The Measurement of Ecological Sustainability on Community Forest Management

Based on the participatory approach, the criteria and indicators on the measurement of the ecological sustainability of community forest management were built in 9 villages of 3 townships in Lin’an, Zhejiang of China. Combined with experts’ methods, the weights, thresholds and score methods of indicators were also developed and the ecological sustainability on forest management was measured under the hierarchical structure in 3 townships. The assessment system was composed of 11 indicators belonging to the criteria of the conservation of biodiversity, maintenance of forest productivity, maintenance of forest health, and environment response on the forest management. The verifiers under the indicators were established so as to collect and quantify the data. The assessment results showed that ecological sustainability scores in the townships of Changhua, Gaohong and Lin’mu in 1994 and 2002 were 5.65, 5.64, 4.68 and 5.09, 5.47, 6.88 respectively, which increased by -0.18%, 8.76% and 25.78% respectively. Compared with the other 2 townships, the ecological sustainability in Lin’an has increased a lot in the past decade. The score on ecological sustainability in 3 townships in 1994 and 2002 was higher than 5 which was defined as good forest management before testing, which showed the forest management in Lin’an is in the state of good condition, but there is a long to get the ideal condition towards sustainable forest management.