Montréal Process

Posted on June 20, 2019 by sparsonsswin

The term is confusing. Participating countries did not sign up to the Montréal Process (MP) in Montréal (Canada) but in Santiago (Chile). It also does not describe a process where action A leads to outcome B – the MP was never intended to become an operations manual. So what does the term stand for? The MP represents an internationally agreed, consistent framework of 7 criteria and 54 indicators that can be used to standardize monitoring, assessment and reporting to endorse conservation and sustainable forest ecosystem management. The criteria and indicators take effect at local, state, national and international scales.

Australia is a signee of the MP and in principle, forest operations in Australia adhere the principles of sustainable forest management. The most recent Australia’s State of the Forests Report 2018 is a result of the Montréal Process Implementation Group (Australia) and reports on each of the 7 criteria using 44 indicators. Similar reports were published every five years since 2003.