Challenges in Sustainability

Abstract: The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a voluntary sustainability standard with global reach that has been developed to encourage responsible and sustainable forest management. Despite its broad appeal, there is little scientific assessment to substantiate the effectiveness of FSC in the boreal zone. In this study, an ecosystem-based and participatory approach was applied to a case study in the Arkhangelsk Region of the Russia Federation to assess the potential influence of the principles, criteria and indicators of the Russian FSC standard. An ECOSEFFECT theoretical plausibility analysis was conducted to evaluate the potential effectiveness of FSC in safeguarding the ecological integrity of the ecosystem. Besides spatial analysis and a field visitation, core elements of the methodological procedure were workshops with experts and stakeholders who directly contributed to knowledge mapping and analysis. The results of the study suggest FSC can potentially influence and improve forest management including monitoring and evaluation, foster the institutional capacity, and enhance knowledge on the impacts of forest management. Theoretically, FSC has a certain potential to reduce a range of anthropogenic threats to the ecosystem, such as large-scale deforestation and forest degradation, logging of High Conservation Value Forests, large size of clear-cuts, excessive annual allowable cuts, damage to trees during forest operations, and hydrological changes. However, human-induced fire is the only ecological stress that was assumed to be effectively tackled through a strong and positive influence of FSC. The results of the theoretical analysis with a semi-quantitative evaluation revealed the potential for FSC to generate much more effective outcomes for biodiversity by prudently targeting key ecological problems. The biggest problem is the large-scale clear-cutting practice, especially within IFL. These devastating practices are not promoted by, but are compliant with the current Russian FSC standard. This feeds doubts about the consistency of FSC practice and its credibility.

Abstract: Livability is a concept being applied to cities, even though it is vague. Worldwide, there are several livable city ranking schemes in use, which compare the livability of cities by making use of standardized indicator sets. The research presented here recognizes, as a point of departure, that each city is unique, implying that comparisons of cities by standardized categories only does not adequately reflect the reality of each city. A qualitative approach to identify context-specific categories of livability is proposed and employed to the case of Malmo ̈ in Sweden. Through interviews, nine context-specific categories were identified and visualized. The findings of the study demonstrate that a qualitative approach enables a more in-depth description of livability categories because it can capture and illustrate relationships among the categories. An explicit awareness of such relationships may provide a more holistic perspective to city officials and planners as they aim to improve the livability of their cities. The study concludes that a qualitative approach in identifying context-specific categories can complement existing assessment schemes and allow a better grasp of livability challenges to cities.