Research Article |
Corresponding author: Laura Demant ( laura.demant@nw-fva.de ) Academic editor: Klaus Henle
© 2019 Laura Demant, Peter Meyer, Holger Sennhenn-Reulen, Helge Walentowski, Erwin Bergmeier.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Demant L, Meyer P, Sennhenn-Reulen H, Walentowski H, Bergmeier E (2019) Seeking consensus in German forest conservation: An analysis of contemporary concepts. Nature Conservation 35: 1-23. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.35.35049
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Setting operational conservation objectives is a major challenge for effective biodiversity conservation worldwide. To analyse forest conservation objectives in Germany in a transparent manner and to achieve a consistent and consensual framework, we systematically classified conservation objectives suggested in concepts by different stakeholders. We analysed 79 biodiversity and forest conservation concepts of different stakeholder groups at various scales and applied textual content analysis and Dirichlet regression to reach a high degree of transferability and applicability. Our analysis revealed a broad consensus concerning forest conservation across stakeholders and scales, albeit with slight differences in focus, but we detected a scale-related mismatch. A wide array of conservation objectives covered social, biotic and abiotic natural resources. Conservation of species, ecosystems and structural elements in forests were found to be of primary importance across stakeholders and scale levels. Shortcomings in the conservation concepts were found in addressing genetic diversity, abiotic resources and socio-cultural objectives. Our results show that problems in forest conservation may be rooted in trade-offs between aims, targeting mismatch across scale levels and insufficient implementation of objectives.
biodiversity, conservation concepts, conservation objectives, Dirichlet regression, forest conservation, stakeholders, spatial scales, scale mismatch, targets
Twenty-five years after coming into force, the targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are yet to be reached. National and international strategy papers on nature conservation and sustainability have proliferated in the meantime (
Effective conservation needs a consistent and comprehensive framework of conservation objectives. Such a framework should aim at preserving wildlife species, as well as ecosystems as a whole. Moreover, the sustainable production and use of natural products such as food, timber, minerals and other resources for human needs, as well as the non-material benefits of recreation, amenity, culture and science, are to be considered (
The limited success of nature conservation efforts can also be attributed to scale mismatches within frameworks of conservation objectives (
Multiple approaches exist to frame nature conservation, provide tools and justify actions (
In fulfilment of the obligations of CBD, article 6, Germany adopted a National Strategy on Biological Diversity, comprising 330 targets and around 430 measures (
(1) to derive a comprehensive and conceptual reference framework of German forest conservation objectives based on contemporary concepts to classify and systematically analyse the conservation objectives in terms of completeness and consistency;
(2) to reapply the results to conservation concepts in search of commonalities and differences and to examine the comprehensive nature of concepts.
Assuming a wide range of different interests, we hypothesised considerable variation between the conservation concepts and objectives provided by different stakeholders but, nevertheless, scale-independent consensus (meaning a balanced knowledge transfer) within particular groups of stakeholders. Another aim was thus to verify unimpeded conceptual transfer of knowledge within stakeholder groups across scales.
We define a conservation objective (CO hereafter) as the combination of a physical object of conservation, e.g. organisms, biotopes, soil or water resources and the properties of its desired state (target). We derived a comprehensive reference framework of COs by referring to the CBD (
For each objective, we defined six levels of potential hierarchical classification depth of COs (Table
Classification framework of conservation objectives (for a detailed list see Suppl. material
Level | Conservation objective | Specification | Code |
---|---|---|---|
1 | General field of conservation | Socio-political | S |
Nature conservation sensu stricto | N | ||
2 | Field of natural resources | Abiotic environment | A |
Biotic environment | B | ||
3 | Mainly abiotic targets | Soil | S |
Water | W | ||
Climate | C | ||
Mainly biotic targets | Genetic diversity | G | |
Species | S | ||
Ecosystems and biotopes | E | ||
Landscapes | L | ||
4 | Categories of natural resources | Processes | P |
Structures, elements | S | ||
Functions = cross-connecting various levels | F | ||
5 | Qualities and properties of natural resources | Diversity | D |
“Typicalness” | T | ||
Completeness, integrity | C | ||
6 | Management dependency | Self-sustaining | S |
Management-dependent, culture-bound | M |
At the first level of differentiation (general field of conservation), COs were classified into the categories socio-political (e.g. recreation, enhancement of tourism, stimulating financial funding for conservation, legal issues, awareness-raising) or nature conservation sensu stricto. For socio-political COs, no further differentiation was deemed necessary, but cross-connections were possible (Suppl. material
To give each objective more detail, we developed further levels concerning categories of natural resources, qualities and conditions of existence (Table
A specific code was assigned to each CO (Suppl. material
Finally, individual target keywords were added to address more specific cases. For instance, the code NBESCS, addressing the integrity of self-sustaining ecosystems, was further detailed by the target keyword “protection of beech forest ecosystems”. A detailed list of all target keywords and their assigned codes can be found in Suppl. material
We conducted textual content analyses of 79 biodiversity and forest conservation concepts (for a detailed list of concepts, see Suppl. material
We classified the stakeholders into three pre-defined groups; administrative institutions (e.g. ministries), nature conservation NGOs and state forestry enterprises (Table
Categorisation of concepts with their abbreviations (Abbr.) and numbers of concepts per stakeholder group and jurisdictional scale level (Int = International, Nat = National, Reg = Regional).
