An institutional evaluation of sustainable forest management in Flanders

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the existing Flemish institutional framework of sustainable forest management (SFM). The evaluation was performed using criteria and indicators that were based on the four-dimensional structure (discourse, rules, power and actors) of the policy arrangement approach. The data collection and analysis were done using a single representative case. The conclusions of the evaluation are mixed. The introduction of sustainable forest management is hampered by different perspectives on SFM and a fragmented network of many different owners with a clear asymmetrical distribution of trust and power. It is, however, enabled by the way that the most powerful and trusted actors in the network – the forest group and the forest service – have the same perspective on SFM perspective as the government. We expect that SFM can be achieved in the near future, although it remains a vulnerable situation.