Criterion 7. Legal, Institutional, and Economic Framework for Forest Conservation and
Sustainable Management
National Report on Sustainable Forests—2010
Indicator 7.54.
Extent to Which the Institutional Framework Supports the Conservation and Sustainable
Management of Forests, Including the Capacity To Enforce Laws, Regulations, and Guidelines
What is the indicator and why is it important?
Market processes allocate many forest resources. Laws, rules,
and regulations are needed, however, to provide the framework
necessary to maintain competitive markets even for private
forests, and more than one-third of U.S. forests are publicly
owned. Effective laws, regulations, and guidelines should
promote tenure rights, sustainable forest management, environmental protection, and a competitive market environment.
What does the indicator show?
Laws, regulations, and guidelines for sustainable forest
management in the United States are enforced adequately. U.S.
laws differ widely among regions and landowner types, ranging
from detailed laws and regulations for national forests and for
all lands governed by the State forest practice acts in the West
Coast to voluntary Best Management Practices in the Southern
and Midwestern States.
Federal Government forest lands have complex laws and policies
governing forest management, biodiversity, public input, and
workforce diversity. Private landowners must comply with
the relevant mandatory and voluntary standards. State forestry
agencies monitor compliance with forest practice acts, BMP
use, and water quality laws. These regulations directly affect
private and public lands, and may involve up to several thousand
inspections of forest operations each year in many States.
Education, technical assistance, and research are used to help
in the training of forestry professionals, monitoring of laws and
regulations, and continuous improvement of the mandatory and
voluntary practices. These policy mechanisms are used both
for the public and private forest land managers who implement
the laws, and for the professionals who monitor, inspect, and
enforce the rules and regulations.
Private sector firms comply with mandatory laws and with
voluntary guidelines. Frequent surveys have found that BMP
compliance rates are very high in all States, as is compliance
with laws and regulations. Similarly, forest certification
provides a clear means to demonstrate that private and public
forestry organizations conform to the standards and guidelines
for sustainable forest management.
What has changed since 2003?
No major Federal or outstanding laws have been enacted that
affect forest law enforcement and governance. Continued pressure on Federal budgets, as noted regarding the fire budgets,
may have reduced U.S. forest law enforcement capacity, but no
empirical studies are available. Compliance with Federal, State,
and local laws is a required indicator in all of the U.S. forest
certification systems.
Table 54-1. Policy and Governance Classification.
Mechanism
Nondiscretionary/mandatorya
Informational/educationalb
Discretionary/voluntaryc
Fiscal/economicd
Market basede
Scale:
National (N),
Regional (R),
State (S),
Local (L)
N, S, L
N, S, L
N, S, L
Approach
Prescriptive
L, R, I, G
Process or
Systems Based
L, R, I, G
E, R, T
Performance or
Outcome Based
Private
Enterprise
R
E, R, T
M, C
Laws (L), Regulations or Rules (R), International Agreements (I), Government Ownership or Production (G).
b
Education (E), Technical Assistance (T), Research (R), Protection (P), Analysis and Planning (A).
c
Best Management Practices (B), Self-regulation (S).
d
Incentives (I), Subsidies (S), Taxes (T), Payments for Environmental Service (P).
e
Free enterprise, private market allocation of forest resources (M), or market based instruments and payments, including forest certification (C) wetland banks (W), capand-trade (T), conservation easement or transfer of development rights (E).
a
Last Updated June 2011 1