Stakeholder | Abbr. | Concept type | Jurisdictional scale levels | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Int | Nat | Reg | |||
Concepts published by administrative or governmental institutions (e.g. ministries) | Instit | Biodiversity | 3 | 2 | 14 |
Forest conservation | 1 | – | 2 | ||
Forest management | – | – | 3 | ||
Forest programme | – | 1 | 4 | ||
Veteran trees and deadwood | – | – | – | ||
Concepts originated under the leadership of state forestry enterprises | StateF | Biodiversity | – | – | – |
Forest conservation | – | – | 10 | ||
Forest management | – | – | 14 | ||
Forest programme | – | – | 2 | ||
Veteran trees and deadwood | – | – | 6 | ||
Concepts published by environmental and nature conservation NGOs | NGO | Biodiversity | – | 1 | 1 |
Forest conservation | – | 8 | 4 | ||
Forest management | – | 1 | – | ||
Forest programme | – | – | 1 | ||
Veteran trees and deadwood | – | – | 1 |
In terms of scale, the concepts were referable to international, national (Germany) or regional (federal states) levels (Table
Textual content analysis was used to identify and interpret the COs. Content analysis is a standard research method in social sciences and is used to gather and scrutinise text, the content of which “can be words, meanings, pictures, symbols, ideas, themes or any communicated message” (
For each concept, all individual CO code assignments were treated as single observations and each hierarchical level of classification (Table
With respect to orthogonality, it is critical that not all stakeholders are represented on all jurisdictional levels (Table
To further analyse the degree of specification within the stakeholder group of administrative institutions, a level-of-detail-analysis was conducted. To allow for sufficient specification, we restricted the analysis to biotic COs (genes, species, ecosystems and landscape, see Table
The textual content analysis of 79 concepts revealed a broad range of single COs. In total, 170 individual targets (keyword combinations) were detected, with between 14 and 85 (mean 50) targets per concept. On average, a single concept covered 30% of the overall number of targets.
All stakeholders clearly prefer nature conservation sensu stricto instead of socio-political COs (Table
Proportions (expected values, in %) of the first and second classification level of conservation objectives.
General field of conservation | Natural resources | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Socio-political | Nature conservation | * | Abiotic | Biotic | * | ||
Regional stakeholder | Instit (n=23) | 10.3 | 89.7 | a | 8.0 | 92.0 | a |
NGO (n=7) | 11.1 | 88.9 | ab | 6.3 | 93.7 | a | |
StateF (n=32) | 7.6 | 92.4 | b | 6.5 | 93.5 | a | |
Jurisdictional scale | Int (n=4) | 13.7 | 86.3 | a | 14.2 | 85.8 | a |
Nat (n=3) | 13.1 | 86.9 | a | 11.6 | 88.5 | ab | |
Reg (n=23) | 9.5 | 90.6 | a | 6.9 | 93.1 | b |
Our results show that COs consider protecting the biotic environment generally more important than abiotic resources (Table
Ecosystem and species diversity are the main biotic COs in all analysed concepts, followed by, but with considerably lower percentages, the protection of landscape elements (Figures
Stakeholder impact – posterior means for the third level of COs for the three stakeholder groups (n = 62). Different letters indicate significant differences between stakeholder groups (Instit = administrative-governmental institutions, NGO = environment or nature conservation NGOs, StateF = State forestry enterprises). Displayed are the expected value (black line), the 99% (light), the 95% (medium) and the 90% (dark) uncertainty intervals.
