HCVF is academically interesting for systematically including a wider range of (forest) values than preceding approaches. In practice, I have not seen an impact of HCVF on more effectively prioritizing or protecting the identified high forest values. The flaw of the approach seems to me that be ownership/use right of the highly valued commodities or services must established to be matched with claims of even higher value on the same forestland in particular opencast mining or cash crop farming (e.g. shrimp; oil palm; tobacco), Only if the high forest values have to compensated by the investor in the proposed alternative high value activity, the latter may move to lower valued forestland. 

Hello Doug, When we were working in an FSC certified concession in Temengor, Malaysia this question came up many times. WWF (I believe) had conducted the original surveys,  including camera trapping and so forth, and produced a report for the conservation management, including designation of HCVFs. One of the first interesting things to note is that in reality the whole forest should have been designated HCVF (as a primary lowland rainforest with species such as tiger and elephant), but only certain areas were selected. So from the outset there was a blurring of the definitions to suit the situation. Second problem, which was often brought to my attention by the forest manager, was that although they had provided lists of species of conservation concern etc and some specific management recommendations, such as to avoid disturbing salt licks, there was almost nothing in the report (or the HCVF definitions) that would change how you manage a forest. In short I came to feel that the entire exercise had been a complete waste of money. Most of the information and management recommendations could have been put together by a competent manager/consultant in 3-4 days work. I think money spent on identifying the threats to species, which was in this case was largely hunting, and indicators of status and management responses (patrols, gate records, gun seizures) would have achieved much more.

I think HCVF is a strong concept for conservation actions; may be there are issues to be handled in terms of definitions and in terms of implementations

The HCVF concept was introduced by WWF-Russia for 8-10 yeras ago and strongly used in the debate concerning protection of large units of virgin boreal forests, maybe with the strongest focus on forest of the Europoean part of Russia - Ural mountains and to the west. Details on how it was intoduced and the outcome can best be answered by WWF Russia so make that contact. If you do not find out of this - let me know and I can help you more next week.

HCVF is academically interesting for systematically including a wider range of (forest) values than preceding approaches. In practice, I have not seen an impact of HCVF on more effectively prioritizing or protecting the identified high forest values. The flaw of the approach seems to me that be ownership/use right of the highly valued commodities or services must established to be matched with claims of even higher value on the same forestland in particular opencast mining or cash crop farming (e.g. shrimp; oil palm; tobacco), Only if the high forest values have to compensated by the investor in the proposed alternative high value activity, the latter may move to lower valued forestland. 

hello doug

http://hcvf.net/eng/about/

Thanks everyone.  I appreciate the time and interest.  To be clear, I am hoping to tap into experiences regarding consequences of HCVF for conservation outcomes (I know what it is and how it was intended to help guide managers).

You might want to try and contact Gary Paoli. You probably know him from your Bogor days, but he worked a lot on HCVF assessments in Indonesia. When we argued about it, I remember that he stressed the benefits of targeting management to avoid degrading HCVF attributes, rather than the benefits of zoning. I also feel the conservation outcomes may vary substantially from country to country as a result of differences in local implementation.

HCVF framework can be a useful tool for non-biologist to understand what is important in a landscape. However there are a few flaws associated with them so far. First the assessment in itself: different HCV teams will come up with different areas as HCVF in their final report. there is a need to standardize the approach. In his answer, Rhett already touched in a few additional points: the arbitrariness of the final selection of what is HCVF or not , the fact that it is really difficult to assess biodiversity in a short period of time (usually the HCVF assessments are done over a short period of time). More importantly, these HCVF assessments are not intended to manage the area. And this is a huge problem since the land managers need to be told what they gonna do with their HCVF. Practical recommendations for management and monitoring should ideally be added to HCVF.

 The concept of 'High Conservation Value forest' is conceptually strong in terms of sustainable forest management, though there can be improvement in concept and implementation at various levels of management over space and time at local, sub regional , regional, national or global.Whether it has benefitted conservation depends on these concepts were used &implemented at these levels and over space & time.However, all these concepts, whether C&I approach or FSC certification or any other certification schemes have definitely helped in creating better awareness about the good &services provided by forests or the need for conservation. Success in Conservation by and large  depends on who owns the forests, who influence the management decision, the technical capabilities of owners &decision makers in assessing, evaluating, certifying, identifying , implementing conservation areas and conservation strategies.Capacity enhancement in creating awareness, identifying, valuing, strategising & implementing High Conservation Value Forests (HCVF)is a very important task requiring lot of attention and serious and sincere efforts at various levels all over the globe to ensure conservation , sustainable development & management of the forests .

Efforts are also needed to identify & devise cost effective and efficient methods to ensure efficient conservation and management  of forests useful to the people over space and time at different levels of management, local, sub regional, regional , national or global suited to the prevailing conditions in these levels.

Hi Doug,

I was provided the link to this conversation that I find important. As the conversation took place 1.5 years ago, I was wondering if you had come up with some document on the topic. Although some of the contributions in this conversation point to some positive and negative impacts, it remains quite unclear to me why HCVF has outstanding limitations for the decisions on where to plant and where not to.

I have a feeling that many statements rely on lots of assumptions and/or implicit facts that would deserve to be made much clearer for the sake of the debate. This is an important one as you know, especially in the context of emerging zero-deforestation commitments made by the diversity of actors along the oil palm supply chain.

Thanks in advance,

Romain

Romain ... thanks. I'll drop you an email.  CGIAR?

I was an amphibian specialist for a workshop held by a big conservation NGO that was using the HCVF to model and evaluate a large provincial area in the tropics. I found the framework difficult to work with and rather arbitrary, especially in the light of political and economic realities. My experience has caused me to entirely distrust the reliability and utility of the approach.

The HCVF concept has been used for Northwest Russia. and I recommend the publication from 2013 " Atlas of high concervation value areas - etc." It includes more than forests - but the concept has been used and give an informative evaluation of posisbel areas for protection.  I give this IBN Reference: 978-952-11-4184-3 (PDF).