Contexts and concepts of forest planning in a diverse and contradictory world

Forest planning is both a crucial and a microscopic field of education and research: crucial because it is hard to conceive of any forest management without long term planning and microscopic because only very limited manpower and resources are devoted to this field. The necessity of forest planning and the challenge to it are composed by rapid evolutions both in the way societies view forests and in technological and economic pressures on them. The paper proposes to review contemporary issues in the field of forest planning education and research. The “comfort zone” of classical approaches — techno-economic approaches concentrating on maximizing fluxes in the forest — is challenged in three directions. First, the foundations of forest planning are increasingly spread across different disciplinary fields. Second, the list of issues encompassed is rapidly expanding, for instance to risk analysis, public participation, biodiversity, new technologies and uses of wood, climate change, etc. Third, forest planning has to find its relevance in very contrasted societal needs and views regarding forests. By reviewing and attempting to order the multiple combinations between these various concepts of, and expectations from, forest planning, the paper attempts to map the landscape of a rapidly diversifying field.

Research highlights
► We consider forest planning as part of the extended sphere of economic activity.
► We then start from a definition of different kinds of society.
► We present a structured view of the contrasting viewpoints to be found at present.
► We discuss the implications on research and education.