 1995, European foresters expressed strong doubts about the feasibility of transcontinental, or even less, global management criteria and indicators. Indeed, sustainable management criteria and indicators do not reflect an objective, disembodied approach to what are “the sustainable, management, conservation and exploitation of all types of forests”. Instead, they express the political will of foresters to go beyond the claim of being the only legitimate, competent voice to speak about forests, in the direction of a “shared vision” with other stakeholders, or at least a dialogue, without the choice of partners being pre-determined. Originally, this dimension as a renewed tool of governance in forest policies was as strong as the ambition to make these criteria and indicators tools that forestry decision-makers could use to steer policy. Their offspring has gone beyond what their promoters imagined, in spite of the fact that their operational ability and their benefits have yet to be solidly established.