How to Measure Governance in Forestry: Key Dimensions and Indicators from Emerging Economic Mechanisms

Most of the emerging economic mechanisms for promoting SFM, such as REDD projects, PES schemes and forest certification initiatives, are expected to involve profound changes in the role of public authorities, their relationships and networking with other actors, decision-making procedures, etc.: in short, in governance. In the current debate on new forms of participatory governance, attention is rarely focused on the instruments to assess "good governance". World-wide, evaluation criteria and related indicators have so far been developed mainly for analyzing policies and governance issues at international, regional or national scale. The Forest Governance Diagnostics Tool of the WB and the Governance of Forests Toolkit of the WRI are examples of initiatives to assess good forestry governance at national level. But no well-consolidated system yet exists of indicators for measuring "good governance" also at local scale and project level where policies are implemented in practice. On the basis of three case-studies (one REDD+ project in Tanzania, one PES scheme and one forest certification initiative in Italy), the paper presents and discusses a conceptual framework of key-dimensions and indicators/variables to assess "good governance" in forestry, at the level of projects implementation. The purpose is to identify cheap and reliable secondary data sources and suitable instruments (e.g. the Social Network Analysis) for collecting/analyzing primary data. Seven dimensions are considered relevant to the new governance modes: Sustainable glocal development, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Participation, Transparency, Accountability and Capacity. Key aspects include unclear benefit/cost sharing mechanisms, weak coordination, limited implementation of participatory procedures, etc. Methodological problems are discussed.