Designing Forest Taxes with Varying Government Preferences and Budget Targets

A model of forest policy design is constructed to examine how government preferences affect the choice of forest taxes. Government preferences are modelled by assuming that the government faces a binding revenue constraint and cares about the provision of public goods from forests. The equilibrium is second best given the imposition of the revenue constraint on the government's decision making. Our results show that a revenue-constrained government will make different choices than a government that does not face revenue constraints. This has important implications for the choice of property and harvest taxes, as well as Pigouvian forest taxes.     

Intertemporal production externalities,technical change,and public expenditure analysis

This paper discusses the implications of relative price change for public expenditure analysis involving natural environments. It develops a model which identifies those demand and supply factors which must be considered in the evaluation of the time stream of benefits associated with the amenity services provided by natural environments in their preserved status.     

Non-timber forest products and village livelihoods in Rajasthan,India: adaptation in a changing environment

This paper presents the results of research conducted between 2009 and 2014 in the village of Khanda Sharol in the state of Rajasthan, India. Our research objective was to determine how the livelihoods of village residents have been affected by the intensification of forest use, and the resulting loss of domestic access to traditionally used forest resources. Results indicate that changes in forest cover have resulted in a loss of livelihood options for village residents. Yet rather than being victimized by environmental change processes, this paper shows how villagers have responded by partnering with public and private actors to develop a community protected forest area that is now helping villagers to meet their livelihood needs. These findings suggest that sustainable livelihoods in rural regions of India require committed and scaled approaches involving local, public, and private actors.     

Efficient and sustainable management of complex forest ecosystems

A large range of models has been developed for the analysis of optimal forest management strategies, with the well-known Faustmann models dating back to the mid-19th century. To date, however, there has been relatively little attention for the implications of complex ecosystem dynamics for optimal forest management. This paper examines the implications of irreversible ecosystem responses for efficient and sustainable forest management. The paper is built around two forest models that comprise two ecosystem components, forest cover and topsoil, the interactions between these components, and the supply of the ecosystem services ‘wood’ and ‘erosion control’. The first model represents a forest that responds in a reversible way to overharvesting. In the second model, an additional ecological process has been included and the ecosystem irreversibly collapses below certain thresholds in forest cover and topsoil depth. The paper presents a general model, and demonstrates the implications of pursuing efficient as well as sustainable forest management for the two forest ecosystems. Both fixed and variable harvesting cycles are examined. Efficient and sustainable harvesting cycles are compared, and it is shown that irreversible ecosystem behaviour reduces the possibilities to reconcile efficient and sustainable forest management through a variable harvesting cycle.     

Effects of preference heterogeneity among landowners on spatial conservation prioritization

The participation of private landowners in conservation is crucial to efficient biodiversity conservation. This is especially the case in settings where the share of private ownership is large and the economic costs associated with land acquisition are high. We used probit regression analysis and historical participation data to examine the likelihood of participation of Danish forest owners in a voluntary conservation program. We used the results to spatially predict the likelihood of participation of all forest owners in Denmark. We merged spatial data on the presence of forest, cadastral information on participation contracts, and individual‐level socioeconomic information about the forest owners and their households. We included predicted participation in a probability model for species survival. Uninformed and informed (included land owner characteristics) models were then incorporated into a spatial prioritization for conservation of unmanaged forests. The choice models are based on sociodemographic data on the entire population of Danish forest owners and historical data on their participation in conservation schemes. Inclusion in the model of information on private landowners’ willingness to supply land for conservation yielded at intermediate budget levels up to 30% more expected species coverage than the uninformed prioritization scheme. Our landowner‐choice model provides an example of moving toward more implementable conservation planning.     

Forest loss,monetary compensation,and delayed re-planting: The effects of unpredictable land tenure in China

Over the past 65 years, forest tenure in China has oscillated unpredictably between private and village property regimes. This policy-induced uncertainty has distorted the harvesting decisions of individuals granted rights to grow trees and has lowered the value of China׳s forest output. We provide an analytical framework for assessing these effects quantitatively. Understanding the consequences of this policy-induced uncertainty is particularly important since China is currently engaged in an ambitious plan to increase its domestic supply of timber. To conduct this analysis, we extend the literature on forestry economics when there is a risk of loss due to forest fire or pests. We (1) take account of the possibility that replanting can only resume after an interval of uncertain length (with immediate replanting as a special Case); (2) investigate the effects of compensation for such losses based only on the net value of the stand of trees at the time of the loss; and (3) compare it to compensation that would leave the wealth and rotation decisions of the farmer unaffected by the presence of uncertainty.     

