Historically, the main objective of forest management was timber production. Although forest policies and forest management objectives diversified and expanded long before the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), since 1992 forestry has become even more multi-dimensional. The performance of the forestry sector depends to a considerable extent on the institutional context, including prevailing forest policies. All Asian countries have formulated forest policies to achieve the goal of sustainable forest management. The earliest forest policies date back to the 1800s. Over the decades, forest policies have been revised and refined in response to the perceived shortcomings of earlier policies.

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