Forest certification has emerged as a market-based tool to safeguard the sustainability of the world's forests. Since media can shape public opinion, this study examines media treatment of forest certification in the United States, the world's largest producer and consumer of forest products. This study utilizes 309 print and digital newspaper articles published in the United States between 1989 and

Forest resource management has undergone profound changes in the last decades, including a tendency to apply participatory approach that seeks to involve local communities. However, the success of the participatory approach tends to remain dependent on the historical and societal context in question. To understand how the participation of forest communities has been changing as a result of the enforcement

Organizations, such as forest management cooperatives (FMCs), are established to support private forest owners to deal with structural and natural challenges that they cannot handle on their own. In 2018, Feil et al. found in a nationwide survey that only 30% of German private forest owners are members of FMCs. This low participation rate of private forest owners in FMCs in Germany poses a problem

The traceability of products has become an ever more important topic in global value chains because governments, producers and consumers wish to have in-depth information on the origin, quality, safety and sustainability of the products they regulate, trade or buy. However, traceability systems come with criticisms and challenges. This article describes how timber traceability is being realized in

According to the economy-environment trade-off, good economic conditions raise citizens' concerns about the environment, while economic recessions reduce the interest. This paper explores this hypothesis in print media and considers the quantitative media coverage of deforestation in three English-language newspapers between 1995 and 2015. The empirical findings reject the economy-environment trade-off

In almost all forms of agriculture and farming practice, land clearing is the initial step. In Indonesia, in general, the most cost effective means of clearing land is through the use of fire. However, this use of fire often results in uncontrolled outbreaks, particularly in lowland areas especially and during prolonged dry seasons. In recent years, these uncontrolled fire outbreaks have had a catastrophic

The paper presents the efficiency evaluation of forest districts in Southern Poland carried out using the standard Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) which is a nonparametric mathematical programming technique. The study aims to evaluate the efficiency and identify the external factors affecting the efficiency of forest districts by using the Tobit econometric model. The study was conducted for 113 forest

Deforestation and land degradation have been occurring across the globe, particularly in developing countries. Over the past 30 years, Indonesia's lowlands have experienced rapid degradation, deforestation and fires. Interventions aimed to achieve sustainable lowlands have been made through the introduction and adoption of commodities that provide sufficient livelihoods and reduce fires. However, these

We consider the effects of protectionist trade policies on international and domestic market integration, using evidence from the long-standing softwood lumber trade dispute between Canada and the United States. The benefits of trade liberalization are widely acknowledged, including better domestic-to-foreign price transmission due to reduced tariffs and lower trade costs between countries. Yet in

Innovation in the forest sector is a growing research interest and within this field, there is a growing attention for institutional, policy and societal dimensions and particular when it comes to the question of how to support innovativeness in the sector. This Special Issue therefore focuses on governance aspects, relating to and bridging business and political-institutional-societal levels. This

We use optimization of a structural dynamic model to evaluate the cost of carbon sequestration when afforestation subsidies are used to encourage private landowners to switch from cropland to forestry. Our model allows for the planting of either softwood or hardwood forest types with flexible rotation lengths, in addition to irrigated crops. We apply the model to a portion of the Lower Mississippi

The logging quota scheme was established in 1987 to control over-harvesting and promoting forest restoration in China, and it is expected to remain in place for many years to come. But the scheme has rarely been subject to careful empirical scrutiny. In this paper, we develop and estimate an empirical model to disentangle its potential effects on different dimensions of the forest condition, based

More than half of the United States' forestland is owned by millions of private forest landowners with small parcels. The length of forestland ownerships and its determinants are examined using duration analysis on a sample of parcels in Mississippi from 1999 to 2019. Overall, forestland ownership duration is short. About 46% of all the sampled parcels were sold at least once over the 21 years, and

Participation of local communities in forest management decision-making has been promoted as a mechanism of improving livelihoods and forest conditions, yet the level of participation in many programs remains low. Using data from a cross-sectional survey of 924 forest-dependent households in Western Kenya, we examine the factors that support or constrain forest dependent people's participation in a

