Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

NOTE 4.1
Integrated Forest Landscape Land-Use Planning
Forest landscape planning differs from other planning
in that it plans at a larger spatial scale and can
assess broader, more wide-ranging trends, influences,
and impacts. 1
Planning is the process in which stakeholders (community
members, scientists, government representatives, private
businesses, traditional authorities, and others) come
together to debate and discuss how to manage lands for the
benefit of current and future generations and to ensure ecological
sustainability of lands and resources. The purpose of
planning is to develop management and governance strategies
that respond to scientific understanding of natural and
social systems as well as changing societal conditions and
values. The simple objective of any planning process is to
promote decisions that are informed, understood, accepted,
and able to be implemented.
Planning can be complex depending upon the number
of issues internal and external to the planning area. Planning
requires risk assessments and forecasts about anticipated
and uncertain future events and conditions. Consequently,
even the best plan will need to be altered to adjust
to improving data and information; changing social, economic,
or other conditions; evolving threats; or feedback
from monitoring efforts (see note 4.3, Using Adaptive Management
to Improve Project Implementation). Therefore,
plans are adaptive in nature, and amendments or entire
revisions will be an outcome of monitoring and other factors
discussed in the plan.
Two predominant approaches to planning are the “threatbased”
approach, and the “desired condition and zoning”
model. The threat-based model addresses only current threats
or those future threats that can be predicted by managers in
designing management direction. It is limited in its ability to
react to and consider unforeseen future threats that may
evolve and does not account for nonthreat-based targets and
objectives. The desired condition and zoning model, which is
used by the U.S. Forestry Service (USFS) for its multiple-use
planning for National Forest lands, outlines overall goals and
objectives for the landscape, as well as more specific objectives
within each macro-zone, to guide all future management
decisions.
Through the setting of objectives, the desired condition
planning model describes the compositional and structural
characteristics of the biological and physical features
desired across the landscape. It also accounts for the social
and economic needs of stakeholders that depend on landscape
resources and the social and economic elements
needed to achieve the plan’s long-term vision. In the desired
condition approach, barriers or threats that may limit
resource management ability to achieve or move toward the
desired condition are specifically addressed in guidelines,
regulations, and zoning concepts. Such an approach is flexible
and adaptable and thus able to address not only existing
threats, but also unforeseen future ones and nonthreat
management targets.
The following section outlines important operational
components of the landscape planning process and the landscape
plan itself. These steps draw heavily from guidelines
prepared by the USFS as part of the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) Central African Regional Program
for the Environment (CARPE) initiative for guidance
to implementing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
These guidelines offer some key steps to be undertaken to
effectively implement a landscape plan.
OPERATIONAL ASPECTS
Sometimes simpler plans are more effective, especially plans
based on a participatory process. The likelihood that the
plan will be more widely read and understood by local
stakeholders, as well as the likelihood of their engagement
in the process, will increase if the plan is relatively concise,
focuses on what is important for the resource condition,
and is light on scientific and legal jargon.
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