The Montreal Process and sustainable management of New Zealand's forests

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Sustainable forest management aims to manage forests for all their values: economic; sociocultural; and ecological and physical. This is a holistic approach. Countries participating in the Montreal Process, an international forestry initiative, have endorsed a set of criteria and indicators that reflect such an approach. With this in mind, this project appraises how the criteria and indicators could contribute to the sustainable management of New Zealand's forests. As an information and monitoring tool, the criteria and indicators present an opportunity to contribute to the policy cycle and public debate. Several obstacles and opportunities within the current New Zealand context influence the extent to which this opportunity is realised. The obstacles are: • a dichotomous interpretation of sustainable forest management, where economic values are obtained from plantation forests and other values are obtained from indigenous forests; and • the lack of a mechanism for integrating the information into the policy cycle and public debate. The opportunities are: • the Government's 2010 Strategy • other monitoring programmes; and • the Ministry of Forestry's approach to the Montreal Process. To overcome the obstacles and take advantage of the opportunities, a conceptual framework for further research comprising three possible stages is proposed. To ensure the Montreal Process criteria and indicators are able to contribute to the sustainable management of New Zealand's forests, the Ministry of Forestry and other national participants in the Montreal Process should consider the following recommendations based on the conceptual framework.