信息不对称、分成契约与超限额采伐--中国国有森林资源变化的理论分析和实证考察

本文回顾了改革开放以来国有林业企业管理体制的演变 ,通过多任务委托代理模型探讨了这一演变过程中利润分成和采伐限额两个不相容的政府政策激励对国有林业企业经营者激励的影响 ,特别是信息不对称条件下其对木材采伐的影响 ,从而解释了国有林业企业普遍存在的超限额采伐的经济原因。通过全国 2 8个省 5次全国森林资源普查的面板数据 ,通过使用国有林业企业的平均面积作为政府与国有林业企业委托—代理关系中信息不对称的代理变量 ,从实证上验证了信息不对称将会导致超限额采伐和国有林资源增长率下降的假说     

Fire use and prevention by traditional households in the Brazilian Amazon

Fire is an important land management tool for smallholders in the Brazilian Amazon. However, when fires are not properly controlled they can give rise to large-scale wildfires that threaten forests, agricultural plantations, and settlement areas. We use data from a survey of 220 households to examine fire prevention and the scale of fire prevention and burning activities among traditional subsistence households in the Tapajós National Forest in Pará, Brazil. We find that in traditional households, economic variables such as the opportunity cost of household time, market conditions, and the hiring wage are important predictors of these decisions, as is household reliance on standing forest resources for non-timber products. Our results confirm that traditional households actively engage in fire prevention, and suggest that fire prevention is motivated by a desire to protect agricultural plantations as well as standing forest reserves. The results suggest that increased income, improved infrastructure, and improved access to markets for labor and agricultural goods will encourage fire prevention among smallholders in communities with education and planning programs.     

The role of domestic timber markets in tropical deforestation and forest degradation in Ecuador: Implications for conservation planning and policy

Studies about the impact of the timber trade on tropical forests have often oversimplified process complexity and underestimated regional variability. This study shows that forest degradation and clearing in Northwest Ecuador between 1983 and 1992 was closely linked to commercial logging. A key finding is that domestic demand is critical for shaping timber extraction and, hence, forest degradation and deforestation in this region. Low timber prices for roundwood and sawnwood at the origin, which are bolstering unsustainable forest extraction, have not been affected by market liberalization. This suggests that conservation initiatives that target international trade linkages may only be partially successful, even when they do what they are intended to do. Results suggest that market-based incentives are more likely to produce the desired results if they target and support timber producers directly. These findings are also relevant for other regions where domestic markets are a significant drive for deforestation and where local markets are supplied through the activities of small-scale, labor-intensive primary producers. Also, by emphasizing areas where logging is a dominant force, meso-level studies, like this one, not only help to more accurately estimate the impact on local forests, but also identify major resource flows and the factors promoting or hindering sustainable use, and those affecting the effectiveness of policy options.     

CHINA'S FORESTS UNDER ECONOMIC REFORM: TIMBER SUPPLIES, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, AND RURAL RESOURCE ACCESS

China's national forest statistics describe increases in total forest cover during the 1980s but mask the diversity of responses to economic reform and some characteristics of the forests and, forest uses. The provincial-level statistics reported here confirm the regional studies and anecdotal reports about widespread fellings of forest in the non-state managed areas but demonstrate that high rates of harvest occurred in the state-managed forests, too. These disaggregated statistics reveal the importance of direct investment projects, as opposed to pure reform measures, to provide environmental services and to increase, forest cover overall. In addition, these statistics provide evidence of an increase in the use of forest land for cash forests and fuelwood forests, as opposed to timber forests, by rural forest managers trying to meet their local resource and income needs.     

Natural resource accounting for Indian states — Illustrating the case of forest resources

Our main objective is to set out and apply a SEEA-based methodology to reflect the true value of forest resources in India's national and state accounts. We establish that a “top-down” approach using available national databases is both feasible and desirable from a policy perspective. In this paper, we address four components of value creation in forests: timber production, carbon storage, fuelwood usage, and the harvesting of non-timber forest products. The results of our analysis suggest that prevailing measures of national income in India underestimate the contribution of forests to income. The income accounts of the Northeastern states in particular are significantly understated by these traditional (GDP/GSDP) measures. We are also able to identify some states which performed poorly in the context of our sustainability framework, reflecting natural capital losses due to degradation and deforestation. Our results highlight the need to integrate natural resource accounting into the national accounting framework in order to generate appropriate signals for sustainable forest management and for the conservation of forest resources which are widely used by the poor in India, as well as being significant stores of national wealth.     

