Forest owners’ willingness to accept compensation for voluntary conservation: A contingent valuation approach

To avoid conflicts often associated with mandatory regulations, it is crucial to motivate and incentivize forest owners to participate in voluntary conservation programs. To investigate forest owner preferences and willingness to accept compensation (WTA) to participate, we conduct a contingent valuation survey of non-industrial private forest owners in Norway. We find that WTA is negatively related to the size of the forest holding and absentee ownership, and positively related to the share of the forest classified as productive. The overall mean WTA per year per hectare is estimated at NOK 1800. Costs of reaching conservation goals can be saved by targeting small and relatively less productive forests and absentee owners first, before considering increasingly expensive forest areas. However, this recommendation only holds if desirable biological characteristics are not substantially less likely to be found in such areas. Results are potentially important both for our understanding of forest owner preferences and the costs of voluntary forest conservation schemes currently in use in many countries.     

南方集体林区森林经营联合认证实践应用分析

结合中国南方集体林区林权制度改革后的森林经营现状,对森林经营联合认证在其发展的有利条件、障碍及机遇进行深入分析。结果表明:林权改革发展、林业合作社兴起以及联合认证花费较低、信息技术共享等为南方集体林区发展森林联合认证创造了有利条件;林农森林认证思想薄弱、农村缺乏专业技术人才与资金以及林农分布较为分散等问题在一定程度上阻碍了联合认证的发展。此外,在南方集体林区发展森林联合认证还有一系列的机遇,例如"三农政策""扶贫政策"等国家政策的保障,巨大的林产品出口量推动合作社林产品的认证以及社区林业与林区联合认证理念契合等。因此,针对其障碍,提出开展认证培训、增设认证试点、拓宽资金渠道及明确和统一高保护价值森林定义等相应的改善对策。     

The meanings of forest governance in Esmeraldas,Ecuador

Participatory forestry has become the most accepted way of exploiting timber resources in tropical rain forests. This paper shows the links between participatory forestry, sustainable forest management and the continuing objective of reconciling conservation with commercial development in the province of Esmeraldas, one of the poorest and most rapidly deforested regions of South America. I describe and contextualize the evolving logging programme of a leading Ecuadorian wood-processing group to show that the decentralization of the development process, the recognition of local communities as legal entities in the management of natural resources, and the active involvement of profit-oriented firms in biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation all contribute to the emergence of new alliances between the Ecuadorian government, the logging companies, conservation and human rights organizations, and local Black and indigenous communities. My central argument is that devolution in this context leads to conflictive interpretations of regulation. I end with a discussion of the multi-scalar nature of “forest governance”, and highlight the contribution it makes to our understanding of control, regulation and management in new contexts of privatization and decentralization.     

Assessing non-industrial private forest owners’ attitudes to risk: Do owner and property characteristics matter?

This study relates owner and property characteristics to non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners’ attitudes to financial risk-taking in forestry decisions. Using a two-period mean-variance setting, the harvesting decisions of NIPF owners are examined with the aim of measuring their willingness to take risks. Since willingness to pay for reduction of risk is empirically unobservable, I rely on an index of NIPF owners’ attitudes to risk from a hypothetical survey question involving financial risk. According to the index, respondents (owners) are categorized as risk-averse, risk-neutral or risk-seeking. I apply a probit analysis to test how owner and property characteristics influence the NIPF owners’ attitudes to risk. The results show that characteristics influence the formation of risk attitudes. More explicitly, a longer period of ownership increases the probability that the owner is risk-averse, while increased time in the forest conducting silvicultural work increases the likelihood that an owner is risk-seeking. The results also show that female NIPF owners are more risk-seeking than male owners. The study fills a knowledge gap in the literature, relating owner and property characteristics to management decisions. Inclusion of risk attitudes and the judgement of risks into studies of NIPF owners’ management can help to understand why NIPF owners’ harvesting may deviate from net present value maximisation.     

