The non-governmental Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) maintains a global set of ten principles and associated criteria for good forest management, covering social, environmental and economic factors. These are to be specified in terms of national standards by multi-stakeholder national working groups, and interpreted by forest managers and certifiers alike for local conditions. In contrast to forestry, there are limited criteria and indicators for sustainable land use and agriculture, especially for complex mixed systems including agroforestry. However, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) sets a basic international standard for organic agriculture and accreditation criteria for organic certification programmes. Individual countries may also have regulations and guidelines that should be employed. For biodiversity, indicators are currently being developed by the Convention on Biodiversity.

At the national level the challenge is to ascertain which existing sustainable development plans and strategies can offer useful guidance as to what kinds of CDM project will be desirable. The most useful national initiatives will be those that are actively applied and are meaningful locally. Six important types are described below. However, experience with sustainable development is relatively new, and many initiatives will not provide the full guidance a CDM project is seeking. (There is little point in screening a CDM project according to an initiative that meets with local disapproval, or is an unrealistic dream). Assessing the national initiatives against the following criteria may be helpful to assess which one(s) to use, both to develop national strategies for CDM, and to develop and screen an individual CDM project. National strategies should:

• have a balanced coverage of environmental, social, and economic dimensions;
• be formulated with participatory, multi-stakeholder input that involves government, civil society and business sectors;
• seek out and respond to local needs;
• be linked to international initiatives, e.g. the environmental conventions;
• have high-level political and legal backing;
• be characterised by continuous systems, and not just by a 'wish-list';
• be actively implemented and monitored.

1. The 'National Forest Programme' (NFP) offers specificity on desirable forestry practices and investment in forestry. It is supposed to be an articulation of (a rather unwieldy) 270 internationally agreed 'proposals for action'. The more recent NFPs meet many of the above criteria. The NFP is also likely to be consistent with the set of forestry C&I that is agreed as applying to forest management in the country.
   
   
2. The various national action plans for international environmental conventions - notably on biodiversity and desertification - offer some specificity on what environmental objectives are expected to be mainstreamed and what indicators to look for, and they call for Environmental Impact Assessments of projects such as CDM.
   
   
3. 'Poverty reduction strategies' - offer specificity on what is considered desirable in terms of improving livelihoods, and can help to make social objectives clearer. However, some may be more an expression of donor intention than national commitment; and they may have an incomplete consideration of environmental issues.
   
   
4. 'Local Agenda 21s' offer specificity on local priorities for integrating social, environmental and economic objectives. They take the form of a plan for sustainable development for a given district, which should show the broad kinds of land use that are considered desirable.
   
   
5. Land-use plans may be of many types, but government-organised plans are often the preserve of technocrats. As such, they may provide little guidance on local sustainability requirements other than information on land capability and suitability. Although government land use planning is often in disarray in many developing countries (and is consequently ignored), some rural development projects are 'reinventing' it through more participatory approaches. Especially where these are based on large-scale common property resource systems, they have potential for helping the rural poor meet the scale requirements of CDM projects.
   
   
6. ''National strategies for sustainable development (nssds)' - are currently being developed to sort out the multiple trade-offs for sustainable development in ways that meet the above criteria. The concept of nssds was agreed in 1992 at Rio as a way to organise 'Agenda 21' at the national level through government, civil society and business partnerships. Only recently has there been guidance on nssds, from the United Nations and OECD. However, not many nssds exist as yet, or meet all the above criteria.