•People are willing to pay 88p more per £1 for an eco-labelled wood product.•Willingness-to-pay is linked to eco-knowledge and beliefs, and education level.•Less product information (“eco-friendly” ...and “sustainable”) is valued higher.
Woodlands provide a variety of market and non-market benefits, but deforestation arising from pressures on landowners to clear forested areas for other land uses may cause irrevocable loss of these benefits. Landowners need to be encouraged to create or retain wooded areas on their land, and manage them sustainably.
A proposed solution is the use of an eco-labelling scheme. Eco-labelling is a process by which branding is applied to a product to assure a customer that the product is “environmentally-friendly”. Customers are willing to pay more for eco-labelled forest products and eco-labels allow producers of forest products to differentiate themselves in the market or enter new markets entirely. It acts as a market-based instrument to encourage sustainable forest management.
Through the use of an experimental second price Vickrey auction, this study determined that people are willing to pay an average of 88p more for every £1 on a low cost, frequently purchased eco-labelled wood product. This positive willingness-to-pay is related to the consumers’ knowledge of the environment, their conservation-orientated beliefs and higher levels of education. Information presented also determines willingness-to-pay, with consumers favouring less information about the product's credentials, preferring to be told the product is generally “eco-friendly” and “sustainable”.
Purpose This article summarizes the international scientific research output of global forest product models, infers future research trends and provides reference for quantitative analysis and ...mathematical modeling of Chinese forest product problems, with the aim of contributing to promoting domestic production of Chinese forest products and strengthening international trade competitiveness of forest products. Design/methodology/approach In 1999, Joseph Buongiorno, a scholar at the University of Wisconsin in the United States of America, proposed the global forest products model (GFPM), which was first applied to research in the global forestry sector. GFPM is a recursive dynamic model based on five assumptions: macroeconomics, local equilibrium, dynamic equilibrium, forest product conversion flow and trade inertia. Using a certain year from 1992 to present as the base period, it simulates and predicts changes in prices, production and import and export trade indicators of 14 forest products in 180 countries (regions) through computer programs. Its advantages lie in covering a wide range of countries and a wide variety of forest products. The data mainly include forest resource data, forest product trade data, and other economic data required by the model, sourced from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the World Bank, respectively. Findings Compared to international quantitative and modeling research in the field of forest product production and trade, China's related research is not comprehensive and in-depth, and there is not much quantitative and mathematical modeling research, resulting in a significant gap. This article summarizes the international scientific research output of global forest product models, infers future research trends, and provides reference for quantitative analysis and mathematical modeling of Chinese forest product problems, with the aim of contributing to promoting domestic production of Chinese forest products and strengthening international trade competitiveness of forest products. Originality/value On the basis of summarizing and analyzing the international scientific research output of GFPM, sorting out the current research status and progress at home and abroad, this article discusses potential research expansion directions in 10 aspects, including the types, yield and quality of domestic forest product production, international trade of forest products, and external impacts on the forestry system, in order to provide new ideas for global forest product model research in China.
Governing through markets Cashore, Benjamin William; Auld, Graeme; Newsom, Deanna
2004, 20040811, 2008, 2008-10-01, 20040101
eBook, Book
In recent years a startling policy innovation has emerged within global and domestic environmental governance: certification systems that promote socially responsible business practices by turning to ...the market, rather than the state, for rule-making authority. This book documents five cases in which the Forest Stewardship Council, a forest certification program backed by leading environmental groups, has competed with industry and landowner-sponsored certification systems for legitimacy.The authors compare the politics behind forest certification in five countries. They reflect on why there are differences regionally, discuss the impact the Forest Stewardship Council has had on other certification programs, and assess the ability of private forest certification to address global forest deterioration.
Most journalists and academics attribute the rise of wildfires in the western United States to the USDA Forest Service's successful fire-elimination policies of the twentieth century. However, in ...Fire Management in the American West, Mark Hudson argues that although a century of suppression did indeed increase the hazard of wildfire, the responsibility does not lie with the USFS alone. The roots are found in the Forest Service's relationships with other, more powerful elements of society--the timber industry in particular. Drawing on correspondence both between and within the Forest Service and the major timber industry associations, newspaper articles, articles from industry outlets, and policy documents from the late 1800s through the present, Hudson shows how the US forest industry, under the constraint of profitability, pushed the USFS away from private industry regulation and toward fire exclusion, eventually changing national forest policy into little more than fire policy. More recently, the USFS has attempted to move beyond the policy of complete fire suppression. Interviews with public land managers in the Pacific Northwest shed light on the sources of the agency's struggles as it attempts to change the way we understand and relate to fire in the West. Fire Management in the American West will be of great interest to environmentalists, sociologists, fire managers, scientists, and academics and students in environmental history and forestry.
