Techniques de gestion des écosystèmes forestiers tropicaux : état de l'art

The principle of sustained yield is a concept that has developed over many decades of forest management and research. This paper has been commissioned by FAO on behalf of the World Bank to review and summarise current experiences with attempts to manage forests sustainably. The paper only focuses on forces in tropical countries. Another paper in this series discusses progress towards sustainable forest management in temperate and boreal countries. The paper is in eight main sections. The first two sections describe the extent of the tropical forest resource and discuss some of the issues that are currently being raised in the debate about sustainable forest management. The third section describes experiences from tropical countries around the world with sustained yield management and section four discusses forest management for objectives other than wood production. Sections five and six appraise experiences to date and discuss the scope for improving forest management in the future. Section seven makes recommendations about how forest management might be improved and the main findings of the report are summarised in section eight. A large number of very useful case-studies are presented in annexes to another version of this report, which is available in French as a separate paper. This paper has been prepared by staff of CIRAD-Foret, drawing from the broad range of experiences of that organisation and a review of published materials. FAO would like to express its gratitude to all the contributors to this paper and to thank everyone that has provided comments on earlier drafts of this work. FAO will continue to explore, with member countries, the ways in which sustainable forest management can be implemented with greater success and to assist with implementation through its technical and normative work programmes. In this respect, we would welcome comments on all aspects of this study from readers. (Résumé d'auteur