This study aimed to propose a set of decision support tools to allocate Cambodia's REDD+ national baseline or initial forest reference level (FRL) to local REDD+ projects, based on their forest cover and forest carbon stocks, and the historical deforestation trends in their reference regions. Our samples included 77 hypothetical REDD+ projects and five actual REDD+ projects. To identify reference regions

The Horizon 2020 project, ALTERFOR, generated knowledge about forest management alternatives. Researchers modelled a future, sustainable provision of ecosystem services, where a salient question was one of how to facilitate the application of these innovative scientific results in praxis. Our qualitative study uses a method mix and the analytical Research-Integration-Utilisation (RIU) Model to provide

Inequality has become a core topic of forest-related research: Forest scholars have investigated how socio-economic and gender inequalities impact on forest use, how power asymmetries shape forest politics and governance, and how gendered professional norms contribute to the marginalization of women in forest industry and education. However, to what extent the forest science community is itself structured

The environmental and economic effects of rubber expansion in southeast Asia have been widely explored, while the possible social influence on local community is rarely investigated. This paper investigates the impacts of rubber cultivation by women's natal households on women's decisions about matrilocal residence after marriage in an ethnic-minority region of Southwest China from the perspectives

Indonesia has experienced one of the world's fastest plantation expansions. Plantation growth is indeed an economic solution to meet the market's needs, but the accompanying environmental damage and social conflict are at odds with sustainability goals. Various actors with interests in land compete with the power they have. The most powerful actors have controlled land use based on their decisions

While many countries around the world are advancing their efforts to transition to more sustainable economies, it is important to be aware of goal conflicts that can be induced by these transition processes. In this paper we focus on land use, especially forest clearances to provide space for transitions in other sectors. The key questions for our empirical case study in Switzerland are: 1) to what

Forest conservation on privately owned lands is a cornerstone of the Brazilian environmental policy framework. Brazilian legislation requires that all farms in the country maintain and protect forest areas known as Legal Reserves. Since Legal Reserves have major implications for forest conservation and agricultural production, it is key that we understand landholders' perceptions towards Legal Reserves

Deforestation is a significant environmental problem, contributing to biodiversity loss, land degradation, soil erosion, and climate change. During the past half-century, the continent of Africa has suffered massive losses of forested areas due to the changing structure of economies, increasing population, and expanding globalization. This research examines statistical evidence for the Environmental

Studies document that forest farm households participate in afforestation programs to increase economic well-being. Moreover, higher program subsidies are expected to raise their coverage rate. However, afforestation programs in Taiwan contradict this consensus. Although 71% of forest farm households participate in an afforestation program, participants have lower forest farm incomes compared to non-participants

Forest areas, like other ecosystems, provide a range of ecosystem services. The most common classification of ecosystem services distinguishes them into four categories: provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural. As is well known, the two categories of services (provisioning and cultural) provide direct benefits to society. The paper focuses on a selected element of Cultural Ecosystem Services

This article analyses the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) between the European Union (EU) and Vietnam as a form of postpoliticisation. In addition to their primary objective the governing of bilateral timber trade value chains, VPAs also entail an element of democratisation, as they are conditional upon stakeholder and civil society participation. Building on poststructuralist discourse-theory

A spatially analyse of the production structure and input choices for the heating, sawmill, and pulp sectors in Sweden is conducted using a panel data set includes quarterly data for period 2011 to 2016 across 21 counties. Focus is on price and input substitution elasticities, scale effects and technical change measures. A single-output regional translog cost models is developed and estimated. The

Several forest related EU policy instruments have set forest relevant quantitative or qualitative targets. We identify the forest relevant targets in current EU policy instruments, and examine whether the pan-European Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Forest Management (Forest Europe, 2015a) are sufficient to satisfy the information needs of EU policy makers when monitoring progress towards these

In subtropical eastern Australia, hardwood sawmills are exploring opportunities to adapt to declining availability of traditional, large hardwood native forest logs through the manufacture of veneer and laminated veneer lumber (LVL) from comparatively abundant small, native forest logs. This paper introduces an operations research model that evaluates the financial performance of veneer and LVL investment

This study examines the sustainability of traditional village groves (Maeulsoop), forest commons, in South Korea, and investigates factors influencing their sustainability. We assessed the socio-economic functions and ecological conditions of twenty-four village groves in Namwon City, South Korea, and evaluated the sustainability of these village groves. Variables (ownership, self-governance, forest

