Some Issues of Sustainability, 1995 Global Fiber Supply Symposium Proceedings

C. Denise Ingram

The challenge of developing sustainable forestry goals will be a long and hard, yet rewarding, challenge for present and future generations on this earth. Unfortunately, we often forget to establish first what we want to sustain before discussing how or whether we can sustain anything. This point is more than just an academic exercise. The potential for conflicting sustainability objectives is as relevant as the potential for successful alternatives, which often arise from conflict itself. For example, can we continue to provide wood-based energy for over 50% of the worlds population while maintaining genetic diversity of flora and fauna in the worlds forests? Can we sustain traditional economic development linked with establishing stable social and political communities while sustaining a diversity of forest ecosystems and other biological communities? At what level (quantity), condition (quality), and within what measure of time and space (scale) do we need to accomplish these or any other sustainability goals? Our success in answering these and similar questions is dependent on our understanding the relationships among significant variables which affect anticipated sustainable outcomes. The various local, national and global efforts to define and measure criteria and indicators of sustainable forestry are vehicles for improving our knowledge and understanding of forest resources and their interactions between human, environmental, and cultural resources. Our future will lie not so much in the specific physical or tangible goals that we may propose today, but in our ability to understand the implications of our choices, to maintain the flexibility to change with unexpected changing conditions, and to maintain an equitable distribution of expectations on a global scale.

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