ABSTRACT

A significant effort has been under way since the 1992 Earth Summit to develop an international indicator framework for monitoring trends and conditions in forests and forest management. The effort, which has focused on “criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management” (FAO, 1999), has produced a set of remarkably comparable indicator frameworks (Wijewardena et al., 1997). Recently, the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD) proposed the development of a “uniform numerical indicator for each nation’s current forest capital” (WCFSD, 1999), suggesting that a “Forest Capital Index” (FCI) could be developed that would permit evaluation of progress in sustaining forest capital for each country; serve as a benchmark for assessing whether forest capital is increasing or declining; facilitate a global framework for valuation of forest ecosystem services; and create market mechanisms to compensate countries for ecological services.