Trade-mediated biotechnology transfer and its effective absorption: an application to the U.S. forestry sector

In this paper, we analyze the consequences of biotechnology innovations in the United States forest sector (logging) by modeling technology transfer embodied in trade flows and its absorption. A seven-region, seven-traded-commodity version of a dynamic computable general equilibrium model is used to achieve this task. A 0.63% Hicks-neutral biotechnological progress in the source region (U.S.) has differential impacts on the productivity of the log-using sectors in the domestic as well as in the recipient regions. Since recipient regions' ability to utilize biotechnology innovations depends on their absorptive capacity (AC) and structural similarity (SS), we construct the AC and SS indices based on multiplicity of factors such as human capital endowments, skill content and social appropriateness of the new innovations. The model results show that biotechnological innovations in the U.S. forest sector result in a significant increase in timber production. Following the productivity improvements and its embodied spillover, wood products and pulp and paper sectors in the U.S. register higher productivity growth. The role of AC and SS in capturing technical change is shown to be evident. In the face of growing regulations on timber production from public forests, increasing productivity through biotechnology may be the most effective way to meet the consumer demand for forest products.     

Payments for environmental services as an alternative to logging under weak property rights: The case of Indonesia

Decentralization reforms in Indonesia have led to local communities negotiating logging agreements with timber companies for relatively low financial payoffs and at high environmental cost. This paper analyzes the potential of payments for environmental services (PES) to provide an alternative to logging for these communities and to induce forest conservation. We apply a game-theoretical model of community-firm interactions that explicitly considers two stylized conditions present in the Indonesian context: (i) community rights to the forest remain weak even after decentralization, and (ii) the presence of logging companies interested in the commercial exploitation of the forest. Intuition may suggest that PES design should focus on those communities with the lowest expected payments from logging deals. However, we show that these communities may not be able to enforce a PES agreement, i.e., they may not be able to prevent logging activities by timber companies. Moreover, some communities would conserve the forest anyway; in these cases PES would not lead to additional environmental gains. Most important, the introduction of PES may increase a community's expected payoff from a logging agreement. A failure to consider this endogeneity in expected payoffs could lead to communities opting for logging agreements despite PES, simply allowing communities to negotiate better logging deals. Our results indicate that PES design is a complex task, and that the costs of an effective PES system could potentially be much higher than expected from observing current logging fees. Using data collected in Indonesia on actual logging fees received by communities, we illustrate how the theoretical results could be used in empirical analysis to guide PES design. Our results are likely to be useful in other cases where local people make resource use decisions but have weak property rights over these resources, and where external commercial forces are present. The results highlight the importance of understanding the details of the local context in order to design PES programs appropriately.     

Accounting for India's forest wealth

In this paper, we account for forest wealth in India. Changes in the timber and carbon wealth embodied in these forests are related to important green national accounting aggregates such as genuine saving and the change in wealth per capita. Important accounting issues include the timing of carbon releases that occur when forests are disturbed, as well as the valuation of these releases. Our empirical findings suggest that while India's forest wealth is substantial, net changes in this wealth are arguably not so large at least in relation to GNP. However, when viewed in the context of the wealth-diluting effects of population growth this implies a far larger additional savings effort is required to cover the (net) loss in forest values than otherwise appears to be the case. Finally, we examine ways in which the accounting approach that we adopt can be reconciled with approaches which stress conserving forest wealth.     

Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting: An Application to the Forest Resources in India

Forests contribute to the economy in several ways. While forests are a source of timber with market values, they also influence local and regional climate, preserve soil cover on site, and in the case of watersheds, protect soil downstream from floods –functions, which are not in the production boundary of SNA. Further, the net value added in forestry sector does not reflect sustainability of forest resources, because it ignores the consumption of natural capital (depletion) that occurs when forests are harvested or converted to other uses. The only costs of depletion considered in the national accounts are the extraction costs and records the potential loss in forest wealth as other changes in assets that have no effect on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The study tries to incorporate forest resources into the national accounts and adjust the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the depletion of forest capital, using the Satellite System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA). The value of net accumulation (positive or negative) of forests is calculated and the net Domestic Product is adjusted for the depletion of the forest resources to get Environment adjusted Domestic Product (EDP). The results show that the EDP equals 98.4% of the adjusted net domestic product in 1993–1994. A proper accounting framework would better reflect not only the long term value of the state's natural wealth but also its immediate contribution to the state economy in the current accounts.     

Economic cost of deforestation in semi-deciduous forests — A case of two forest districts in Ghana

The ecological, economic and socio-cultural roles of forests are under threat in Ghana due to the high rate of deforestation. Efforts are being made to combat this problem through rehabilitation measures. However, the costs of deforestation and restoration benefits are not adequately estimated. This paper fills in the gap in knowledge by providing an empirical estimation of the cost of deforestation in monetary terms. Primary data collected regarding timber, non-timber forest products and soils in semi-deciduous forests were analyzed using opportunity cost and replacement cost techniques. The results emphasize differences in the value of these forest goods and services lost annually. The largest losses were in stumpage fees, edible fruits, and avoided carbon emissions values. The results show that US$133,650,000 gross revenue, equivalent to 2.6% of the 2008 agricultural sector Gross Domestic Product, is lost annually. It can be concluded that restoring the degraded forest lands would bring benefits particularly to the local communities through increased stumpage revenues and harvest of non-timber forest products, as well as additional funds from carbon credits. It is recommended that stakeholders of forest resources are made aware of these costs in order to raise awareness of what they are losing through deforestation.     

Management strategies for tropical rain forests: Results of ecological models and requirements for ecological-economic modelling

In this study, we use two ecological forest models, namely FORMIX3 and FORREG, to analyse the impact of logging on tropical rain forests and to discuss needs for and problems of an economic extension of these models. The FORMIX3 model simulates spatial-temporal dynamics of tropical forests using an individual and process based approach. The main processes included are growth, mortality, competition, and regeneration of trees. The FORREG model simulates wood growth of tropical forests at landscape scale based on differential equations. Regeneration capabilities of logged forests are analysed and compared for different logging strategies. While conventional management strategies with a short logging cycle (here 20 years) produce low yields and cause severe changes in tree species composition, a reduced impact logging strategy with a longer cycle (here 60 years) leads to relatively high yields and causes moderate changes in species composition. Thus, longer logging cycles are preferable from an ecological point of view. However, also economic aspects influence logging decisions, thus a closer analysis of additional economic aspects of forest management is inevitable. We discuss which economic shortcomings of present rain forest models should be dealt with in the future and which additional data is needed as a consequence.     

Socioeconomic Impacts of Public Forest Policies on Heterogeneous Agricultural Households

Nepal has a long history of returning public forests to local people as part of its community forestry programme. In principle the community forestry programme is designed to address both environmental quality and poverty alleviation. However, concern has been expressed that forest policies emphasise environmental conservation, and that this has a detrimental impact on the use of community forests in rural Nepal where households require access to public forest products to sustain livelihoods. To study the effect of government policies on forest use, an economic model of a typical small community of economically heterogeneous households in Nepal was developed. The model incorporates a link between private agriculture and public forest resources, and uses this link to assess the socioeconomic impacts of forest policies on the use of public forests. Socioeconomic impacts were measured in terms of household income, employment and income inequality. The results show that some forest policies have a negative economic impact, and the impacts are more serious than those reported by other studies. This study shows that existing forest policies reduce household income and employment, and widen income inequalities within communities, compared to alternative policies. Certain forest policies even constrain the poorest households?? ability to meet survival needs. The findings indicate that the socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies may be underestimated in developing countries unless household economic heterogeneity and forestry??s contribution to production are accounted for. The study also demonstrates that alternative policies for managing common property resources would reduce income inequalities in rural Nepalese communities and lift incomes and employment to a level where even the poorest households could meet their basic needs.     

