Sustainable Forestry
Sustainability is a concept that is widely embraced, yet is rarely, or so broadly, defined that it is open to differing interpretations, creating the potential for misunderstanding (Brown 1987, Wiersum 1995). Below are given four different definitions of sustainability and sustainable development.
Merriam-Webster (2003) defines sustainability as a noun form of the word sustainable, defined as: "of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged."
The Brundtland report defines sustainable development as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987)."
A sustainable process can be maintained indefinitely without progressive diminution of value qualities inside or outside the system in which the process operates or the condition prevails (Soberon et al. 2000).
Sustainability is the capability of natural systems to maintain themselves while still being used. Sustainability = resource productivity + ecosystem maintenance = Capability (Bailey 2002).
Implicit within each of these definitions is the assumption that the recognition of when a resource has been compromised is commonly agreed upon. Often glossed over in scientific treatments of measures of sustainability is that the concept of sustainability is inherently a sociological construct (Suter 1993). There is tremendous variation of opinion of which desired qualities of forests are to be sustained and this variation often reflects personal goals and desires. Romm (1993) states that the term sustainable forest has no definition until the what-where-when-how-who, or the value perspective, is specified, whereas the term sustainable forestry can be defined as an adaptive social process that creates sufficient future forest opportunity to satisfy potentially competitive interests that would diminish the forest if left unresolved. If it is agreed that the concept of sustainability is a social construct that varies with each stakeholder and therefore inherently impossible to define, then is it valuable to turn the question around and ask, What isn't sustainable? Are there existing examples of unsustainable land use or forestry practices that we can identify? For example, two cases of unsustainable land use are 1) the massive amount of topsoil loss and erosion that occurred due to poor farming practices in the early 1900s in the southeastern United States (Johnston and Crossley, Jr. 2002) and 2) the shift of primary forests to savouka, or scrubland, following clearing and a short-term rotation in agriculture in northeastern Madagascar (Madson personal observation).