Jurisdictional scale effect – posterior means for the third level of COs for the three spatial scales (n = 30). Different letters indicate significant differences between scales (Int = International, Nat = National, Reg = Regional). Displayed are the expected value (black line), the 99% (light), the 95% (medium) and the 90% (dark) uncertainty intervals.
Regarding the scale effect, regional concepts exhibited a smaller range than the other levels (Figure
The results concerning the category (Table
Proportions (EV, in %) of the fourth level to describe the categories of conservation objectives.
Functions/ cross-connections | * | Processes | * | Structures, elements | * | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Regional stakeholder | Instit (n=23) | 24.7 | ab | 14.0 | a | 61.3 | a |
NGO (n=7) | 28.3 | a | 20.8 | b | 50.9 | b | |
StateF (n=32) | 22.6 | b | 13.9 | a | 63.5 | a | |
Jurisdictional scale | Int (n=4) | 49.4 | a | 3.3 | a | 47.4 | a |
Nat (n=3) | 30.3 | b | 12.3 | ab | 57.5 | ab | |
Reg (n=23) | 25.0 | b | 14.6 | b | 60.4 | b |
Proportions (EV, in %) of the fifth level to describe the qualities of conservation objectives.
Diversity | * | “Typicalness” | * | Completeness | * | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Regional stakeholder | Instit (n=23) | 53.6 | a | 40.7 | a | 5.6 | a |
NGO (n=7) | 47.2 | a | 49.5 | a | 3.3 | a | |
StateF (n=32) | 56.2 | a | 39.9 | a | 3.9 | a | |
Jurisdictional scale | Int (n=4) | 76.7 | a | 20.7 | a | 2.6 | a |
Nat (n=3) | 46.5 | b | 43.1 | a | 10.5 | b | |
Reg (n=23) | 53.6 | b | 40.6 | a | 5.8 | b |
Proportions (EV, in %) of the sixth level to describe the conditions of existence of conservation objectives.
Management-dependent | Self-sustaining | * | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Regional stakeholder | Instit (n=23) | 22.2 | 77.9 | a |
NGO (n=7) | 9.2 | 90.9 | b | |
StateF (n=32) | 20.5 | 79.5 | a | |
Jurisdictional scale | Int (n=4) | 7.4 | 92.6 | a |
Nat (n=3) | 25.2 | 74.8 | b | |
Reg (n=23) | 21.5 | 78.5 | b |
The significantly highest percentages of targets with functions/cross-connections to other CO levels were found in international concepts. Cross-connections were either in relation to socio-political targets (e.g. a social responsibility to protect species; forest habitats as a place for recreation and tourism) or to abiotic targets (e.g. preservation or development of climate-resilient forest stands; water supply by forests). Here, StateF had significantly lower percentages than NGO. In general, protecting particular elements and structures (e.g. specific forest or species communities; habitat trees; biotope types; single species) plays a major role across almost all stakeholders and levels. However, StateF and Instit emphasise the protection of structural elements significantly more than NGO. This was also true at the regional level and partly so at the national level.
The fifth level describes particular qualities of COs (Table
On the sixth level, protecting self-sustaining biodiversity features was given priority across all stakeholders and scales (Table
We assumed that the degree of specification would increase from the international to the regional level. However, this was not the case for COs related to genetic diversity and only weakly so for species and landscape diversity (Figure
We distinguished a total of 107 target keywords in the concepts (Suppl. material
Absolute and percentage frequency of the most important keywords for all concepts, for administrative-governmental concepts at all levels and for regional concepts of all stakeholder groups, respectively (only keywords with > 40 mentions for all concepts are listed).
