Participatory decision support for sustainable forest management: a framework for planning with local communities at the landscape level in Canada

There is an increasing demand for active public involvement in forestry decision making, but there are as yet few established models for achieving this in the new sustainable forest management (SFM) context. At the level of the working forest, the fields of forest sustainability assessment, public participation, decision support, and computer technology in spatial modelling and visualization need to be integrated. This paper presents the results of a literature review of public participation and decision-support methods, with emphasis on case study examples in participatory decision support. These suggest that emerging methods, such as public multicriteria analysis of alternative forest management scenarios and allied tools, may lend themselves to public processes addressing sustainability criteria and indicators. The paper develops a conceptual framework for participatory decision support to address the special needs of SFM in tactical planning at the landscape level. This framework consists of principles, process criteria, and preliminary guidelines for designing and evaluating SFM planning processes with community input. More well-documented studies are needed to develop comprehensive, engaging, open, and accountable processes that support informed decision making in forest management, and to strengthen guidance for managers.