The evaluation of Artvin regional directorate of forestry in terms of criteria & indicators in sustainable forest management

Abstract

Depending on increasing population and developing industry, the demand for natural sources has gained variations increasingly. Structural degeneration of forests, fragmentation of forests, formation of isolated areas, and decrease in biological diversity have guided the countries towards agreeing in a common point. After biological diversity agreement, the concept of sustainable forest management (SFM), which is defined in international process, appeared. SFM is monitoring the conditions of forest sources numerically by introducing new standards to the world forestry with six or seven criteria and over thirty contingent indicators. Our country, due to its geographical location, has been involved in Pan Europe and Near East processes and it has been following its forests with 6 criteria and 28 indicators which appeared in this processes. In the new process, Turkey aims to take place in the world scale by increasing the quality standards as a result of increasing certified forests and developing economy in all fields with 150 years of knowledge about forestry. In this paper, SFM criteria and indicators set in Turkey (C&I) is discussed and international processes and the concept of SFM have been summarized. Correspondingly, the status of Artvin Regional Forest Directorate was evaluated according to the current set of C&I on the bases of last five years. Sustainability of Artvin Regional Directorate of Forestry has been introduced with scoring system by accepting the whole country values as a threshold.