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Abstract
To safeguard overall sustainability in forest conservation it is necessary to consider ecological,
economic, social, and cultural viewpoints simultaneously. However, particularly the sociocultural
aspects are difficult to measure and thus often poorly considered. Furthermore, practical
decision-making requires that sustainability assessments are as easy and simple as possible. This
study sought to develop and test a practically feasible procedure for measuring and monitoring
the socio-cultural impacts of the biodiversity cooperation networks within the Forest
Biodiversity Programme METSO. Fundamentally, the procedure falls within a multi-criteria
decision support (MCDS) framework. First, a literature review helped to select and
operationalize a set of 10 criteria and 25 indicators. Second, empirical data for the indicators
were gathered from seven cooperation networks in November 2010 and January 2012 with
email questionnaires. Applying the indicator data to an additive utility model yielded
cumulative utility scores for all networks and for both operational years. According to the
results, improvements from 2010 to 2011 took place particularly within the indicator
“Achievement of innovation and new operation models”. Generally, the best performances
appeared under the criterion “Acceptability”. The high (positive) total socio-cultural impacts can
be achieved through different strategies: by gathering sub-utility from all criteria with rather
equal weights or by concentrating on a few locally important criteria with higher weights. The
presented procedure enables longitudinal monitoring of socio-cultural sustainability, which is
beneficial, because some outcomes of actions appear with a delay. The method may help to
compare the networks’ sub-utility distributions, i.e., performance profiles, which provides
valuable information for policy-makers. However, it is noteworthy that some indicators rely on
subjective expert judgements, which is why direct comparisons between networks should be
done with caution. Following task is to link or merge the monitoring of socio-cultural impacts
with other dimensions of sustainability.