Forest Policy and Economics最新文献

Street Level Bureaucrats (SLBs) play a crucial role as frontline public officials tasked with implementing policies on the ground. Despite their significance, the specific challenges that they face in the context of agroforestry policy implementation remain understudied. This research aims to fill this gap by investigating the challenges and coping strategies of the SLBs who implement agroforestry policies in Namibia. In addition, we aim to understand how these coping strategies hinder or facilitate the implementation of agroforestry. Drawing upon Lipsky’s theory of Street Level Bureaucracy, a qualitative research approach was employed which included document analysis, on-field observation, and interviews. We interviewed eighteen (18) SLBs from the Forestry and Agriculture departments across five regions in Namibia. The findings show that organisational settings, personal norms, and coping strategies of rationing, husbanding and ambidexterity influence policy implementation and consequently the outcomes of agroforestry initiatives. The study emphasizes the critical role of government support, clear policy formulation, resource alignment, and creating an enabling environment to empower SLBs in their implementation activities. Furthermore, this study contributes to exploring Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy theory within the context of agroforestry policy implementation, and in settings that are similar to Namibia. We conclude that while the theory offers valuable insights, it may not fully capture the complexity of policy implementation in these contexts, especially considering the influence of informal factors. Acknowledging this, future research should consider integrating the informal and cultural context to better address these complexities.

A significant segment of the variety of forest ecosystem services is neither demanded nor supplied through market exchange, but is provided essentially through political processes. In this paper, we present an economic analysis of forest stand management under consideration of politically provided ecosystem services. In this, competition between pressure groups seeking to grasp privileges plays an important role. We extend the Hartman model with elements of the pressure group models. We incorporate the amount of the reward derived from the political contest, the effectiveness factor of the forest owner in the political competition and the lobbying investment made by the forest owner. We show that the competition amongst pressure groups has a profound impact on the optimal rotation length compared to the classical solution by Faustmann. We discuss, how the competition amongst pressure groups shapes the optimal rotation length when forest stand management provides multiple forest ecosystem services. We also address the levels of the reward derived from the political contest and the effectiveness factor in the context of the urban–rural interface.

Increased demands for timber products remove carbon from forests, however previous literature has suggested that higher resulting prices could spur forestland expansion, ameliorating the forest carbon impacts. We examine the impacts on forest carbon from harvest increases with an empirical forest sector model, coupled with an econometric model of endogenous land use change that differentiates the impacts of population, income, and pine plantation rents among forest management types and non-forest land uses. We explore the sensitivity of forest area and carbon to a suite of scenarios by varying timber product demands combined with a sensitivity analysis on pine plantation responses to pine plantation rents. The econometric results show that pine plantation rents lead to increases in pine plantation area and that all non-urban land uses are negatively related to both per capita income and population. Scenario projections show that (1) higher pulpwood demands driven by wood pellets lead to lower forest carbon outcomes; (2) higher sawtimber demands exacerbate the known cycles in sawtimber prices and result in corresponding cycles in forest area and carbon. All scenarios show increases in forest carbon over time, though some scenarios increase faster than others. Within the study period, the highest forest carbon level is achieved by the high sawtimber demand and low pulpwood demand scenario. Long term growth cycles over the course of the projection period, however, lead to alternating forest carbon outcomes, indicating that conclusions about forest carbon depend on the projection length.

In order to have sustainable wood value chains, it is essential to understand the factors that determine the incorporation of wood resources into them. Forest contractors are among the key players in this process. This study evaluates the preferences of forest contractors when purchasing forest parcels. The variables considered are: slope of the terrain, distance to the nearest road, parcel size, parcel shape, and the fragmentation of the surrounding land. The study area is Galicia, a region in northwestern Spain that is dominated by small-scale family forestry. An Attribute Levels Survey was designed to establish threshold values of the considered variables to afterwards perform a Choice Based Conjoint Analysis (CBCA). The CBCA allowed to analyze the preferences of forest contractors in relation to the values of these variables and their relative importance. Also, it allowed to generate a map of the level of preference for all the Galician forest parcels with individual, private ownership. The most noteworthy result of this survey was that size greatly impacts the preference of timber contractors, preceded by slope and followed by distance to roads. These results will aid in the design of landscape-scale policies in a geospatial dimension, like the promotion of forest associations, and will lead to an improvement in the sustainability of wood supply.

We study the optimal enhancement of forest carbon sinks via forest management changes in boreal even-aged Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) forests. The economic–ecological stand-level optimization model integrates a statistical–empirical individual-tree growth model with a comprehensive model for carbon in living trees, wood products, and soil. We use reinforcement learning to optimize for rotation length, thinning timing, and thinning intensity. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) pricing has a notable effect on the optimal solutions and on the corresponding CO₂ flows and carbon stocks. Under a 1% interest rate, increasing the CO₂ price from zero to €100 increases the discounted carbon sink by 83% and the total steady-state carbon stock by 122%. Increasing the CO₂ price decreases the economic significance of thinning, and, with a high enough CO₂ price, the stand is harvested only with clear-cuts, which are further postponed by CO₂ price increases. Decreasing stand volume or total C stock cannot be taken as a sign of an overly mature stand. Depending on the CO₂ price and interest rate, the economic benefit–cost ratio of additional carbon sinks via forest management changes varies between 1.9 and 3.7. Overall, the results reveal a high potential to increase the role of boreal managed forests in climate change mitigation.

