SUSTENTABILIDAD ECONÓMICA DE LAS CONCESIONES FORESTALES DEL DEPARTAMENTO HUÁNUCO, PERÚ

Background: Nowadays, recent concepts such as “forest sustainability” and “sustainable forest management” have been adopted by most countries in the world, in addition to sustainable development, because they consider continuous use of forests and their perpetual ecological integrity to satisfy the needs of current and future generations. In that sense, sustainability indicators can realistically estimate whether the management of the system is correct, which is why various governments and organizations have set a variety of local, national, and international criteria and indicators (C&I) to evaluate the sustainability of forest ecosystems. Objective: To create and validate indicators and determine the economic sustainability of forest concessions located in Huánuco department, Perú, applying multicriteria analysis based on the indicators. Methodology: Standardized indicators were defined as scales from 0 to 4, with the latest as the highest sustainability value. Afterward, they were weighted by multiplying them by a coefficient according to their importance related to sustainability. A forest concession is considered economically sustainable if its economic sustainability index (ISK) is ≥ 2. In view of this, a survey was applied to forest concessions managers and workers. The Chi-square non-parametric statistical test was used to determine if ISK exceeds the value 2 in 40% of forest concessions. On the other hand, Pearson correlation was used among indicators with 95% of confidence. Results: The Chi-square test proves that forest concessions which exploit forest resources mechanically (40% of the whole) are economically sustainable (X2 = 0.000, p-value = 1.000). Furthermore, it was found that the following indicators: “profit from the sale of wood” and “economic risk” are independent of each other (r = 0.091, p-value > 0.05). Implications: Finding out the economic sustainability of forest concessions will lead to design more solid forest policies in Huanuco, Peru. Conclusion: Mechanical forest exploitation leads to economically sustainable productive processes and higher profitability. Finally, developing value added products make possibilities bigger for forest concessions to be economically sustainable.