Performance of success and failure in grassroots conservation and development interventions: Gender dynamics in participatory forest management in India

Co-governance of forests, or participatory forest management, has been a wide-spread conservation and development (C&D) intervention in India for over two decades. The practice began in the 1990s as Joint Forest Management (JFM), where local communities – organised into forest protection committees (FPCs) – worked in cooperation with various state forest departments. Later on, this intervention took shape of Community Forest Management (CFM), where communities managed their forests largely independent of the forest departments. Under both the JFM and CFM models, gender mainstreaming – enabling equal distribution of opportunities and services across genders – held a pivotal position. This study shows that despite continued marginalisation, female FPC members often performed as if initiatives were successful. Thus, the central question investigated in this paper is: "Why women performed success in participatory forest management interventions while experiencing marginalisation in the FPC?” This paper adopts an ethnographic case study methodology (immersion), utilising in-depth ethnographic case studies from three states of India for analysing performances of success and the resulting dynamics of participation, to explain the gendered nuances of the grassroots conservation and development interventions. The concept of 'situated agency' of community actors is explored to understand the practices around the performances of success in C&D interventions in forest-dependent communities in India. The paper argues that these performances hold the promise of a slow, but steady progress towards the creation of a gender-sensitive system in an otherwise patriarchal social structure.     

Changing decisions in a changing landscape: How might forest owners in an urbanizing region respond to emerging bioenergy markets?

The global bioenergy market has considerable impacts on local land use patterns, including landscapes in the Southeastern United States where increased demand for bioenergy feedstocks in the form of woody biomass is likely to affect the management and availability of forest resources. Despite extensive research investigating the productivity and impacts of different bioenergy feedstocks, relatively few studies have assessed the preferences of private landowners, who control the majority of forests in the eastern U.S., to harvest biomass for the bioenergy market. To better understand contingent behaviors given emerging biomass markets, we administered a stated preference experiment to private forest owners in the rapidly urbanizing Charlotte Metropolitan region. Respondents indicated their preferences for harvesting woody biomass under a set of hypothetical market-based scenarios with varying forest management plans and levels of economic return. Our analytical framework also incorporated data from a previously-administered revealed preference survey and spatially-explicit remote sensing data, enabling us to analyze how individuals’ ownership characteristics, their emotional connection the forests they manage, and the spatial patterns of nearby land uses, influence willingness to grow bioenergy feedstocks. We found conditional support for feedstock production, even among woodland owners with no history of active management. Landowners preferred higher economic returns for each management plan. However low-intensity harvest options were always preferred to more intensive management alternatives regardless of economic return, suggesting that these landowners may be more strongly motivated by aesthetic or quality-of-life concerns than feedstock revenues. Our analysis indicated preferences were dependent upon individual and environmental characteristics, with younger, more rural landowners significantly more interested in growing feedstocks relative to their older and more urban counterparts. While this study focuses on one small sample of urban forest owners, our results do suggest that policy makers and resource managers can better inform stand-level decision-making by understanding how feedstock production preferences vary across populations.     

乡村振兴林农参与碳汇项目意愿研究

基于2016年福建省林权改革监测调研数据,利用二元Logistic模型,分析影响福建省欠发达山区林农参与碳汇林生产经营意愿的因素;贫困户与非贫困户对碳汇林项目经营意愿是否有差异及产生差异的原因。结果表明:贫困户与非贫困户对于碳汇林项目的响应程度有一定的区别,对于全体受访对象和非贫困户,是否参加过碳汇林生产培训、家庭林地面积、家庭林业总收入对提高其参与林业碳汇项目的意愿有显著的促进作用,而木材采伐销售收入反向影响其参与林业碳汇项目的意愿;对于贫困户,是否参加过碳汇林生产培训显著影响其参与林业碳汇项目经营的意愿。因此,提高贫困户和非贫困户的碳汇林经营意愿应各有侧重,在政策的制定上应给予贫困户一定的倾斜,调动贫困户的经营积极性,拓宽收入渠道,最终实现精准扶贫。     

Knowing but not knowing: Systematic conservation planning and community conservation in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca,Mexico

