In 1992, the UNCED meeting signaled an unprecedented global consensus on the urgent need to find real, practical, and sustainable solutions to the serious environmental challenges facing the planet. It was there that the IMFN was announced and work began to demonstrate what a sustainable development agenda could look like when translated into action in a defined forested landscape.

 

By the late 1990s, it became clear that working in voluntary partnerships was leading to reductions in conflict among stakeholders, new ideas on sustainable economic development and poverty alleviation, new thinking about the relationship between conservation areas and the communities in and around them, and more focused application of existing resources. In fact, the model forest approach was being used to address many more issues than originally conceived as local-level partnerships throughout the world devised their own strategies on how to translate the policies of sustainable forest management (SFM) into practice. The relevance of what model forests are doing to national and international policy objectives is striking.  A number of examples are highlighted below.

 

National forest programs (NFPs): Many, if not most, of the guidelines describing NFPs are found in model forests — their partnership and participatory mechanism, ecosystem context, focus on local community and indigenous stakeholders, and respect for land tenure and national sovereignty. Model forests and NFPs also share guidelines for the development of criteria and indicators, capacity-building, and active development of international linkages. In addition, as all model forests have the support of national or appropriate sub-national governmental bodies — an essential component for an NFP — national support of an enabling environment for SFM through a local stakeholder group is in place.

 

Model forests can provide a cost-effective way to test and refine key NFP objectives for a given landscape or in a given watershed, rather than beginning on a national scale. This experimentation allows for lower risk — and lower-cost — development.

 

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Ensuring environmental sustainability means integrating “the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs [and reversing] the loss of environmental resources” (source: www.un.org/millenniumgoals). A model forest represents a place, a partnership, and a process to do just that, to affect people’s lives in tangible and positive ways by reversing environmental degradation through research and science; providing training and alternative economic opportunities; and encouraging conservation and reforestation programs.

 

The number one MDG is poverty alleviation. Because the partnerships themselves determine their priorities within the context of sustainability, model forests in developing countries consistently place issues of governance and poverty alleviation at the top of their lists, tackling these concerns in creative, effective, and collaborative ways. Moreover, they are also active in promoting gender equity (goal 3), ensuring environmental sustainability (goal 7), and developing a global partnership for development (goal 8) through the IMFN.

 

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD): One of the key agreements adopted at UNCED was the CBD. It sets out “commitments for maintaining the world's ecological underpinnings as we go about the business of economic development” (source: www.biodiv.org/doc/publications/guide.asp). Every model forest in the IMFN encompasses landscape areas with significant conservation or preservation values, such as national parks, biosphere reserves, or world heritage forests. Some contain species at risk, such as the Siberian tiger or the grizzly bear. Working at a landscape or ecosystem level allows partners to see and understand their environment without borders, which is a precondition for developing strategies to reduce forest fragmentation, enhance wildlife habitat, and develop collaborative strategies with local communities for managing biodiversity, while also recognizing the legitimate needs of those communities to derive benefit from the land. In this sense, model forests can be seen as responding very strongly to the spirit and intent of the CBD.

 

Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): Other global instruments designed to halt and reverse environmental degradation can also be put into operation through model forest partnerships. For example, the Sabana Yegua Model Forest in the Dominican Republic faces the looming crisis of a disappearing forest and loss of water for rural and urban users, problems well known across its border in Haiti. It is applying the model forest approach to advance strategies and programs to ensure that this does not happen.

 

On another front, the Canadian Model Forest Network (CMFN) recognizes that climate change has the potential to alter forest ecosystems and wildlife habitats rapidly — affecting the future of forests and the communities that depend on them. Its model forests are cooperating in an initiative aimed at helping communities gauge their vulnerabilities and identify strategies to reduce potential impacts. Through the IMFN, Canada will share its experience with others, contributing to global discussions surrounding this important topic.

 

United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF): The UNFF seeks to focus forest sustainability issues in a coherent and comprehensive manner and continues to work with UN member states and institutions to facilitate implementation of the more than 270 proposals for action developed through the IPF/IFF process. These proposals have been bundled into thematic groupings; model forests — in one respect or another — are involved in all of them. They include such themes as economic aspects of forests, traditional forest related knowledge, forest-related scientific knowledge, social and cultural aspects of forests, and criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management. In the area of innovative financial mechanisms, model forests have been notably successful in leveraging an extensive array of financial, technical, and political resources at all levels from local to international.

 

In its final statement, the XII World Forestry Congress (Québec, 2003) called for industry, governments, environmental groups, and individuals to pursue sustainable development of forest resources through participatory processes; equitable and transparent governance structures; collaborative partnerships; research, education, and capacity-building; sustainable economic development; and the creation of criteria and indicators for SFM and forest certification schemes. Each of these elements is reflected in the model forest approach, and locally based partnerships around the world now have over a decade of experience in how to do this.