Inventory-based monitoring initiatives to support C & I are the main inter- national actions that have been developed to address the issue of conservation of biodiversity and sustainable forest management since the Rio Summit. While such C & I initiatives have been largely developed and conducted in the context of the boreal and temperate forests of the developed nations (MCPFE and the Montreal Process), there are widespread arguments for the harmonization of standards of C & I inventories across the globe. Hence, what has been done in monitoring for biodiversity conservation in non-tropical forests has a direct bearing on what might be considered should be done in monitoring biodiversity conservation in tropical forests. We therefore consider how the indicators used in the MCPFE and the Montreal Process C & I inventory-based initiatives, as well as the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and Food and Agricul- ture Organization (FAO) C & I programmes (which have a specific tropical forest
remit), might be regarded as adequate for addressing the task of monitoring tropical forest tree species diversity for conservation purposes.
MCPFE
Within Europe, the Ministerial Conference for the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE [6]), first met in 1990 (pre-dating the Rio Summit), with the main function being to monitor European national biodiversity resources, and with the putative aim of achieving sustainable forest management. The monitor- ing methodology has involved traditional forest inventory combined with the C & I approach (see [8] for the UK report).
The MCPFE C & I methodology (‘Improved Pan-European Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management’ [7]) was adopted by the MCPFE Expert Level Meeting in Vienna in 2002. Its Criterion 4 for ‘Maintenance, Conservation and Appropriate Enhancement of Biological Diversity in Forest Ecosystems’ specifies:
4.1 Tree species composition: Area of forest and other wooded land, classified by number of tree species occurring and by forest type.
4.3 Naturalness: Area of forest and other wooded land, classified by ‘undisturbed by man’, by ‘semi-natural’ or by ‘plantations’, each by forest type.
These indicators, designed for European forests, are not appropriate for tropical forests, and were not meant to be.
The Montreal Process (MP)
Following the Rio Summit, a workshop in Montreal in 1993 focused specifically on criteria and indicators, and how they might help define and measure progress towards sustainable development of boreal and temperate forests. Countries with tropical forests (Brazil and the nations of Africa and of South and South-East Asia) were not initially included. The Montreal Process formally began in 1994, in Geneva, with the first meeting of the Working Group on Criteria and Indicators for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Temperate and Boreal Forests [9]. The MP Indicators for forest tree species diversity are:
3.1 (a) The number of forest dependent species, (b) The status (threatened, rare, vulnerable, endangered, or extinct) of forest dependent species at risk of not maintaining viable breeding populations, as determined by legislation or scientific assessment.
These are realistic and measurable in the context of the boreal and temperate forests with which the MP is concerned, but not so for tropical forests. Abee (Chapter 5, this volume) describes how the MP C & I have been an integrative framework for multiple-resource and multiple-objective planning and decision making in the US. Seelyet al. (2004) make use of a C & I approach, in conjunc- tion with an ecosystem model-based approach, to demonstrate an effective multi-resource management strategy in Canada. However, the differing eco- nomic and social conditions in the developing countries, as well as the difficulty
in monitoring biodiversity in tropical forests, mean that these North American models for the application of MP C & I are very unlikely to be relevant or applicable in developing countries.
Dudley and Stolton (2003) say:
A global total of temperate and boreal forest ‘undisturbed by man’ of somewhere between 40 and 55% disguises the fact that the bulk of this is concentrated in a few, mainly northern boreal forest ecosystem types and that many temperate forests ecosystems have little or no natural forest remaining . . . For a substantial number of countries (and by implication for whole forest eco-regions) there are now no forest areas large enough or natural enough for country correspondents to consider them worth recording. Seventeen countries recorded no forest at all that is ‘undis- turbed by man’ and a further 12 recorded less than 1 per cent.
While the legacy of forest diversity of the limited remaining forests undisturbed by man is clearly worth preserving in the temperate and boreal regions, it would seem that the Montreal Process or MCPFE C & I Inventories have little to offer the major challenges we face in relation to the monitoring or conservation of biodiversity of tropical forests.
International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO)
The aim of ITTO is the promotion of the conservation and sustainable manage- ment, use and trade of tropical forest resources. ITTO stresses the importance of estimates of accuracy of reported indicators [10]. On species diversity conser- vation, its main criteria are:
5.3 Existence and implementation of procedures to identify and protect endan- gered, rare and threatened species of forest-dependent flora and fauna.
5.4 Number of endangered, rare and threatened forest-dependent species.
These are worthwhile goals, but it is clear from previous discussion that any prac- tical implementation will be very problematic. Corresponding to Criterion 5.4, the first row of ITTO (2005) ([6], Table 23) requests, as indicators, the numbers of endangered, protected and endemic tree species, and the names of the five most important species from these threatened species. Details on rare species are not requested, even though the table header is ‘Number of endangered, rare and threatened species’. IUCN (2001), in making a recommendation of what to do in circumstances of high uncertainty, says: ‘A precautionary attitude will classify a taxon (species) as threatened unless it is certain that it is not threatened . . . Assessors should adopt a precautionary but realistic attitude to uncertainty when applying the criteria.’ Following this principle, it seems that alarm bells should be ringing for forest management operations in virtually any natural tropical forest.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
FAO proposes the selection of indicator species to be simultaneously ‘representa- tive of the types of species found in the area’ and to be ‘those which are thought
to be most susceptible to adverse effects’. This is a worthwhile aim, but, as we have seen, it is not really feasible. FAO seems to suggest verifiers as a cheaper monitoring measure than that provided by indicators, but verifiers are at least as problematic for tropical forests as the FAO indicators.
FAO guidance on the selection of biodiversity indicators is rather vague, and therefore unsatisfactory:
Based on the information generated, and assessment of the probability that man- agement actions will reduce risks to sustainability, it is recommended to apply a decision making system to determine if the targeted species can be deemed to be managed sustainably or, at least, cannot be deemed to be threatened under the prevailing or proposed forest management system. As the species selection process is intended to identify those species which are highly susceptible to loss of genetic variation, it can be concluded that, if these species are found to be sustainable in the management system applied, the other species (which by definition are less vulnerable and less susceptible), are also in the same condition.
(FAO, 2002) The FAO has sponsored and documented both the Tarapoto and ATO C & I proposals in South America and Africa, respectively. They both aim to monitor endangered species, in order to ensure protection. These activities of FAO are all very important. However, few details are given on proposed opera- tional procedures for the measurement of these indicators, or the treatment of uncertainty.