The overexploitation of forest resources in the charcoal production basin of the city of Lubumbashi (DR Congo) is reducing the resilience of miombo woodlands and threatening the survival of the ...riparian as well as urban human populations that depend on it. We assessed the socio-economic value and availability of plant-based non-timber forest products NTFPs in the rural area of Lubumbashi through ethnobotanical (100 respondents) and socio-economic (90 respondents) interviews, supplemented with floristic inventories, in two village areas selected on the basis of the level of forest degradation. The results show that 60 woody species, including 46 in the degraded forest (Maksem) and 53 in the intact forest (Mwawa), belonging to 22 families are used as sources of NTFPs in both villages. Among these species, 25 are considered priority species. NTFPs are collected for various purposes, including handcrafting, hut building, and traditional medicine. Moreover, the ethnobotanical lists reveal a similarity of almost 75%, indicating that both local communities surveyed use the same species for collecting plant-based NTFPs despite differences in the level of degradation of the miombo woodlands in the two corresponding study areas. However, the plant-based NTFPs that are collected from miombo woodlands and traded in the urban markets have significant economic value, which ranges from USD 0.5 to USD 14.58 per kg depending on the species and uses. NTFPs used for handicraft purposes have a higher economic value than those used for other purposes. However, the sustainability of this activity is threatened due to unsustainable harvesting practices that include stem slashing, root digging, and bark peeling of woody species. Consequently, there is a low availability of plant-based NTFPs, particularly in the village area, where forest degradation is more advanced. It is imperative that policies for monitoring and regulating harvesting and promoting the sustainable management of communities’ plant-based NTFPs as a priority, be undertaken to maintain their resilience.
Forest Farming: Who Wants In? Trozzo, Katie E; Munsell, John F; Chamberlain, James L ...
Journal of forestry,
09/2021, Volume:
119, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
Forest farming is an agroforestry practice defined as the intentional cultivation of nontimber forest products (NTFPs) underneath a forest canopy. Forest farming perspectives and preferences ...among family forest owners are generally understudied, particularly in Appalachia, where many marketable native NTFPs species are found. We surveyed Appalachian family forest owners in 14 Southwest Virginia counties about their interest in forest farming and likelihood of leasing land for this purpose. We also asked about the owner’s residency and historical connection to the region as well as contemporary land uses, and identified the following types of uses: absentee and vacationers, newcomers, longtime farming residents, and longtime nonfarming residents. We mailed 1,040 surveys and 293 were returned (28.9%). Forty-five percent were interested or extremely interested in forest farming and 36% were likely or extremely likely to lease land. Rates of interest in forest farming and leasing were similar across owner types, suggesting broad appeal among family forest owners.
Impact evaluation methods (mixed effects models and matching) were used to investigate the effect of protected areas (PAs) on poverty and livelihoods in Cambodia, comparing households inside PAs with ...bordering villages and controls. There was no evidence that PAs exacerbated local poverty or reduce agricultural harvests in comparison with controls. Households bordering the PAs were significantly better off due to greater access to markets and services. Non-timber forest product (NTFP) collectors inside PAs were significantly better off than controls and had greater rice harvests, because they had more secure access to land and forest resources. The PAs in Cambodia therefore have some positive impacts on households that use forest and land resources for their livelihoods.
Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have become a vital part of the organizational landscape for corporate social responsibility. Recent debates have explored whether these initiatives represent ...opportunities for the "democratization" of transnational corporations, facilitating civic participation in the extension of corporate responsibility, or whether they constitute new arenas for the expansion of corporate influence and the private capture of regulatory power. In this article, we explore the political dynamics of these new governance initiatives by presenting an in-depth case study of an organization often heralded as a model MSI: the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). An effort to address global deforestation in the wake of failed efforts to agree a multilateral convention on forests at the Rio Summit (UNCED) in 1992, the FSC was launched in 1993 as a non-state regulatory experiment: a transnational MSI, administering a global eco-labeling scheme for timber and forest products. We trace the scheme's evolution over the past two decades, showing that while the FSC has successfully facilitated multi-sectoral determination of new standards for forestry, it has nevertheless failed to transform commercial forestry practices or stem the tide of tropical deforestation. Applying a neo-Gramscian analysis to the organizational evolution of the FSC, we examine how broader market forces and resource imbalances between non-governmental and market actors can serve to limit the effectiveness of MSIs in the current neo-liberal environment. This presents dilemmas for NGOs which can lead to their defection, ultimately undermining the organizational legitimacy of MSIs.
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