Economic Causes of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: A Panel Data Analysis for the 2000s

We use under-explored municipality level datasets to assess the recent economic and policy determinants of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. We estimate yearly panel data models (from 2002 to 2009) for 663 municipalities in the region. The results show that recent deforestation is increasing with economic activity and is also affected by economic incentives, measured by fluctuations in agricultural product and wood prices. Moreover, we document that the increasing enforcement efforts of the Brazilian environmental police (IBAMA) were effective in reducing deforestation rates.     

Improving Human Wellbeing and Ecosystem Health on BC’s Coast: The Challenge Posed by Historic Resource Extraction

Synopsis Haida Gwaii and the Great Bear Rainforest (GBR) comprise the world’s largest intact coastal temperate rainforest. British Columbia has encouraged industrial logging of this region. As a result, ecological values have been eroded and natural capital has been drawn down. The logging industry has provided few local economic benefits. Colonization and industrial resource extraction have contributed to high levels of social distress in First Nations communities. Since 2001, logging companies, environmental organizations, and the provincial and First Nations governments have collaborated in developing an Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) approach. EBM is intended to maintain ecosystem integrity and improve human wellbeing. In 2006, the province began implementing EBM by setting aside one third of the GBR’s land base from logging and by proposing transitional EBM requirements. This paper draws on stumpage and forest cover data to analyze natural capital depletion. The analysis indicates that much of the GBR’s natural capital, as represented by timber, has been depleted. Industrial logging was already on the decline before the decision was taken to implement an EBM approach. Expectations for improved socio-economic outcomes under EBM may not be realistic given the constraints implied by past logging. If EBM performance is measured using conventional economic indicators without accounting for past depletion, it risks being found to have failed the goal of improving human wellbeing. This would create pressure to relax EBM provisions to allow more logging, an outcome that would fail both ecosystems and human communities in the long term. If much reduced extraction levels are to support local human wellbeing, a greater share of economic benefits must be retained locally.      

Converting Forests to Farms: The Economic Benefits of Clearing Forests in Agricultural Settlements in the Amazon

Agricultural expansion into tropical forests is believed to bring local economic benefits at the expense of global environmental costs. The resulting tension is reflected in Brazilian government policy. The national agrarian reform program has settled farm families in the Amazon region since the 1970s, with the expectation that they will clear forests in order to farm the land. On the other hand, recent Brazilian policy initiatives seek to reduce deforestation to mitigate climate change. We contribute to the policy debate that surrounds these dual goals for the Amazon by estimating the marginal effects of new agricultural land on the full income and assets of farm settlers over a 13-year period from 1996 to 2009. Using micro panel data from agrarian settlements where forest was being rapidly cleared, and controlling for factors that would otherwise confound the relationship, we estimate the effect of converting forest to agriculture on total household income to estimate the opportunity cost of conserving forest. Our measure of income reflects any re-allocation of resources by utility maximizing households and any productivity effects due to loss of forest ecosystem services. The estimated effect of new agricultural land on income is positive, but small relative to the income per hectare of previously cleared land. However, we show that income increases investment in physical assets, which raises households’ income generating capacity and future accumulation of assets. Thus, while there is only a small immediate income gain from clearing more forest, the long-term effects on wealth are still substantial. This demonstrates that given the right conditions, conversion of forest to agricultural land can be an impetus for asset accumulation by smallholders. It also highlights the importance of considering the indirect and long-term welfare benefits of new agricultural land when assessing the opportunity costs of forest conservation.     

Community–Industry Contracting over Natural Resource use in a Context of Weak Property Rights: The Case of Indonesia

Decentralization in Indonesia has resulted in an increased influence of local communities over the terms of logging agreements with timber companies. The outcomes of such community–company negotiations vary significantly across communities. What are the conditions that cause this variation, and how can the outcomes be more effectively and efficiently influenced by third-party actors such as the local government or NGOs? This paper addresses these questions by developing a game-theoretic model to illustrate the strategic interactions between communities and companies. The model allows for endogeneity of de facto property rights and bargaining positions. We show that third-party actions to improve the community’s bargaining position by raising its reservation utility may result in an increase in the area logged and thereby harm the environment. Our results indicate that the strategy of intervention matters. In particular, strategies that raise the sensitivity of interventions to local logging threats are likely to be more cost-effective in supporting communities and reducing forest degradation than more indiscriminatory strategies. The model will be relevant to other situations where communities negotiate contracts over natural resource use with outside actors in a context of weak property rights, a situation increasingly observed in other developing countries.     

