Spiritual concerns inspiring sustainable forest management

Spiritual values are among the indicators in major international sustainable forest management (SFM) schemes (FSC, MPFCE, PEFC, ITTO) that warrant the continuity of forests by ecologically, economically and socially sound interventions. SFM was the answer to civil society’s deep concern about the loss of forests and forest values. Spiritual values feature most prominently in Indigenous Peoples’ SFM discourses (Wyatt 2013); they also emerge in the global/local discourse on planet-saving lifestyles and inner reconnection with nature (Pope Francis 2015; Dewitt 2013). As society’s involvement in forest management grows (Dekoning et al. 2013), attention for underlying spiritual concerns gains importance (Snodgrass 2013). However, there is no systematic knowledge on what forests’ spiritual values actually mean, how they are operationalized, and whether they have a demonstrable bearing on the outcomes of SFM practice. This paper is part of a research project aimed at building a framework for clarifying foresters’ spiritual concerns and their influence on SFM. ‘Foresters’ are defined s “practitioners in forest conservation and management - be they community members (…) or professional foresters” (Arts et al. 2013:3). ‘Spiritual concerns’ (Depater 2008) are defined as the combination of personal spiritual experiences and their expressions in terms of values and beliefs shared by persons, informally or institutionalised. As forest management plans are ormalized ‘translations’ of SFM, this paper reports literature study into the extent to which spiritual concerns are operationalised in these plans. Further studies address spiritually inspired forestry field practices and coping with forest conflicts.