Keyword | All concepts (n = 79) | % | Administrative concepts (n = 30) | % | Regional concepts (n = 62) | % |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Habitat protection | 75 | 94.9 | 28 | 93.3 | 59 | 95.2 |
Deadwood in forest ecosystems | 67 | 84.8 | 24 | 80.0 | 53 | 85.5 |
Sustainable forestry | 65 | 82.3 | 27 | 90.0 | 50 | 80.6 |
Social obligation for habitat protection | 65 | 82.3 | 21 | 70.0 | 51 | 82.3 |
Close-to-nature forestry | 63 | 79.7 | 23 | 76.7 | 52 | 83.9 |
Habitat trees | 63 | 79.7 | 20 | 66.7 | 52 | 83.9 |
Protected areas | 62 | 78.5 | 26 | 86.7 | 46 | 74.2 |
Natura 2000 habitats | 61 | 77.2 | 25 | 83.3 | 49 | 79.0 |
Natura 2000 species | 59 | 74.7 | 24 | 80.0 | 47 | 75.8 |
Near-natural forests | 59 | 74.7 | 24 | 80.0 | 46 | 74.2 |
Rare species | 59 | 74.7 | 20 | 66.7 | 46 | 74.2 |
Forest structures | 58 | 73.4 | 19 | 63.3 | 48 | 77.4 |
Naturally developing forests | 58 | 73.4 | 20 | 66.7 | 46 | 74.2 |
Natural regeneration | 54 | 68.4 | 19 | 63.3 | 45 | 72.6 |
Hunting | 53 | 67.1 | 22 | 73.3 | 43 | 69.4 |
Natural forest reserves | 52 | 65.8 | 18 | 60.0 | 42 | 67.7 |
Biotope network | 51 | 64.6 | 26 | 86.7 | 40 | 64.5 |
Wetlands | 51 | 64.6 | 20 | 66.7 | 41 | 66.1 |
Deadwood-dependent species | 49 | 62.0 | 15 | 50.0 | 42 | 67.7 |
Forests developing stages | 49 | 62.0 | 17 | 56.7 | 42 | 67.7 |
Old-growth forest | 49 | 62.0 | 16 | 53.3 | 39 | 62.9 |
Species stepping stones | 49 | 62.0 | 20 | 66.7 | 37 | 59.7 |
Forest edges | 48 | 60.8 | 16 | 53.3 | 39 | 62.9 |
Beech forests | 46 | 58.2 | 16 | 53.3 | 37 | 59.7 |
Mixed forests | 46 | 58.2 | 22 | 73.3 | 41 | 66.1 |
Rare tree species | 45 | 57.0 | 16 | 53.3 | 38 | 61.3 |
Bogs | 44 | 55.7 | 21 | 70.0 | 38 | 61.3 |
Riverine systems | 44 | 55.7 | 24 | 80.0 | 36 | 58.1 |
Traditional forest management | 44 | 55.7 | 16 | 53.3 | 36 | 58.1 |
Certification | 42 | 53.2 | 19 | 63.3 | 32 | 51.6 |
Forest conservation financing | 42 | 53.2 | 18 | 60.0 | 28 | 45.2 |
Certain differences between administrative-governmental concepts (found at all scale levels) and between regional concepts (found in all different stakeholder groups) are worth mentioning. Regional concepts pay more attention to the protection of specific forest elements, such as habitat trees, deadwood-dependent species and old-growth forests. Administrative-governmental concepts, on the other hand, stress the importance of landscape- and connection-related elements, such as biotope networks, species stepping stones and riverine systems, while emphasising the need to finance forest conservation. Although not shown in Table
Many researchers examined and reviewed nature conservation concepts in general and the implementation of nature and forest conservation objectives in particular (
The framework proved suitable in reviewing 79 concepts of different stakeholder groups and across different scale levels. Universal validity with respect to German nature conservation in forests is achieved due to the fact that our analysis is firmly based on the common ground of the CBD and the BNatSchG. The frame may be used to encompass all possible objectives in nature conservation and cultural and natural objectives alike. It may be adopted in various fields of conservation science, despite its presently narrow focus on German forests. Our framework is in line with the initially-mentioned approaches to widely conceive nature conservation (CICES, People and Nature, Nature’s Contribution to People). It is, however, constrained to an overall level, requiring further implementation in practice.
The assignment of keywords helps to acquire higher degrees of detail and to overcome the disadvantage of abstraction and is important in specifying COs, making the framework more applicable. Nevertheless, some constraints remain, as further implementation also means setting priorities and identifying synergies or trade-offs between single COs and hierarchical levels. This process, however, defies generalisation, as additional criteria need to be evaluated, such as the local or regional conservation status or the level of protection already gained. Thus, priority setting and the identification of trade-offs are not included in our framework of COs. However, the functional relationships can be regarded as an indication of existing synergies.