An Operative Framework for Total Hicksian Income Measurement: Application to a Multiple-Use Forest

A methodology for estimating total hicksian income in multiple-use forests is presented. The approach consistently incorporates commercial as well as non-commercial economic values and enables the measurement of national accounting aggregates taking into account variation in man-made and natural capital. Innovative solutions are developed (i) for the estimation of non-market values, such as recreation, where an attempt to determine exchange values has been made simulating markets, (ii) for timber, where standing timber valuation methods have been extended to cover uneven stands, and (iii) for carbon fixation valuation, where only permanently fixed carbon after 1990 has been taken into account. The methodology is applied to a multiple-use pinewood in the Guadarrama mountains, near Madrid (Spain). Timber, cattle grazing, hunting, recreation, carbon fixation and conservation values are measured and integrated in the accounting system, using primary microeconomic data from the case study. Results indicate the importance of non-commercial income, which accounts for 51% of the total income, and the social relevance of the analysed forest, implying that only 31% of the total income generated is appropriated by the forest owner.     

Increasing Forest Conservation in Norway: Consequences for Timber and Forest Products Markets

This paper analyses the impacts on timber and forest products markets of increasing forest conservation in Norway. A partial equilibrium forest sector model is applied to analyse effects on roundwood and forest products prices, quantities and trade of four alternative conservation extents. These alternatives are based on a recent biological analysis of the conservation needs in order to protect biodiversity in Norway. Roundwood prices are projected to increase moderately when conservation increases domestically only, since the Norwegian forest industry substitutes imported fibre for domestic. The impacts on roundwood prices are more substantial if also Norways forest products trading partners increase the forest conservation. If forest owners voluntarily conserve forests subject to an economic compensation (which currently is the most likely policy in Norway), the model results imply that forest owners on average are better off with increased conservation. Domestic sawnwood production is projected to reduce when assuming increasing forest conservation, while the production level in the pulp and paper industry is almost unaffected in the short-run. Finally, increasing demand for forest products as a result of environmental good-will may increase roundwood prices and harvest levels in unaffected forest areas significantly.     

不同生计策略类型对农户林种选择意愿的影响研究——基于福建省477户农户调查数据

研究以福建省为调研区域,数据来源于福建省集体林权制度改革监测调查。根据农户收入来源不同,将农户生计策略类型划分为纯林型、兼业型和非林型,通过构建多元无序Logit模型,实证分析不同生计策略类型对农户林种选择意愿的影响。结果表明:从纯林型向非林型转变时,呈现出家庭耕地面积、家庭林地块数、家庭林地面积、家庭林业生产经营支出、家庭林业收入逐渐减少的趋势和家庭非林生产经营支出、家庭非林收入逐渐增加的趋势。以农户种植竹林意愿为参照,与非林型相比,纯林型和兼业型对农户用材林和经济林选择意愿均具有显著正向作用,用材林选择意愿受户主年龄、是否签订林地承包合同的影响,经济林选择意愿受户主是否为村干部、是否有林权证、是否加入农民林业专业合作社、是否拿到过林业补贴、林业单位面积投入的影响。研究结论有助于农户根据不同生计策略选择不同林种,进而提升农户收入水平,缓解农户生计问题。     

NET ACCUMULATION OF TIMBER RESOURCES

National accounting issues related to forest resources have attracted much attention recently. The net-depletion method, the most popular method for estimating aggregate changes in the value of timber stocks, tends to overstate both the depreciation of mature forests due to harvests and the appreciation of immature forests due to growth. Alternative, correct methods, which I term the net-price and El Serafy variations, can be derived from an asset valuation model that takes forest age into account. An empirical example indicates that estimates from the net-depletion method can deviate from actual values by up to 40 percent for some age classes.