Using Goal-Programming to Model the Effect of Stakeholder Determined Policy and Industry Changes on the Future Management of and Ecosystem Services Provision by Ireland’s Western Peatland Forests

Edwin Corrigan,Maarten Nieuwenhuis

doi:10.3390/su9010011

Abstract

Recent studies have highlighted land-use conflicts between stakeholder groups in Ireland. Some of these conflicts can be attributed to European directives, designed with sustainable forest management principles in mind, but imposing incoherencies for land-owners and stakeholders at the local level. This study, using Ireland’s Western Peatland forests as a case study area, focused on the development and implementation of a goal programming model capable of analysing the long term impact of policy and industry changes at the landscape level. The model captures the essential aspects of the changes identified by local level stakeholders as influencing forest management in Ireland and determines the future impact of these changes on ecosystem services provisions. Initially, a business as usual potential future is generated. This is used as a baseline against which to compare the impact of industry and policy changes. The model output indicated that the current forest composition is only really suited to satisfy a single, financial objective for forest management. The goal programming model analysed multiple objectives simultaneously and the results indicated that the stakeholders’ desired ecosystem service provisions in the future will be more closely met by diversifying the forest estate and/or by changing to an alternative, non-forest land-use on less productive areas.

Highlights

Proper implementation of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) will depend on an acceptable balance between the three pillars of SFM, i.e., the economic, ecological and the social, as quantified by their indicators [1,2,3]
As these choices depend to a large extent on the forest composition for each owner type (OT), which is quite different at the start of the planning horizon, presenting the results by OT is not very useful within the context of this paper
In all potential futures (PF), management approaches changed away from the traditional forest management approach that currently dominates in the Western Peatlands

Summary

Introduction

Proper implementation of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) will depend on an acceptable balance between the three pillars of SFM, i.e., the economic, ecological and the social, as quantified by their indicators [1,2,3]. It has been suggested that Ecosystem Services (ESs), a utilitarian concept, may prove useful to identify this balance [5]. The origin of the concept dates back to the late 1960s [7] It was used in the 1970s to capture public interest in terms of biodiversity conservation [8]. The WPs is a popular tourism destination Water based activities such as fishing and leisure cruising are predominant tourism attractions in the area. Excellent water quality for salmonid fish stocks is essential for tourism, and forest management planning needs to address concerns about the impacts of forest operations on the viability of populations of the threatened freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera margaritifera), a species native to Ireland

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Discussion

Conclusion