Review and synthesis of sustainable community indicators used in monitoring forest community sustainability

Abstract

The objectives of this project are: (1) to review literature related to sustainable community indicators that will include studies on: social indicators, sustainable forest management indicators, and sustainable community indicators; (2) to develop a viable framework for measuring sustainability of communities; and (3) to develop a list of sustainable community categories and indicators. To better understand the effectiveness of sustainable community indicators in measuring forest community sustainability, the review of literature is divided into two parts. The first part covers frameworks that are used by different scientists in the development of sustainable community indicators. The second part covers three studies undertaken in the Canadian Model Forest Program (CMFP) to assess forest community sustainability. The first study is based on social indicators, the second study is based on sustainable forest management indicators, and the third study is based on sustainable community indicators. The main reason for selecting all three studies from the CMFP is that only in the CMFP research is being carried out on community sustainability at the local level by adopting different approaches (indicated above). The results ofthe studies in the literature review are compared to the results of the study in this project to determine the effectiveness of the indicators developed in this study. The indicators developed in this study focus on sector (population, employment, education, poverty and forest operations) sustainability as well as across the sector sustainability. Sector sustainability is achieved by assessing the present status of the categories. Across the sector sustainability is assessed by taking into account the impact of each sector on the environment, society and economy (ESE). Based on the results of this study, it can be said that every sustainable community indicator is a social indicator, but every social indicator is not a sustainable community indicator. To achieve sustainable development, it is important to treat the ESE as an integrated unit, and not isolated parts.