Urban forest in China: Development patterns,influencing factors and research prospects

Urban forest is a very important part of urban ecosystems and provides significant ecosystem services. It benefits urban communities environmentally, aesthetically, recreationally and economically. This article reviews the development status, development patterns and influencing factors of urban forest in China. There are four typical development patterns of urban forest in China: the forest city, garden city, ecological economics and forest greenbelt. Social, climatic, economic and other factors influence urban forest development in China. Social factors include government behaviour, laws and regulations, science and technology, education and culture, public awareness and participation, ecological planning and management. Climatic factors include rainfall, temperature and sunlight. Economic factors include urban economic level and funding for urban forest. In future, government, NGOs and the private sector should be considered more in the planning and management of urban forest. The social, climatic and economic factors should be taken into account when improving urban forest management. Research on urban forest from the academic and the management viewpoint should be strengthened. This can improve the development and management of urban forest in China and in other developing countries.     

Hartwick's rule and maximin paths when the exhaustible resource has an amenity value

This paper studies the maximin paths of the canonical Dasgupta–Heal–Solow model when the stock of natural capital is a direct argument of well-being, besides consumption. Hartwick's rule then appears as an efficient tool to characterize solutions in a variety of settings. We start with the case without technical progress. We obtain an explicit solution of the maximin problem in the case where production and utility are Cobb–Douglas. When the utility function is CES with a low elasticity of substitution between consumption and natural capital, we show that it is optimal to preserve forever a critical level of natural capital, determined endogeneously. We then study how technical progress affects the optimal maximin paths, in the Cobb–Douglas utility case. On the long run path of the economy capital, production and consumption grow at a common constant rate, while the resource stock decreases at a constant rate and is therefore completely depleted in the very long run. A higher amenity value of the resource stock leads to faster economic growth, but to a lower long run rate of depletion. We then develop a complete analysis of the dynamics of the maximin problem when the sole source of well-being is consumption, and provide a numerical resolution of the model with resource amenity. The economy consumes, produces and invests less in the short run if the resource has an amenity value than if it does not, whereas it is the contrary in the medium and long runs. However, and without surprise, the resource stock remains for ever higher with resource amenity than without.     

Public Timber Supply, Market Adjustments, and Local Economies: Economic Assumptions of the Northwest Forest Plan

Abstract:  The Northwest Forest Plan in the Pacific Northwest sought to stabilize local economies, including local employment and income, by stabilizing the flow of wood fiber from public forests. This is also a common forest management objective in other regions and countries. Because this economic strategy ignores basic market adjustments, it is likely to fail and to unnecessarily damage forest ecosystems. Application of basic economic principles on how markets operate significantly changes the apparent efficacy of efforts to manage local economies by managing timber supply. The emphasis on timber supply tends to ignore the dominant role that the demand for wood fiber and wood products, rather than wood-fiber supply, plays in determining levels of harvest and production. Contemporary economics indicates that markets tend to operate to offset reductions in wood-fiber supply. This significantly moderates the economic cost of reducing commercial timber harvest in the pursuit of environmental objectives. In addition, contemporary economic analysis indicates that the economic links between natural forests and local communities are much broader than simply the flow of commercially valuable logs to manufacturing facilities. At least in the United States, the flow of environmental services from natural forests has increasingly become an amenity that has drawn people and economic activity to forested areas. Attractive site-specific qualities, including those supported by natural forests, can potentially support local economic development even in the face of reduced timber harvests. These market-related adjustments partially explain the Northwest Forest Plan's overestimation of the expected regional impacts associated with reduced federal timber supply and the ineffectiveness of the plan's efforts to protect communities by stabilizing federal timber supply.     

Effects of Carbon Taxes in an Economy with Prior Tax Distortions: An Intertemporal General Equilibrium Analysis

This paper analyzes the costs of carbon taxes in a model that recognizes interactions between this tax and pre-existing taxes. First we examine the extent to which costs of a U.S. carbon tax are reduced when its revenues finance cuts in income taxes. Such use of revenues significantly reduces, but does not eliminate, the overall policy costs. The positive overall costs reflect the carbon tax′s focus on intermediate inputs and its relatively narrow base in comparison with income taxes. We also examine the sensitivity of the carbon tax′s costs to the level of pre-existing taxes. For any given use of revenues, welfare costs rise significantly with pre-existing tax rates, indicating that models disregarding pre-existing taxes may substantially understate the costs of new environmental tax initiatives.     

