Implementing Participatory Decision Making in Forest Planning Jayanath Ananda Received: 18 January 2006 / Accepted: 20 October 2006 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007 Abstract Forest policy decisions are often a source of debate, conflict, and tension in many countries. The debate over forest land-use decisions often hinges on disagreements about societal values related to forest resource use. Disagreements on social value positions are fought out repeatedly at local, regional, national, and international levels at an enormous social cost. Forest policy problems have some inherent character- istics that make them more difficult to deal with. On the one hand, forest policy decisions involve uncer- tainty, long time scales, and complex natural systems and processes. On the other hand, such decisions encompass social, political, and cultural systems that are evolving in response to forces such as globalization. Until recently, forest policy was heavily influenced by the scientific community and various economic models of optimal resource use. However, growing environ- mental awareness and acceptance of participatory democracy models in policy formulation have forced the public authorities to introduce new participatory mechanisms to manage forest resources. Most often, the efforts to include the public in policy formulation can be described using the lower rungs of Arnstein’s public participation typology. This paper presents an approach that incorporates stakeholder preferences into forest land-use policy using the Analytic Hierar- chy Process (AHP). An illustrative case of regional forest-policy formulation in Australia is used to dem- onstrate the approach. It is contended that applying the AHP in the policy process could considerably enhance the transparency of participatory process and public acceptance of policy decisions. Keywords Public policy  Analytic hierarchy process  Australia  Forest land-use decisions  Public participation  Stakeholders Introduction Over the last decade, Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) has emerged as a dominant forest management paradigm (Kant and Lee 2004). Unlike the conven- tional commodity-based resource management para- digm, the SFM focuses on sustainable commodity production, conservation, amenity values, and long- term sustainability of forests where larger spatial scales and longer time periods are accommodated (Clark 2004). Formulating sustainable forest policy involves balancing complex economic, sociopolitical and envi- ronmental objectives, and accounting for the multiple objectives of forest stakeholders and their conflicting interests. More importantly, SFM represents a shift from ‘‘management by exclusion’’ to ‘‘management by inclusion’’ (Kant and Lee 2004). Collaborative deci- sion-making processes have been proposed to achieve a more inclusive resource management (Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000). The movement towards SFM has been a rough journey that has incited numerous forest-related con- flicts in many countries including Australia. Among the sources of conflict are complex institutional arrange- ments, uncertainty of available information, a multi- tude of stakeholders, and vulnerable forest ecosystems. J. Ananda (&) School of Business, La Trobe University Wodonga Vic 3690, Australia e-mail: j.ananda@latrobe.edu.au Environ Manage (2007) 39:534-544 DOI 10.1007/s00267-006-0031-2 123