We examine the efficiency of Brazilian pulp and paper companies in the production of pulp and bioelectricity using an output-oriented data envelopment analysis. We assume that pulpwood volume, energy consumption, installed capacity and number of workers are the inputs to generate pulp and bioelectricity. We conduct this analysis by first determining the traditional efficiency scores, and secondly calculating

A column generation based algorithm for optimally solving a daily log routing problem in the Argentinean forest industry is presented in this work. Minimum-cost truck-routes are dynamically generated by two complementary pricing procedures within this algorithm. The proposed decomposition procedure is able to provide optimal and or near optimal transportation plans for large instances found in the

This paper presents ideas and strategies to prevent illegal logging of timber. Globally, illegal logging is a substantial problem. While the exact amount of timber harvested illegally is unknown, the problem is estimated to cost USD$30–100 billion annually. Criminological theories suggest intervention mechanisms that could either prevent or severely limit illegal logging in the forests. Utilizing situational

A major problem faced by government as trustee of society charged with conserving the nation's forest environmental asset is that the standard Economic Account for Forestry (EAF) fails to measure the contribution of nature to total forest incomes and environmental assets. In the context of this government mission, the debate arises with regard to how to uncover the contribution of nature to the total

In the face of growing demand for sustainable sources of biomass, the challenge of mobilising non-industrial private forest landowners (NIPF) with varying management objectives, to actively manage their forests and increase the supply of wood biomass, is an area of growing research and policy focus. While innovation and knowledge exchange is increasingly viewed as a means of promoting sustainable wood

Common property in Latin America is mostly managed by indigenous populations, which are in most of the cases located in remote settlements. Tenure regimes and remoteness are considered to influence the amount of income and type of products extracted from forests. Most of the previous studies could not assess to what extent the contribution of forests to livelihoods is mediated by either tenure regimes

The forest sector can play a major role in the transformation to a sustainable bioeconomy, driven by climate change, population growth, and accelerated urbanization. However, in most contexts, the industrial wood construction markets, as a promising field for sustainable bioeconomy, are still at a niche level. The analysis in this study concerns the preferred future export markets for industrial wood

In a climate change context, changing temperature and precipitation patterns are expected to have strong impacts on Brazilian eucalypt plantations. Implementing adaptive water-efficient management practices is thus becoming necessary to maintain high levels of productivity while preserving the water resources. This paper investigates the ability of eucalypt farmers to modify their current silvicultural

There is increasing political interest in the use of voluntary agreements (VA) as a policy instrument. The attraction has grown also in environmental policy, VAs are expected to be less costly, more effective and more cost-efficient than regulation. Using a realist review methodology, our analysis focuses on the effect of contextual factors and mechanisms on private forest owners' willingness to enter

Multnomah Falls, a 620-ft-tall waterfall in the Columbia River Gorge, is the most visited natural site in Oregon. Its economic value is unclear, however, as the Falls are free to access. Due to a wildfire in 2017, the site was partially closed for over a year. Costly repair work was carried out along the single trail that allows visitors to hike to the top of the waterfall. In this study, we first

Collective action approaches in the commercialization of wood forest products from smallholders in a rural setting are not fully investigated and understood. This implies the necessity to gain a better understanding on the state of forest farmers' organizations (FFOs), with a view to identifying current and future research issues to be addressed. This systematic review, thus, aims to provide a knowledge

Increasingly it is recognized that traditional models of rational decision making fail to capture important aspects that extend beyond just assessments of relative costs and benefits, expanding to consideration of other elements such as culture. We studied how ethnicity and religion may influence the use of native forests in the South of Chile, an area of high biological and cultural diversity where

This manuscript offers a synthesis of the studies compiled under the Special Issue “Socio-economic and Ecological Impacts of China's Forest Policies, Programs and Practices” and outlines areas where new research seems warranted. There is evidence that China's policy interventions in its forest sector have improved national environmental and ecological conditions. Corresponding effects on localized

Satellite data offer a transformative view of global forest resources but observe a highly restricted set of forest attributes, limiting both theoretical and applied research. In response to this problem, we propose the use of ‘economic forests’ as analytical units and show how key characteristics of forests that determine human decision-making can be retrieved by combining open earth observation datasets

