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[Departement_IRSTEA]Territoires [TR1_IRSTEA]DTAM [Axe_IRSTEA]DTAM3-ECOPRA; Payments for Environmental Services (PES) implemented in forest-dependent subsistence-based economies can involve significant restrictions on the traditional use of forest resources. This implies changes in human-nature relations that affect the way people relate to forests, including their perception of why the forest is valuable. Such effect is scientifically relevant since the way people perceive forest values might influence their motivations to implement conservation practices. In this paper, we estimate the impact of a Cambodian PES scheme designed to conserve biodiversity on the perception of forest values and assess the correlation between specific perceived values and conservation behaviors. We conducted a household survey with PES participants (N = 205) and with non-participants living in control villages selected with propensity-score matching (N = 120). Our results show that the program had a significant impact on the perceived forest values, which changed from subsistence-related to money-related values. Our results suggest that these changes have consequences on the program long-term effectiveness, as individuals emphasizing money-related values reported significantly more frequently that they would break conservation rules after an eventual end of payments. We conclude that the PES program changed the way local populations relate to nature, following the pattern of motivation crowding-out described in the social psychology literature.

Recent decades have seen a rapid movement towards decentralising forest rights and tenure to local communities and indigenous groups in both developing and developed nations. Attribution of local and community rights to forests appears to be gathering increasing momentum in many tropical developing countries. Greater local control of forest resources is a response to the failure of government agencies to exercise adequate stewardship over forests and to ensure that the values of all stakeholders are adequately protected. We reviewed evidence of the impact of decentralised forest management on the biodiversity values of forests and conclude that special measures are needed to protect these values. There are trade-offs between shorter-term local needs for forest lands and products and longer-term global needs for biodiversity and other environmental values. We present evidence of local forest management leading to declining forest integrity with negative impacts on both local forest users and the global environment. We advocate greater attention to measures to ensure protection of biodiversity in locally-managed forests.

Approximately 85% of the global forest estate is neither formally protected nor in areas dedicated to intensive wood production (e.g., plantations). Given the spatial extent of unprotected forests, finding management approaches that will sustain their multiple environmental, economic, and cultural values and prevent their conversion to other uses is imperative. The major global challenge of native forest management is further demonstrated by ongoing steep declines in forest biodiversity and carbon stocks. Here, we suggest that an essential part of such management—supplementing the protection of large reserves and sensitive areas within forest landscapes (e.g., aquatic features)—is the adoption of the retention approach in forests where logging occurs. This ecological approach to harvesting provides for permanent retention of important selected structures (e.g., trees and decayed logs) to provide for continuity of ecosystem structure, function, and species composition in the postharvest forest. The retention approach supports the integration of environmental, economic, and cultural values and is broadly applicable to tropical, temperate, and boreal forests, adaptable to different management objectives, and appropriate in different societal settings. The widespread adoption of the retention approach would be one of the most significant changes in management practice since the onset of modern high-yield forestry. Fil: Lindenmayer, D.B.. The Australian National University,; Australia Fil: Franklin, J.F.. University of Washington; Estados Unidos Fil: Lõhmus, A.. University of Tartu; Estonia Fil: Baker, S.C.. University of Tasmania; Australia Fil: Bauhus, J.. Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg; Alemania Fil: Beese, W.. University of Vancouver; Canadá Fil: Brodie, A.. No especifíca; Fil: Kiehl, B.. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; Suecia Fil: Kouki, J.. University of Eastern Finland; Finlandia Fil: Martínez Pastur, Guillermo José. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas; Argentina Fil: Messier, C.. Université du Québec a Montreal; Canadá Fil: Neyland, M.. University of Tasmania; Australia Fil: Palik, B.. No especifíca; Fil: Sverdrup Thygeson, A.. Norwegian University of Life Sciences; Noruega Fil: Volney, J.. Canadian Forest Service; Canadá Fil: Wayne, A.. No especifíca; Fil: Gustafsson, L.. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; Suecia

Many indicators and criteria have been proposed to assess the sustainable management of forests but their scientific validity remains uncertain. Because the effects of forest disturbances (such as logging) are often specific to particular species, sites, landscapes, regions and forest types, management "shortcuts" such as indicator species, focal species and threshold levels of vegetation cover may be of limited generic value. We propose an alternative approach based on a set of five guiding principles for biodiversity conservation that are broadly applicable to any forested area: (1) the maintenance of connectivity; (2) the maintenance of landscape heterogeneity; (3) the maintenance of stand structural complexity; and (4) the maintenance of aquatic ecosystem integrity; (5) the use of natural disturbance regimes to guide human disturbance regimes. We present a checklist of measures for forest biodiversity conservation that reflects the multi-scaled nature of conservation approaches on forested land. At the regional scale, management should ensure the establishment of large ecological reserves. At the landscape scale, off-reserve conservation measures should include: (1) protected areas within production forests; (2) buffers for aquatic ecosystems; (3) appropriately designed and located road networks; (4) the careful spatial and temporal arrangement of harvest units; and (5) appropriate fire management practices. At the stand level, off-reserve conservation measures should include: (1) the retention of key elements of stand structural complexity (e.g., large living and dead trees with hollows, understorey thickets, and large fallen logs); (2) long rotation times (coupled with structural retention at harvest); (3) silvicultural systems alternative to traditional high impact ones (e.g., clearcutting in some forest types); and (4) appropriate fire management practices and practices for the management of other kinds of disturbances. Although the general ecological principles and associated checklist are intuitive, data to evaluate the effectiveness of many specific on-the-ground management actions are limited. Considerable effort is needed to adopt adaptive management "natural experiments" and monitoring to: (1) better identify the impacts of logging operations and other kinds of management activities on biodiversity, and; (2) quantify the effectiveness of impact mitigation strategies; and (3) identify ways to improve management practices. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Many indicators and criteria have been proposed to assess the sustainable management of forests but their scientific validity remains uncertain. Because the effects of forest disturbances (such as logging) are often specific to particular species, sites, landscapes, regions and forest types, management “shortcuts” such as indicator species, focal species and threshold levels of vegetation cover may be of limited generic value. We propose an alternative approach based on a set of five guiding principles for biodiversity conservation that are broadly applicable to any forested area: (1) the maintenance of connectivity; (2) the maintenance of landscape heterogeneity; (3) the maintenance of stand structural complexity; and (4) the maintenance of aquatic ecosystem integrity; (5) the use of natural disturbance regimes to guide human disturbance regimes.We present a checklist of measures for forest biodiversity conservation that reflects the multi-scaled nature of conservation approaches on forested land. At the regional scale, management should ensure the establishment of large ecological reserves. At the landscape scale, off-reserve conservation measures should include: (1) protected areas within production forests; (2) buffers for aquatic ecosystems; (3) appropriately designed and located road networks; (4) the careful spatial and temporal arrangement of harvest units; and (5) appropriate fire management practices. At the stand level, off-reserve conservation measures should include: (1) the retention of key elements of stand structural complexity (e.g., large living and dead trees with hollows, understorey thickets, and large fallen logs); (2) long rotation times (coupled with structural retention at harvest); (3) silvicultural systems alternative to traditional high impact ones (e.g., clearcutting in some forest types); and (4) appropriate fire management practices and practices for the management of other kinds of disturbances.Although the general ecological principles and associated checklist are intuitive, data to evaluate the effectiveness of many specific on-the-ground management actions are limited. Considerable effort is needed to adopt adaptive management “natural experiments” and monitoring to: (1) better identify the impacts of logging operations and other kinds of management activities on biodiversity, and; (2) quantify the effectiveness of impact mitigation strategies; and (3) identify ways to improve management practices.