| dc.description.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. | |
