Susanna Sironen

Mixing methods – assessment of potential benefits for natural resources planning

Multi-objective forest planning is a multi-methodological endeavor whose success largely depends on how well the combined use of different methods contributes to the goals of the planning. This review assessed the benefits of mixing methods in natural resources planning. A sample of 30 peer-reviewed research articles was analyzed using an evaluation framework, designed based on democracy and planning theories, and participatory planning literature, including four dimensions: transparency, flexibility, consensus building, and operability. According to analyses, mixing different types (i.e. qualitative and quantitative) of methods generally yields greater benefits than the combination of similar methods. The subsample of 12 planning cases that utilized simulation-optimization software (SOS) appeared operable and moderately transparent, whereas flexibility and consensus building were often lacking. In comparison to the wide scholarly discussion on multi-methodology and mixing methods, it was observed that successful mixing examples in natural resource planning are still scarce and there are weaknesses in bridging the methods together. There is an evident need to pursue and to better communicate the benefits of mixing. Some good mixing examples utilizing SOS provided evidence that forest planning processes would make an excellent venue for studying the benefits and caveats of using mixed methods.

Towards more non-compensatory sustainable society index

A sustainable society index (SSI) developed by the Sustainable Society Foundation (SSF) has been designed to measure the sustainability of 151 countries over the world in terms of human, environmental and economic well-being dimensions. The purpose of SSF’s SSI is to share global, integrated and scientifically based information and serve as a tool to measure the level of sustainability of a country in absolute terms and in comparison with other countries. The SSF provided the framework and the data for this study. The aims of this study were to test different alternatives that would enable to take interactions of the sustainability indicators into account and accomplish a more non-compensatory composite index, which presents more of a stronger sustainability view instead of weak sustainability. The tested methods included additive aggregation rule with interaction terms for the indicators, multiplicative aggregation rule, weighting of the decision hierarchy and constructing piecewise linear models with threshold values to calculate the indicator scores for each country from the raw data. The acquired results were compared to the redesigned SSI-2012 developed by the SSF. According to the results of this study, the new framework and geometric mean used as aggregation method in the redesigned SSF’s SSI-2012 did not fully succeed in its aims towards more non-compensatory composite index. The results of the tested methods showed that the most useful manner to construct composite indices such as SSI would be the use of multiplicative aggregation rule applying weighting based on expert elicitation, and constructing new calculation rules with thresholds for the indicator scores, thus considering the strong sustainable view already at the level of indicator scores. However, all these issues need further studying and development including new comprehensive weighting task, expert judgment task for determining the threshold values and constructing the piecewise models for calculation of the indicator scores.

Is enhanced biodiversity protection conflicting with ambitious bioenergy targets in eastern Finland

The study describes how qualitative stakeholder feedback can be used in quantitative scenarios to simulate forest resource use under alternative management objectives. In earlier studies in the region of eastern Finland, stakeholders did not see a possible conflict between increased bioenergy use and nature conservation; this finding is contrary to the results of other studies. The aim of this study was to test with a quantitative modelling approach whether the stakeholder expectation holds and whether forest management in eastern Finland can simultaneously increase biomass utilization and biodiversity protection. Prior to this study, three alternative scenarios on forest resource use were created in a participatory stakeholder process, involving a broad range of stakeholders, with half of them being from research and education. In the current study, a large-scale forest resource planning model (MELA) and a sustainability impact assessment tool (ToSIA) were used to simulate the different alternative scenarios and present the results back to the stakeholders in order to evaluate them. The scenarios were evaluated by stakeholders using multi-criteria analysis. In a survey, the stakeholders indicated that biodiversity, employment, recreational value and greenhouse gas emissions were the most important indicators to them, whereas growing stock, amount of harvested roundwood, energy wood and protected forest area were considered less important. Of the created scenarios, the scenario combining bioenergy and biodiversity targets was the most preferred by the stakeholders as it performed well on those indicators that were identified by stakeholders as the most important. In this scenario, the area of protected forest and bioenergy production were increased simultaneously. With this study we offer a framework for evaluating different alternatives for future land use. The framework helps to identify key issues that are important to the stakeholders so that they can be taken into consideration in future land-use planning. In addition, the results confirm the stakeholder expectation that by protecting more forests while simultaneously increasing the mobilization of potentially available wood resources, both targets can be met without compromising too much other forest functions such as timber production and recreation.