Of all the criteria and indicators initiatives, the Montreal Process is geographically the largest in representation, encompassing most of the world's temperate and boreal forests. Other initiatives include the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (Pan-European Process); the Tarapoto Proposal for Amazon Basin countries; the Central America, Near East and Dry Zone Africa regional initiatives and the International Tropical Timber Organization, which pioneered work on criteria and indicators for sustainable tropical forest management as early as 1990. The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has played a leading role in fostering the development of many regional criteria and indicators processes.

There are also criteria and indicators processes that address forest operations at the local level. There is a relationship between field management level criteria and indicators and national level criteria and indicators, but they are not one in the same. Field management unit level criteria and indicators are being developed to monitor the quality of forest management activities and may result directly or indirectly in the process of certifying field operations. In time, national level and field management unit level process will complement each other; however, there currently exists a fair degree of confusion between efforts at various scales due in part to the similarity of the terminology and the ultimate goal of assessing progress towards sustainable forest management.

Back to top Background and Resource Sites
These sites provide a general understanding of criteria and indicators:

• History of the relationship of sustainable development, sustainable forest management, and the development of criteria and indicators.
  
  
• Primary international discussion on sustainable forest management--UN's Intergovernmental Forum on Forests
  
  
• Montreal Process (criteria and indicators for non-European temperate and boreal forests).
  
  
• Pan-European Process (criteria and indicators for European temperate and boreal forests).
  
  
• Intergovernmental Seminar on Experts on Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management
  
  
• International Conference on Criteria and Indicators (CICI) - 2003
  
  
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
  
  
• US Forest Service site index page for the Agency's sustainability sites.
  
  
• US Forest Service International Programs newsletter on domestic implementation of criteria and indicators.
  
  
• Crosswalk 1: Linkages Between the IPF/IFF Proposals for Action and Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators (in PDF Format. Please download Adobe Acrobat reader to view the file.)
  
  

• Crosswalk 2: Linkages Between the Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators
  and the IPF/IFF Proposals for Action (in PDF Format. Please download Adobe Acrobat reader to view the file.)

• "The Future of Our Forests: Clarifying the Debate" (A PowerPoint Presentation - 3.88MB)

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Practitioner's Tips and Case Studies
The following sites provide technical resources and case studies of the use of national and state level criteria and indicators:

National and state level criteria and indicators
The following sites provide technical resources and case studies for the use of national level criteria and indicators:

National Level

• U.S. National Report on Sustainable Forests
  
  
• Papers from the Intergovernmental Seminar on Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management (August 19-22).
  
  
• Technical material produced to guide use of the Montreal Process criteria and indicators
  
  
• Report on the institutional capacity of the United States to report on the Montreal Process criteria and indicators (1997)

State Level

• National Association of State Foresters Position Statement - (2003)
  (Principles and Guides for Well Managed Forests)
  
  
• Oregon's First Approximation Report for Forest Sustainability

Field management unit level criteria and indicators
The following are sites that deal with field management unit level criteria and indicators:

• U.S. Forest Service tests Local Unit Criteria & Indicators on six national forests, Mexico and the Middle East
  
  
• Canadian Model Forest Network with local level indictors for each forest

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