Systematic conservation planning (SCP) seeks to propose new reserves through a scientifically rigorous process using databases and research selection algorithims. However, SCP exercises have been criticized for “knowing but not doing”, i.e. not implementing the proposed reserve. But there is an additional problem that can be called “knowing but not knowing”, knowing things from databases, but not knowing crucial contextual information about community-based social processes that have supported the high forest cover and biodiversity detected. Examined here is how a common property region of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico has maintained high forest cover in the absence of public protected areas, while multiple SCP exercises have advocated for the creation of public protected areas in communal tropical montane cloud forests and pine forests as strategies for biodiversity conservation and resilience to climate change. Methods included archival research, review of community documents, focus group interviews, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, land use transects, and GIS analysis and remote sensing. Conservation in the region originally occurred because of low population densities, steep slopes and a lack of agricultural subsidies, supported by locally adapted agricultural practices. In the 1990s, a transition from passive to active conservation took place with land use zoning plans, community conservation rules, community forestry enterprises and payments for environmental service programs that consolidated a trend towards high, unthreatened forest cover. Today, the study communities have an average of 88.3% forest cover, with 61% of that in informal conservation based on community land use zoning and rules and another 14% governed by forest management plans approved by the Mexican government. We argue that truly systematic conservation plans would seek to understand how communities in the region are already managing forests for conservation. It is pointless and uninformed to advocate for top-down conservation interventions of forests that are already robustly conserved and resilient to climate change due to community action.     

Effects of gender and length of land tenure on timber supply in Finland

This study investigated timber supply from Finnish non-industrial private forests (NIPF) using the consistent Tobit model and nationwide micropanel survey data on timber sales of 1299 forest owners during 2004–2008. The effects of forest owners’ gender and length of land tenure on timber supply were studied in particular. Women sold one cubic meter per hectare and per year (about 30%) less than men did. Female owners sold less frequently, but larger quantities at a time than did male owners. Short-tenure (<5 years) owners’ harvests were only affected by price, owner's age, income, timber stock and forest acreage. A group with relatively high harvest levels was young, low-income new forest owners.     

Public Preferences and Willingness to Pay for Forest Disease Control in the UK

Invasive pests and diseases in trees impose a range of costs on society related to reductions in timber values, impacts on recreational opportunities and effects on forest biodiversity. These costs need to be considered when assessing control options and developing public policy. We investigate the preferences and willingness to pay of the UK general public for a range of forest disease control measures using a choice experiment with a sample of 605 people. Respondents were relatively well informed about general tree disease‐related issues, such as causes and general measures to minimise the risk of disease spread. They were less knowledgeable about specific tree diseases, with Dutch elm disease and chalara ash dieback being the most well known. We find that disease control programmes in publicly‐owned forests and forests owned by charitable trusts are more likely to be supported by the public than equivalent control programmes in privately‐owned and/or commercial forests. The nature of scientific uncertainty about diseases does not affect peoples’ preferences for disease control measures significantly. Higher respondent income, greater ex‐ante knowledge about tree diseases, and more frequent visits to forests are correlated with greater willingness to support publicly‐funded tree disease control programmes in forests. Better knowledge about tree diseases also improves the clarity of respondents’ choices. We find a negative sentiment against some disease control measures, such as clear felling of a forest, and chemical or biocide spraying. We conclude that there is significant public support for part‐financing forest disease control policies in the UK, but that this is conditional on forest ownership and the type of control measures used.     

Editorial - Value of nature conservation: the good or the context?

