Multi-stakeholder assessment of forest sustainability: Multi-criteria analysis and the case of the Ontario forest assessment system

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of methods for assessing forest sustainability, and describes an extranet World Wide Web forest assessment system. A general assessment approach, multi-criteria analysis (MCA), is briefly described. One of the MCA methods, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is the method used for the computer-assisted assessment system, is described in more detail. The primary MCA/AHP innovation is multi-stakeholder assessment with a stratification process. This web-distributed assessment system, that was designed to meet Ontario's provincial state of the forest criteria and indicators forest health assessment need, may be suitable for use in other jurisdictions with similar conditions. Key words: multi-criteria analysis, forest sustainability, multi-stakeholder assessment, criteria and indicators