Assessing Forest Legislation in the Context of Climate Change Through Expert and Practitioner Perspectives: The Case of the Turkish Forest Law

Forest law shapes protection, carbon sequestration, and adaptation. However, empirical and field-based evaluation of the mitigation and adaptation performance of forest legislation in combating climate change remains limited. This study combines legal analysis, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and field data to assess Türkiye’s forest law under seven criteria. The criteria were derived from five sources, validated by nine experts, and weighted through AHP. The perceived climate-related performance was assessed using a five-point Likert scale administered to 65 forestry practitioners for each article group. The Weighted Climate Score (WCS) was calculated as the product of dimension weights and item scores. Practitioners rated the overall contribution of the evaluated provisions significantly above the scale midpoint (WCS = 3.33/5). Conservation-oriented provisions received significantly higher scores than permit- and allocation-oriented provisions, and practitioners rated the mitigation contribution higher than the adaptation contribution. The main gaps were permit and allocation provisions and the absence of explicit carbon/climate language.