The Forest Ecosystem Services (FES) concept is of immense value not simply because it is a principal provider of ecosystem services but because it makes these services a cross-sectoral policy concern. However, it is crucial to study how the European Union addresses its forests and ecosystem services in its policies because a well-coordinated and coherent EU forest policy could align numerous goals

During the last decades, political parties have still appeared as an almost unknown factor within the substantial expansion of topics in forest policy research. While discriminating between green, state/protection and market/use orientated parties, this study aims to reveal the influence of different governing parties on forest nature conservation policy in Germany, contributing to partisan theory

Despite the crucial role nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners play in reducing hazardous fuels across large landscapes, there is lack of information concerning their support and valuation of fuel reduction treatments. This study determined NIPF landowners willingness to pay (WTP) for implementing prescribed burning on their forestland to lower wildfire hazards using a contingent valuation

REDD+ is a mechanism to address climate change by reducing deforestation and forest degradation. In this article, the implementation of the REDD Early Movers- REM/Visión Amazonia program in Guaviare, Colombia, is analyzed, focusing on the implementation challenges and scope of the program when addressing deforestation drivers in a post-conflict context. By taking a historical perspective on regional

This Special Issue (SI) collects 16 papers that examine the direct, indirect, and/or induced socioeconomic and ecological impacts of China's major forest policies, programs, and practices. The topics covered in the SI includes: (1) ecological conservation and restoration; (2) international trade and industrial competitiveness; (3) tenure devolution and institutional changes; (4) forest resource management;

There is a noted lack of information on the effectiveness of investments in forest fire management in Brazil. Here, we quantify the budget expenditures of one private and one public fire-management program. We then compare burned areas within conservation units (CUs) and private rural properties (PPs) with and without investments in fire management in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado biomes. Investments

The rubber industry is one of the largest contributors to Malaysia's GDP and is economically important for the country. However, production has been declining over the last few decades. Similarly, this has also occurred in other crops such as cocoa. The decline in production adversely impacts the livelihood of local rubber smallholder farmers. To understand why this decline in rubber production has

Log prices can be volatile and hard to predict from month to month. For those tasked with managing timberland investments and the marketing of logs, however, short run predictions of price could be useful. This study shows that Douglas-fir log prices can be predicted with reasonable accuracy using only a small amount of readily available macro-economic information. For example, nearly half of the variation

The exchange of information among communal forest organizations is potentially beneficial for the creation and transfer of knowledge, but the establishment and maintenance of links between distant communities can be challenging. Network facilitators can help to establish and strengthen ties or collect and relay information among organizations. For this purpose, communal forest organizations in Thailand

In Europe, 60% of the forest area is privately owned, with a significant proportion of nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) being highly fragmented with, in particular, low intensity forest management. Numerous typologies have therefore been developed to provide detailed guidance to policy makers for the design of policy instruments to involve these owners in forest management approaches. However, these

The development of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) plays an active role in overall economic development and is considered a new direction for sustainable forestry development to help people escape poverty. From micro data collected by a survey of poor, rural households living in the mountainous region of Central Vietnam, a structural equation model (SEM) incorporating the six factors of household

In a growing bioeconomy, traditional forest products markets change and diversify. Fossil-based inputs in the chemical, textile, apparel and downstream industries can be replaced by lignocellulose-based products such as dissolving pulp, cellulose-based chemical derivatives and textile fibres. When looking ahead, these previous niche products are likely to gain in economic importance. So far, little

Sustainable development requires knowledge of trade-offs and synergies between environmental and non-environmental goals and targets. Understanding the ways in which positive progress in matters of development not directly concerned with the environment can affect the natural environment, whether for better or for worse, can allow policymakers and development agencies to avoid the negative impacts

Scientific Forest Management (ScFM) is gaining scholarly and policy attention in Nepal. This interest validates the need for evidence on the costs and benefits for users in scientifically-managed community forests. This paper analyzes the costs incurred and the benefits that accrue to users under ScFM. Data was generated through a survey of 200 household representatives in the Nawalparasi Bardaghat-Susta