Assessment of progress towards sustainable forest management in Croatia through usage of quantitative Improved Pan-European Criteria and Indicators

Background and purpose: Paper analyzes the transition of forestry in Croatia from 1995 up to the situation in 2006. The comparison between these two situations is made through quantitative Improved Pan-European Criteria and Indicators (C&I) for sustainable forest management (SFM). The paper also tests the applicability of the framework on a national reporting scale, and comments on the format of the framework itself Material and methods: This secondary research compiles data in the framework of quantitative Pan-European Criteria and Indicators. Data comes out of many national and international sources, out of which most important ones are the MCPFE/FAO forest assessments and the General forest management plans for Croatia. For the reasons of comparison, all respective data is equated to 2000, and all forest types have been presented through MCPFE systematization scheme. Results and Conclusion: According to this framework, the forestry in Croatia has made a progress in 15 out of a total of 35 indicators while no indicator showed a negative trend, 8 showed no significant change and 12 could not be calculated. The main impediment to the calculation of the indicators was the format of the requested information, notably division of total forest area to forests and other wooded land, and division of total forest land according to availability for wood supply.