**4.2 Perceptions among local communities**

214 Sustainable Forest Management – Case Studies

As described in section 2.3.3, the null and alternative hypotheses are associated to similar or different perceptions between stakeholders. The results show that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected for any of the pairs of experts and local populations (all p-values > 0, 05). Thus, the local populations have different perceptions of what they consider to be important ecological elements for a SFM compared to national and province experts, as well as local authorities represented by the district workshop. The *p*-value is at the limit of significance (0, 055) for the national and district workshops compared to the village Ban Bac 4. This is in

There are similar perceptions about SFM among villages, irrespective of the forest use type

Alike this study indicates, previous studies equally show that local and expert perceptions of indicators for sustainable forest management often differ, but that these differences decrease while concerning ecological indicators (Karjala et al., 2004; Purnomo et al., 2005; Pokharel and Larsen, 2007; Sherry et al., 2005; Adam and Kneeshaw, 2008). This has been explained by the fact that C&I processes always largely focus on environmental (not socioeconomic) issues, so that there is less disagreement in what should be included in a meaningful set of indicators for ecological sustainability: ecosystem condition, biodiversity and ecosystem services are nearly always included (Adam and Kneeshaw, 2008). Rural populations often not only depend on natural resources, they also inherit a thorough traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) (Karjala et al., 2004) about their surrounding environment which is often in accordance with expert formulations, even if the vocabulary is different. Requirements like water and soil protection, critical habitat preservation or

**3.3 Hypotheses testing** 

**4. Discussion** 

understand the concept.

accordance with the cluster dendrogram results (Fig. 6).

**4.1 Local and expert perceptions of sustainable forest management** 

productive functions of forests are the concerns of both local people and experts.

In fact, the differences in perception between experts and villages in this study are based for a non-negligible part on the genetic diversity concept. About 42 % of eliminated indicators (5 out of 12) concern the criterion of genetic diversity. The neglect of genetic issues by local populations can be attributed to a lack of knowledge and difficulties to

On the other hand, villagers added some elements which were considered as relevant, independently from their scientific importance. For instance, the elements leading to the addition of *"1.3.8 Pleasantness of environment"* as an indicator included the beauty of the landscape, air quality, temperature and provision of shade. Aesthetic issues have been identified in previous studies to be typical local requirements which are not integrated at the expert levels (Adam and Kneeshaw, 2008). Bottom-up approaches and TEK can thus be seen as a way to integrate and connect ecological issues with cultural and communal aspects. This integration of connections / interlinkages in some indicators could be an answer to recent critics about the strict structure and isolation of elements into ecological, social and economic issues (Adam and Kneeshaw, 2008; Mendoza and Prabhu, 2003; Requardt 2007). Further this result also confirms that expert sets fail to address particular values and needs of local populations. Elements generated by local communities can complement expert sets by adding valuable knowledge. Moreover, they can increase the legitimacy of those sets,

they manage (all p-values are < 0, 006) (Fig. 6).

Local populations of the villages where PRA was implemented had almost the same perceptions of ecological sustainability of forest management as shown in section 4.0 and there were no measurable differences resulting from the forest use type the villagers were managing. The existing discrepancy of one indicator (Tab. 3a and 3b) dealt with the significance of forests for protecting or mitigating soil degradation. Villages surrounded by protection forests never experienced landslides or soil degradation, ergo could not make the link between the presence of forests and the absence of soil degradation. This does not mean that the indicator is not applicable; it even makes it a suitable element, showing that protection forests actually really protect the soil. It can thus be discussed if future research has to consider forest use types as a meaningful subdivision in the sampling design or not.

The village Ban Bac 4, representing the outlier in all data analyses, was the village with the smallest forested area (10 ha), entirely young *Acacia spp.* plantations planted in 2006 and decimated by a disease in 2008. The government did not support new plantations since then, resulting in a general disinterest in forests. Therefore, forest area could be a key element influencing the correct implementation of PRA and the resulting lists.