The types of tenurial arrangements and incentives appropriate for the sustainable management of common pool resources (CPRs), such as forests, remain a topic of debate. In this study, we aim to (i) investigate the extraction level of forest resources under short and long-term property rights, and (ii) evaluate the effectiveness of introducing mechanisms that leverage reputation and feelings of guilt in promoting cooperation among CPR users with short-term property rights to reduce over-harvesting. We develop a simple theoretical model to predict the optimal extraction level of a shared forest resource and validate the predictions using data from a framed field experiment conducted in rural Ethiopia. Our findings demonstrate that extraction levels under short-term property rights are higher compared to long-term property rights, aligning with the model predictions. Leveraging reputation and feelings of guilt is effective in bridging the gap in extraction intensity between short- and long-term property rights. However, as implementing reputation requires reliable monitoring that can be costly and challenging in the study context, we propose extending the duration of property rights over shared forest resources as a preferred strategy for curtailing over-extraction.

Forests play a pivotal role in delivering diverse ecosystem services, underscoring the need for effective care and management. Ecosystem service management recognizes the importance of integrating forestry within a broader framework that encompasses rural development, agriculture, landscape management, and environmental protection. This study focuses on structural policy coordination for forest management in the legal system requiring multiple actors' obligations with the case of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) by examining the relevant laws. We examined the selected 223 forest-related articles from 56 laws. Forest-related articles were categorized into three ecosystem services—provisioning, supporting and regulating, and cultural services— and analyzed focusing on deontic and actor-oriented meaning based on the concept of legal accountability. The results demonstrated structural policy coordination between the forest and agricultural sectors dominantly to enhance provisioning services for optimizing agricultural productivity while preserving productive forest resources. Policy coordination between the forest and urban sectors was developed dominantly to enhance cultural services of forests through collaborative endeavors for forest and green space planning and management in urban areas. Policy coordination between the forest and environmental sectors was developed dominantly to enhance supporting and regulating services through undertaking collaborative actions for habitat preservation, wildlife protection and soil conservation. This research revealed that structural policy coordination occurred to manage multiple ecosystem services between forest and non-forest sectors in the DPRK. The findings enrich our understanding of coordinated legislation based on the design of legal accountability in forest ecosystem services management.

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) has increased dramatically due to various human activities, with deforestation playing an important role. Forests act as carbon sinks and have the capacity to absorb CO₂ and other harmful emissions from the atmosphere. In particular, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-15 (Life on Land) addresses the importance of reforestation and forest management. Accordingly, this study analyzes the impact of the forest load capacity factor and renewable energy on CO₂ emissions in the context of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. For this purpose, the study focuses on India from 1990 to 2021. The empirical results indicate that (i) the EKC hypothesis is valid; (ii) the forest load capacity factor has an inhibitory effect on CO₂ emissions; and (iii) renewable energy consumption has no significant effect on ecological degradation. This study points to the crucial role of forest load capacity for ecological sustainability. Moreover, renewable energy sources do not seem to be a viable option to achieve India's environmental goals. Therefore, the Indian government should focus on improving afforestation and forest conservation policies to improve ecological conditions.

The valorization of forest ecosystem services requires actors to innovate and tackle difficulties in realization. We conducted two questionnaire survey series in Japan with forest owners and municipalities—important actors in implementing valorization—to investigate their innovativeness. We measured owners' innovativeness regarding valorization by asking whether they were interested in, planning for, or had implemented four types of valorization: (1) multifunctional payments, (2) habitat payments, (3) non-wood forest products (NWFP) marketing, and (4) forest service industries. Based on spatial autoregressive regression (SAR) analyses of 312 responses, we found that ownership type, age, holding size, and purpose of forest ownership were associated with owners' innovativeness indices. For example, younger owners and the ones with NWFP ownership purpose are more innovative in one or several types of valorization. We also asked municipalities how innovative they were toward using forest environmental transfer tax, a national funding scheme, for implementing or assisting the valorization methods mentioned above. Based on the SAR analyses of 664–670 responses, we identified correlations between innovativeness and several municipal factors such as population size, population changes, areas of private plantation forest ownership, forest ratios, and the importance of agriculture and forestry. Specifically, the coefficients for forest ratio and agriculture/forestry/fishery added value variables were positive in the NWFP model. Relying on the results of the SAR analyses, we evaluated the influences of regional systems of innovation on respondents' innovativeness and found that the influences are statistically and substantially significant.

The impact of forest certification standards on firm management and market performance is analysed in this paper, so as to isolate the influence of internal (moral and learning) and external (market and signalling) sources of motivation. To do so, three propositions are formulated and then empirically tested on a sample of Spanish companies certified by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). In the structural model, the association of the external motivations with management performance was not confirmed, although the one of internal motivations was significant and companies certified due to internal reasons yielded greater benefits. Our results suggested that the implementation of forest certification per se will not improve overall performance. Moreover, when the standard is internally driven, it is reasonable to expect the implementation of the necessary measures to improve management performance, using the guidelines prescribed by such standard. The findings may be used to characterize certified firms and to anticipate the benefits of both the implementation and the certification of the standard, shedding light on the associations between the motivational factors and the benefits of forest certification standards, a field which has yet to be addressed.