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Application of Multi-Criteria Methods in Natural Resource Management - A Focus on Forestry

Natural resource management refers to the management of natural resources such as land, water, soil, plants, and animals, which in accordance with the concept of sustainable development, a distinct emphasis puts on the way the management affects both present and future generations. In management and utilization of forests and forest land, as one of the most significant natural resources, the principle of the sustainable development is incorporated in a way that adheres to biological diversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and potential of the forests to fulfil, now and in the future, its important economical, ecological and social functions. Forest resources and benefits that derive from them represent an important part in fulfilling the needs of humanity for energy, raw materials and quality of life. These benefits cover a broad range of goods and services. Among other, they include: wood, recreation, water, soil preservation, clean air, game, scenic beauty, etc. Many of such benefits and services can be simultaneously gained from a single forest stand. And even though many countries have legislative regulations that prescribe the course of forest management and/or protection of certain forest functions, there are still many debates on the issue how to manage forests and to which purposes. In general, we could say that today the basic postulate of forest management is multifunctional or multiple use of forests. It represents the manner in which the most of many different functions of forests are being utilized. In that sense, forest management should enable the most prudent usage of forests and forest land to provide some or all of respective products and services, while ensuring productivity and stability of forest ecosystems at the same time. In realizing these goals careful planning and decision making play a major role, and are considered to be especially significant for effective natural resource management and achieving the principles of sustainable development. Planning and decision making in forest management represent a very complex task mainly because of the multitude and a broad spectre of criteria enrolled in the decision making process. That means that any decision making is under many different influences, and that at the same time every decision made affects many criteria of different nature. These influences and criteria encompass (Diaz-Balteiro & Romero 2008): a) economical issues – wood production, non-wood forest products (forest trees fruits and flowers, seeds, mushrooms, honey, resin, humus) livestock, game management, hunting ; b) ecological and environmental issues – soil erosion, watershed regulation, biodiversity conservation, carbon sink, scenic beauty, influence on climate ; c) social issues – recreational activities, tourism, level of employment, rural development, population settlement etc. Moreover, the complexity of a large proportion of forestry issues is increasing due to the way in which different interest and social groups and organizations perceive the relative importance of specific criteria and appraise the management of forests, and thus judge the “quality” of forest resources management. The importance of specific criteria and evaluation of forest management in that sense depend on the personal standpoints and opinions of each individual i.e. group. Examples of such subjective assessments are often related to scenic beauty or recreational value of a certain forest area, or for example to game management and hunting. So, while someone preffers a specific game species and specific type of hunting, someone may want different kind of game and hunting, and someone else may be absolutely against hunting at all. Similar evaluations of forest management are related to the logging and creating certain revenue on the one hand and the protection and conservation of forests on the other hand. All of the above mentioned daily increases the complexity of forest management, hinders the performance of forest operations and hardens the management conditions making the planning and decision making in forestry very demanding. And while in the past decision making and management in forestry have frequently been performed on the basis of common sense and/or past experiences, today's forestry with multiple criteria and functions calls for more flexible decision support. The complexity of today's business environment in forestry, the imperative of continuous increase of business and ecological efficiency, and multiple stakeholders with different interests impose the necessity to use new models and more precise methods. In that kind of a situation the joint use of multi-criteria decision making methods and different techniques of group decision making are becoming an important and potentially desirable way for solving forestry issues. It is considered that multi-criteria decision models and methods can provide to modern forestry, which has multiple aims and tasks, and multitude of interest groups with often conflicting interests, a strong and flexible support to decision making. Development and application of such methods that haven't traditionally been used in forestry could provide to management a new tool which can be a valuable aid both on strategic and operational level of decision making. The emphasis in doing so, is on the fact that decision proposals and decisions made must be based on the rational arguments. This paper provides an overview of certain multi-criteria methods which can be used as a support for planning and decision making in forestry. Several methods of multiple-criteria decision making have been described and compared. Brief description and comparison presented in the paper includes following multi-criteria methods: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), outranking methods, voting methods and Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA). The paper also gives a brief overview and analysis of problems and forest areas where multicriteria methods have been applied so far. The intention was to explain for which types of tasks and problems these methods can be applied in the field of forestry. That provides an insight into characteristics of the respective methods and a guideline to eventual choice of which method to apply. Many of the articles cited in the paper provide information on the existing experiences, reflect the actual role and significance of multi-criteria decision making in forestry and represent a valuable reference source that can be beneficial to students, researchers, experts and practitioners in forestry. The main aim of the paper is to raise the forestry profession's awareness about the importance and potential role that multi-criteria decision making can play in forestry. Concrete examples of the carried out investigations provide an insight into the possibilities, suitability and justification of the application of multi-criteria methods.

Multi-criteria decision making, forestry, forest management, planning in forestry, MCDM methods, DEA, AHP

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