Montreal Process

The Montréal Process, officially known as the Montréal Process Working Group on Criteria and Indicators for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Temperate and Boreal Forests, is a voluntary agreement on sustainable forest management. It was formed in Geneva, Switzerland in June 1994 as a result of the Forest Principles developed at the 1992 Earth Summit.

The Montréal Process was formed in June 1994 as a direct response to the Rio Forest Principles, a document that was created at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development suggesting recommendations for sustainable management of forests (The Montréal Process, 2015, p. 8). One of the first orders of business for the Montréal Process Working Group was to create and implement criteria and indicators for the conservation and sustainable management of forests (Montréal Process, 2014, para. 1).

In February 1995, countries in the Montréal Process adopted the Santiago Declaration which confirmed their commitment to the conservation and sustainable management of forests. They completed their first order of business by endorsing seven criteria and sixty-seven associated indicators as guidelines for policy makers to refer to in determining national forest trends and advancing toward a more sustainable forest management (The Montréal Process, 2015, p. 8).

In 2003, the Montréal Process countries created and published their first country reports which were highlighted in the Montréal Process First Forest Overview Report 2003. They also adopted the Québec City Declaration in September 2003 which set a vision for the Montréal Process for the timeframe from 2003 until 2008 (The Montréal Process, 2015, p. 8).

In November 2007, the member countries revised the first six criteria in Bueno Aries and used these improvements to prepare the second country reports in 2009 once again showing their commitment for the sustainable management of forests (The Montréal Process, 2015, p. 8). In addition to this, they also established the framework for the Montréal Process Strategic Action Plan: 2009-2015 which serves as the overall guiding document for the Montréal Process and helps in efforts of communicating with the international community the Montréal Process’s objectives and priorities (The Montréal Process, 2015, p. 9).

In 2009, the Montréal Process countries revised the seventh criteria in South Korea and trimmed the criteria and indicators to seven criteria and fifty-four indicators (The Montréal Process, 2015, p. 9).

Although there has been many successful initiatives, there is still considerable room for improvement of the country reporting practices. Chandran and Innes, researchers at the Department of Forest Resources Management, University of British Columbia, stated “current reporting practices, if not corrected, will create difficulties in communicating progress in sustainable forest management amongst countries” (Chandran, 2014, p. 103).

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