Identifying and ranking the components affecting the performance evaluation of forestry plans

Forests are the main part of renewable resources and play an influential role in economic change and sustainable development. Therefore, sufficient knowledge of these resources is essential for the appropriate management of forests. A forestry plan must guarantee the production of goods and services without seriously damaging the values of the forest and the future of forest production. In this way, a management plan will be successful in the various aspects such as scientific, ecological, executive, economic, and social dimensions that can be achieved together. The balance between these aspects will be predicted and implemented, although it is hard to achieve this balance. The general purpose of this study was to identify the components affecting the performance of forestry projects in Iran and rank them from the perspective of experts to stop the implementation of forestry projects based on these criteria.

For this purpose, Fuzzy Delphi method based on the data from experts opinions at the three criteria level, 1- scientific criterion (included 7 component), 2- managerial-executive criterion (included 18 component) and 3- legal criterion (included 9 component) and Finally, based on the final weight, the highest to the lowest value of the importance of the factors were used, respectively. Fuzzy Delphi is a method in which the mental data of experts is transformed into almost objective data using statistical analysis. This method leads to a consensus in decision-making and reaching a stable point. In this method, experts were first asked to enter their predictions in the form of triangular fuzzy numbers in the form of a minimum and maximum importance in the questionnaire. Then a group of fuzzy numbers is formed and calculated by the aggregation of ideas.

The results of scientific component showed that the coordination and communication between the scientific, executive and legal factors with a final weight of 0.181 had the highest degree of importance. The component of the high dependence of forest dwellers' livelihoods on the utilization of natural resources with a final weight of 0.866 was the first priority among management-executive component. The specificity of the project supervisor and the observer's activity and attention to the reports, as well as the forest destruction and wood smuggling with a final weight of 0.150 had the highest final weight as the legal component.

Although there is no single method for evaluating and determining the criteria and indicators for the effectiveness of forest management, research on identifying priorities, especially for forestry projects in different parts of the country, has significantly helped to evaluate, improve performance, deciding on the future period of implementation or stop or change procedures to protect activities.