The idea of the contingent valuation method for measuring the value of non-marketed goods, proposed by Ciriacy-Wantrup in 1947, found its first application in a study by Davis (1963) at the beginning of 1960's on valuing recreational benefits of forests. Since then, contingent valuation and related methods like choice experiments have become a standard part of forest economists' toolkits. During their history, the pros and the cons of methods of valuing non-marketed benefits of nature have been intensively discussed in the literature. One of the questions, considered also in earlier editorials of this Journal, is what are we actually measuring.Reallocating land from timber production to nature conservation has been a prominent trend in northern Europe and North America during recent decades. On many occasions, this has caused public debates, the spotted owl controversy in western United States being a well known example. In Finland, the implementation of the European Union's nature conservation programme, Natura 2000 Network, at the end of 1990's resulted in a heated public controversy.Public debate and the arguments presented went out of all proportion as compared to the actual proposal. In the Natura 2000 Network proposal, only 5 % of the conserved area were newly protected sites, and newly protected forestland area was 0.15 % of the productive forest land area in Finland. Still, it was claimed that the programme would severely restrict forestry, endanger the profitability of forest industries and violate private forest owners' property rights. The Ministry of Environment received over 14.000 written complaints from private landowners concerning the conservation areas proposed.After the conflict, social scientists have tried to find out what actually went wrong. The most important reason seems to have been the fact that the environmental administration neglected land owners by leaving them completely out of the process of policy planning and designing the areas to be conserved. A contingent valuation survey on Finnish households' willingness to pay for increased conservation in the form of the Natura 2000 Network (Pouta et al. 2002), indicated that the planning process itself had a significant negative effect on Finnish households' welfare. Those respondents who were offered a nature conservation programme similar to Natura 2000 Network, but without the Natura label were willing to pay five times more for the increase than those who received the conservation project within the Natura 2000 Network. According to a choice experiment survey (Li et al. 2001), the proposal would have actually lost a majority vote in Finland.Preliminary results of a survey conducted in year 2002 on increasing biodiversity conservation in forests in Southern Finland indicate much more positive attitudes towards nature conservation (Lehtonen et al. 2002) than the survey on Natura 2000 Network just a few years earlier. One reason for this may be that preferences have changed. Partly, the results may reflect the fact that the later survey is very explicit on the effects of the programme on biodiversity, which seem to matter more than the hectares conserved. However, one reason may also be that this time the planning has not got the bad publicity of Natura 2000 Network, at least not yet.Since Fischhoff and Furby (1988), researchers have been aware of the fact that the context is an important determinant of willingness to pay for public goods. However, at least in Finland, this does not seem to have been common knowledge to environmental groups or policy planners. On the other hand, maybe it is exactly these kinds of features of non-market valuation techniques that cause environmental groups and even many academic natural scientists and ecologists to view the methods and mindset of economists with grave suspicion. Non-market valuation methods seem somehow to dilute the value of nature, which should be preserved whatever the costs.However, disregarding the effects of policy planning, or the perceived property rights of the landowners, is not going to make conservation policies more effective. In fact, if conservation controversies decrease citizens' utility given the proposed level of conservation, they decrease willingness to pay, and make it more difficult to justify conservation measures. Other things being equal, as customers we are more likely to enter a shop with good, reliable service, and a friendly smile can save the day, even if we decide not to make the purchase that time. This is how the human mind works: why should it be any different in the market for environmental goods and services?ReferencesCiriacy-Wantrup SV (1947) Capital returns from soil-conservation practices. Journal of Farm Economics 29: 1181-1196.Davis RK (1963) The value of outdoor recreation: an economic study of the Maine woods Ph. D. thesis, Harvard University. Fischhoff B, and Furby L (1988) Measuring values: a conceptual framework for interpreting transactions with special reference to contingent valuation of visibility. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 1: 147-184.Lehtonen E, Kuuluvainen J, Pouta E, Rekola M, and Li C-Z (2002) Stated preferences of the forest conservation in southern Finland. Scandinavian Forest Economics (forthcoming)Pouta E, Rekola M, Kuuluvainen J, Li C-Z, and Tahvonen O (2001) Willingness to pay in different policy-planning methods: Insights into respondents' decision-making processes. Ecological Economics 40: 295-311.Li C-Z, Kuuluvainen J, Pouta E, Rekola M, Tahvonen O (2001) Using choice experiments to value Natura 2000 nature conservation program in Finland. Helsingin yliopisto - University of Helsinki Metsäekonomian laitos - Department of Forest Economics Tutkimusraportteja - Reports 18.     

