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In most jurisdictions, the rule of law has been the core instrument used to implement rules, regulations and restrictions relating to forests. The results of this approach have relied on the effectiveness of the system for regulating through monitoring and reporting. Despite the obvious differences in the wider operating environment of forestry internationally, issues related to globalization have increased the need for comparison. The potential impact of certain social, economic and environmental differences on the nature of monitoring and information reporting is, therefore, important to forest policy and management. The analysis presented here considered data associated with forestry-related monitoring and information reporting to provide a comparative description of certain hard-law requirements in a sample of jurisdictions. This was done to shed light on the potential for coordinated monitoring and information reporting objectives to be mandated through inter-jurisdictional hard law. Our research suggests that further comparative analysis of hard law monitoring and information reporting requirements could form a central theme in defining the âground rulesâ of a global forest law.

A range of different indices are available for assessing the health of trees in forests. An even larger range can be used for the assessment of the health of forest ecosystems. Most studies made in connection with âforest declineâ and the impact of air pollution and other environmental stresses on forests have concentrated on the assessment of crown transparency and crown discoloration in individual trees. These are non-specific indicators which are now known to be sometimes of relatively little value when determining the health of a forest ecosystem. Numerous problems exist with both, and the standardisation of assessments between and even within countries has not been achieved. Consequently, studies claiming to compare âdefoliationâ between different countries cannot be substantiated. The emphasis on crown transparency and crown discoloration has resulted in the neglect of a number of other indices that could be of considerable value. These include a variety of visual measures of crown condition and also several non-visual bioindicators. Some of these techniques are objective, reducing the present reliance on observed standardization. A large number of potential techniques are currently at the research stage and have yet to be adequately tested in field trials. This represent an area where a substantial amount of further research is required.