Brazil-DSS usage on sustainable natural forest management in the Amazon basin

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Case

Has flag N/A
Has full name DSS usage on sustainable natural forest management; rainforest in the Amazon basi in Brazil
Has country Brazil
Has location
Has responsible organisation Simosol
Has type of owner organization
Has related DSS
Has start date
Has end date
Has DSS development stage use
Has decision stage
Has temporal scale Long term (strategic), Medium term (tactical), Short term (operational)
Has spatial context Non spatial
Has spatial scale Forest level
Has decision making dimension Single decision maker
Has objectives dimension Single objective
Has goods and services dimension Market wood products
Has working group theme
Has website
Has description An in-depth interview of forest management planners of the use of DSS in their daily work; aspects of including which planning tasks they use DSS or not, and why.

Focus on companies dealing with low impact harvesting in the natural forests of Amazon basin.

Has reference
Has wiki contact person jussi.rasinmaki@simosol.fi
Has wiki contact e-mail jussi.rasinmaki@simosol.fi
Has DSS development
Has decision support techniques
Has knowledge management processes
Has support for social participation

This case study was conducted in November 2013 as a FORSYS STSM. Interviews were done in 5 companies (2 belonging to this category) with the people responsible for forest management planning. The aim was to find out what the company does, how they do do it, do they use a DSS for it, why and why not?

The STSM was organised by Atrium Forest Consulting / Silvana Nobre. The background of the STSM researcher is forest management DSS development in Finland.

Close to nature or low impact natural forest management in Brazil is relatively recent concept as far as the legislation is concerned (2008?, check). The system operates both on federal and private land. On the federal land companies are bidding for long term concessions to extensive forest areas.

The practice is very tightly regulated, in principle:

  • complete inventory at tree level (over 40 cm dbh) prior to harvests over the whole yearly harvest area
  • harvest plan at tree level
  • indicators for roads, remaining tree stock, protected species, water body protection etc.
  • complete timber tracking from felled tree to sold logs (the government is providing an online system for this)

But the level of corruption makes this impressive system (almost) non-operable for practitioners.

Observations:

  • either you build your DSS to help you to deal with the bureaucracy and corruption, or you don't operate
    • emphasis on making the system watertight for possible law suits etc.
    • very solid operation support focus, getting the "paper trail" right
    • "optimisation of cost structure is not that important if you're fined to your teeth for some abnormality in data"
  • DSS for planning the operation; support for getting the data yes (inventory), but utilising the data, not so much. Very much still on manual level with little software support for planning the roads, selecting the trees to harvest
  • regulation at this level dictates the features of the DSS you develop: sawmill system is not optimizing the sawn yield from logs, it's used to guarantee that the yield is within the conversion limits set in the law
  • Working "by the book" more expensive, no premium for sustainable timber => easily unprofitable operation: two possible impacts for DSS development: (i) minimize your spending on anything, just build the systems the operation absolutely needs, (ii) use DSS to get a competitive edge, use it to minimize your operational cost / maximize the profit
    • emphasis clearly on (i), my interpretation: the corruption is so severe, it practically kills any change of (ii) succeeding (management (continuity in personnel) & society (corruption) problems come first
  • Discontinuity in personnel, their education level & the importance of getting the data right: all these aspects set demands for the usability features of the DSS
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