Some indirect costs of forest certification

摘要

Forest certification is designed to assure consumers that the wood products they purchase come from sustainably managed forests. Certified forests must meet certain standards that vary with the certification scheme. However, certification generally promotes environmental objectives by restricting forest management options in ways that may reduce wood and fibre production and increase the cost of delivering wood to market. For example, some aspects of certification programmes can discourage creation of new forest plantations and application of herbicide and fertilizer. These restrictions have costs which often are difficult to quantify. Bounds on the opportunity costs of restricting silvicultural options are explored by comparing a natural pine regime to plantation management regimes with and without herbicide using some basic economic criteria. In this analysis, a plantation regime with herbicide had nearly four times the land expectation value (LEV) of a natural pine regime and almost double the LEV of a plantation without herbicide treatment.