Conflict resolution in forest land use planning and management: The use of multi-stakeholder analysis

Formulating sustainable forest policy has become a crucial issue today with the increased awareness of global environmental problems including global warming and climate change. Conflict resolution in natural resource management and planning is recognized as an important aspect of participatory development. Policy decisions on the use and management of forest resources often engender controversy and conflict among various stakeholders. This chapter presents a multi-stakeholder model - a tool that can help to identify the sources of conflict - to facilitate conflict resolution in forest management and environmental conservation. The regional forest policy process of Australia is analyzed using this approach. The analysis elicits the value judgments and quantifies the critical tradeoffs in forest land uses in order to determine the most preferred forest land-use option for the region. The results indicate that this approach is useful in strategic forest planning exercises as well as forest advisory or citizen's committee settings. Further, the approach can enhance the transparency and therefore the credibility of the decision process, which is vital to conflict resolution. © 2012 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.