Using Geographically Weighted Choice Models to Account for the Spatial Heterogeneity of Preferences

In this paper, we investigate the use of geographically weighted choice models for modelling spatially clustered preferences. We argue that this is a useful way of generating highly‐detailed spatial maps of willingness to pay for environmental conservation, given the costs of collecting data. The data used in this study come from a discrete choice experiment survey of public preferences for the implementation of a new national forest management and protection programme in Poland. We combine these with high‐resolution spatial data related to local forest characteristics. Using locally estimated discrete choice models we obtain location‐specific estimates of willingness to pay (WTP). Variation in these estimates is explained by characteristics of the forests close to where respondents live. These results are compared with those obtained from a more typical, two stage procedure which uses Bayesian posterior means of the mixed logit model random parameters to calculate location‐specific estimates of WTP. We find that there are indeed strong spatial patterns to the benefits of changes to the management to national forests. People living in areas with more species‐rich forests and those living nearer bigger areas of mixed forests have significantly different WTP values than those living in other locations. This kind of information potentially enables a better distributional analysis of the gains and losses from changes to natural resource management, and better targeting of investments in forest quality.     

古城自然保护站生态环境建设及可持续发展对策

通过对古城自然保护站水源涵养林现状及特殊的地理位置的分析,针对森林面积减少、森林质量下降、林业经费投入不足、森林资源保护压力仍然较大等存在的现象,进行了深入细致的分析,研究找出古城自然保护站生态环境建设存在的问题和困难,提出加强宣传教育,增强全社会的生态保护意识;依法治林,加强生态环境建设;封山禁牧、科学管理,缓解生态环境压力;推广节能措施,减轻对森林资源的获取;生态移民,减轻生态环境的人为压力;培育和扩大森林资源的对策和建议。     

The failure of agri-environment measures to promote and conserve grassland biodiversity in Slovenia

The effectiveness of four grassland-specific agri-environment measures (AEM), implemented in the frame of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) in the period 2007–2013 in Slovenia was studied. We questioned whether the measures – “extensive grassland maintenance”; “preservation of special grassland habitats”; “preservation of grassland habitats for butterflies” and “bird conservation in humid extensive meadows in Natura 2000 sites” did genuinely support the conservation (maintenance or improvement) of high nature value (HNV) grasslands in Slovenia. The HNV grasslands were defined on the basis of national fine-resolution field mapping of habitat types. Two main outcomes emerged: AEM did not reach the vast majority of HNV grasslands in Slovenia (only 3%); the proportion of HNV grassland area included in AEM was negligibly low (1). Moreover, even this very limited interest in AEM did not target only grasslands of HNV, but any permanent grasslands regardless of their conservation value: forty-one percent (41%) of the grassland areas included in the AEM were actually non-HNV grasslands (2). The absence of pre-selection criteria for grasslands along with an absence of monitoring of the effectiveness and efficiency of the measures and low interest in the subsidies among farmers, led to almost complete failure of the AEM to promote and conserve species-rich extensive grasslands in Slovenia between 2007 and 2013. Even with some minor differences, the same concept was maintained for the currently running EAFRD 2014–2020, which raises serious concern.     

Forest conservation programs and the landowners who prefer them: Profiling family forest owners in the New York City watershed

Voluntary forest conservation programs offer family forest owners (FFO) financial incentives in exchange for legally-binding land use restrictions and/or management obligations. Protecting family forests in the Catskill Mountains region of New York is an important policy objective, as these watersheds provide clean drinking water to New York City. Multiple methods were used to elicit preferences for forest conservation program attributes and to identify potential barriers to participation. Respondents to a mailed survey were grouped according to the program attribute that most influenced their likely participation into forest conservation programs. Respondents were identified as time-sensitive, payment value-sensitive, rights-sensitive, payment mode-sensitive, or harvest-sensitive. Comparing groups revealed significant differences in age, attitudes towards harvesting trees, income, and importance of timber production. Supplemental qualitative data was collected during three focus groups of survey respondents and analyzed for general themes. Focus group discussions revealed a lack of knowledge about conservation easement programs, reluctance to burden landowners’ children with encumbered land inheritances, concerns for resale values and tax assessment, and a simmering animosity towards New York City’s watershed management efforts. We offer strategies to address these concerns and to design programs that will foster greater participation among FFOs in the region.     