Our analyses of forest COs show that, in general, there is a broad consensus concerning forest conservation amongst different stakeholders in Germany. A wide variety of targets was found, covering social, biotic and abiotic natural resources. All stakeholder groups emphasised the protection and maintenance of diverse and self-sustaining structures, forest ecosystems, species and natural forest elements. Genetic diversity, landscape elements and abiotic resources are less considered. However, apart from this detected consensus amongst stakeholders and across scales, some differences in prioritising conservation objectives were identified, which do not fully accord with a comprehensive approach to nature conservation. The preamble of the CBD in 1992 already recognised the importance of comprehensive nature conservation concepts in postulating that the contracting parties are “conscious of the intrinsic value of biological diversity and of the ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its components” (
National and international administrations take more account of social demands and the protection of abiotic resources. Since abiotic resources and their regulating services are an essential part of the natural environment (
On the whole, concepts with a wider scale level turned out to be more balanced and consider functional relations. Regional concepts focus on concerns to be tackled by approved forest conservation methods and are more aware of management-dependent systems. Nevertheless, our results demonstrate that there is a lack of focus on the maintenance of culture-bound and management-dependent COs (e.g. cultural heritage and management-related habitat tradition). Even state forestry enterprises focus on natural and self-sustaining ecosystems, although initially we assumed they would pay more attention to management-dependent systems.
For an effective forest biodiversity conservation, it is important to identify synergies and trade-offs (
The most frequently mentioned forest conservation keywords (e.g. protecting deadwood in forest ecosystems) reflect topics recently discussed amongst forest conservationists in Germany. The differences between the concepts concerning the frequency of specific keywords are, with few exceptions, not very pronounced, supporting the detected consensus amongst stakeholders in terms of forest conservation.
As ecosystem functions, species and ecosystem processes occur at different temporal and spatial scales (
The detected imbalance in target-consistency prompts us to reject our hypothesis that frameworks of COs within stakeholder groups are scale-independently consensual and confirms rather a slight scale mismatch indicating possibly insufficient transfer and exchange of knowledge. One-to-one transmissions of CO set at the international level may be problematic (
Our analysis identified shortcomings concerning the unbalanced design of the concepts, where social-cultural demands and societal obligations, as well as the protection of landscape, genetic diversity and abiotic resources are not always covered adequately. These objectives might have been considered as subsidiary COs, implemented per se in the wake of ecosystem and species diversity conservation (umbrella effect). This study suggests to stakeholders that they reassess their conservation concepts in these fields. Improving the awareness of biodiversity and its values is essential to convince residents and other people concerned of the ecological and economic justification and the necessity and consequences of conservation actions.
Forest stakeholder concepts describe the purpose of conservation and restoration measures, such as to secure veteran and habitat trees, forest soil care, management of protected biotopes and species conservation programmes. The next step, specifying how to implement the measures, was taken only in 48 out of 79 concepts which provided information to this effect for certain forest COs. Without practical how-to recommendations, however, even well-founded objectives run the risk of remaining wishful thinking, a long way from implementation.
If, as our results indicate, stakeholders largely agree on the conservation objectives, the question remains why there are still considerable discrepancies in German forest conservation. Implementing forest conservation measures usually involves various stakeholders (owners, inhabitants, users, nature conservationists, administrators) with diverse and sometimes incongruent requirements. Therefore, the procedure of integrating all parties, which is so essential for the successful conservation and sustainable use of forest biodiversity, is to be improved. Mutual respect should be strengthened.
This study was conducted within the WaVerNa-project and the authors want to thank the Agency for Renewable Resources FNR e. V. as project sponsor of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) for funding this research project. We acknowledge support by the German Research Foundation and the Open Access Publication Funds of the Göttingen University. We are very grateful to Robert Larkin for language check and want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments.
Tables S1–S3
Data type: supplementary tables
Explanation note: Table S1. Framework for conservation objectives and its application. Table S2. List of all target keywords, their German equivalent and their assigned codes according to the framework of conservation objectives. Table S3. List of all concepts analyzed in this study with their names, references, type of concept, assigned stakeholder group, jurisdictional scale level allocation and their year of publication.