私有林与中国林业发展

发达国家和经济转型国家的私有林具有以下特征:木材生产大多由采伐公司承担,集约经营程度和竞争力与它的规模有较强的正相关性,公共品或准公共品性质趋强,以及非农林主增多、老龄林主增多、林地平均规模趋小等。根据国际经验判断,私有林也应成为中国林业发展的选择。在现阶段发展私有林,需要改进林木采伐管制,确保采伐指标的公平分配,削弱森林部门征收税费的能力,相信农民的能力,并规范政府的行为。     

农户林权抵押贷款意愿及其影响因素分析——基于林业生产性融资需求的视角

利用四川省5个省级集体林权制度改革试点县(区)32个村508个农户调查数据,运用Logit模型对农户林权抵押贷款意愿及其影响因素进行实证分析。研究表明,在现行林权抵押贷款制度安排下,农户的性别、受教育年限、是否担任过村干部、非农就业人数比重、是否获得过信用贷款、投资风险承受能力、林木林产品销售比例、是否与企业签订购销合同和政府的支持等因素对农户林权抵押贷款意愿有显著影响。     

中国退耕还林生态补偿研究

通过梳理和归纳相关文献了解中国退耕还林生态补偿发展历程。退耕还林生态补偿研究主要内容:退耕还林生态补偿机制研究区域集中,研究层次较低;退耕还林生态补偿标准研究较为科学,但实施起来比较困难;退耕还林生态补偿意愿研究对象单一,影响因素不够全面;退耕还林生态补偿对农户影响结果存在差异性;退耕还林生态补偿效应研究内容与尺度不够全面。未来中国退耕还林生态补偿可以在4个方面进行深入研究:加强差异化退耕还林生态补偿研究,结合各地实际合理制定补偿机制;丰富退耕还林生态补偿意愿研究,注意影响补偿客体意愿因素的多样性;注重研究方法的多学科交叉和创新;进一步在退耕还林生态补偿效应分析中拓宽研究内容与尺度。     

What to do with mushroom pickers in my forest? Policy tools from the landowners’ perspective

Wild mushroom picking is a growing recreational and commercial activity. In Spain, wild mushrooms legally belong to the landowner, who seldom benefits from trade in mushrooms or from their recreational value. Cultural aspects (tradition, picker-related harms) and economic aspects (costly forestry works, income opportunities) constitute elements of the debate on how to deal with mushroom picking. Through a survey of private forest owners in Catalonia (north-eastern Spain), this paper examines their experiences with mushroom pickers, the factors shaping their related policy preferences and their willingness to engage in mushroom reserves.The results show broad support for introducing mushroom picking norms. A regulation would allow outsider pickers to enter private land, but only under certain conditions, i.e. to comply with socio-ecological rules of the area. Among respondents who support the regulation, active land owners who report instances of picker-related harm (both tangible and intangible) tend to support the establishment of a fee system which could be reinvested into forest management. That is also the position of the respondents who perceive mushrooms as a private right, i.e. they believe to have a legitimate right to exclude outsider pickers and, eventually, to raise revenues from that asset. On the contrary, forest owners who conceive mushroom picking as a free-access activity prefer neither to regulate it nor to charge fees. The option to establish a mushroom picking reserve depends on the landholder being a fee-supporter and perceiving instances of harm. Harm, instead, is mainly determined by the perception of congestion of pickers, which in turn is determined by the mushroom productivity of their forest, their level of privacy protection and their involvement to the primary sector. These findings help policymakers to better understand the logic and sensitivities of forest owners in view of designing mushroom picking policies that can effectively solve picker-landowner conflicts.     

Community forest management,gender and fuelwood collection in rural Nepal

This paper investigates how Forest User Group (FUG) management of community forests and household characteristics influence household allocation of male and female labor to fuelwood collection in rural Nepal. FUG collection bans are found to displace both landed and landless female fuelwood collection labor to other forests that are typically further away, but lower restrictions do not. A higher female FUG executive committee share has both conservation and equity enhancing effects by lowering the likelihoods that landless, Dalit, landed and non-Dalit women collect in other forests, and increasing the likelihood landless males collect in the FUG forest.