广州市城市森林的空间特征与发展研究

应用城市林业的基本理论和ＧＩＳ技术，广州市城区森林的空间分布以两山（白云山、越秀山）两河（珠江、流溪河）为核心，辅之公共绿地和道路绿化，形成多功能、多类型的网络式结构。近郊森林建设好风暴旅游林以及环绕卫星城镇和重点工业镇的生态公益林。远郊森林保障了“菜蓝子”工程，促进森林旅游及其相关产业的发展。     

Tax evasion and optimal environmental taxes

This paper introduces a new argument to the debate about the role of environmental taxes in modern tax systems. Some environmental taxes, particularly taxes on gasoline or electricity, are more difficult to evade than taxes on labor or income. When the tax base is shifted in a revenue-neutral manner toward these environmental taxes, the result is a net reduction in the amount of tax evasion. Using a carbon tax as a motivating example, the “tax evasion effect” is shown to sharply reduce the welfare cost of controlling emissions. A simple computable general equilibrium model suggests that the impact of considering tax evasion can be large: costs are lowered by 28% in the United States, by 89% in China, and by 97% in India. In countries with high levels of pre-existing tax evasion, a carbon tax will pay for itself through improvements in the efficiency of the tax system.     

Pigou meets Mirrlees: On the irrelevance of tax distortions for the second-best Pigouvian tax

This paper extends the Mirrlees (1971) model of optimal income redistribution with optimal corrective taxes to internalize consumption externalities. Using general utility structures and exploring both linear and non-linear taxes, it is demonstrated that the optimal second-best tax on an externality-generating good should not be corrected for the marginal cost of public funds, since it equals one in the optimal tax system. In the optimum, distortions of income taxes are equal to marginal redistributional gains. If the government does not have access to a non-distortionary marginal source of finance, the marginal cost of public funds can be either larger or smaller than one depending on subjective preferences for income redistribution. The optimal second-best corrective tax is then either higher or lower than the Pigouvian level. The findings in this paper generalize and amend prior results based on representative-agent models, shedding new light on the weak double-dividend hypothesis, and on the welfare gains of recycling revenue from environmental taxes.     

Identifying forest ecosystem services through socio-ecological bundles: a case study from northern Jordan

This study aims to identify services provided by forest ecosystems based on locals’ perceptions in the northern part of Jordan. By better understanding preferences of locals and by understanding why they value certain services more heavily, policy-makers and planning managers can make more effective decisions regarding development and conservation. Three hundred respondents were interviewed in order to collect information about forest ecosystem services (ES). Data collection was conducted using a structured questionnaire regarding ES provided by three forest types situated in northern Jordan. ES trade-offs and socio-ecological bundles were identified by analyzing respondents’ socioeconomic demographics and preferences of forest ES through multivariate canonical corresponding analysis (CCA). The statistical analysis indicated that the socioeconomic factors and forest type have an effect on social preferences toward ES. Results displayed a clear trade-off between provisioning services and regulating and cultural services. CCA demonstrated that 73% of the variation in ES value is explained by social factors (i.e. education level, income level, and gender), while 26% of perception variation was attributable to categories of ES supplied by each forest ecosystem. These findings imply that involving people in the place-specific management of public forests using the ES approach gives managers a clearer understanding of the benefits people recognize and value, as well as those they either are not aware of or do not value. Such information is useful in forest management and in public outreach. Although direct policy applications are limited by the research’s nature, the paper provides a starting point for incorporating forest users’ voices into policy discussions and management design.     

Amenity changes,property values,and hedonic prices in a closed city

The effects of changes in amenity levels on the bid prices for land and on the marginal worth of an amenity are examined. The vehicle for analysis is a closed-city urban spatial model containing an explicit utility function and explicitly specified, spatial distributions of amenities. Issues addressed include the behavior of bid price (and property value) schedules in response to amenity changes; the impact of such changes on the utility of renters, under conditions of both identical and disparate tastes; the effect of amenity changes on the amenity's schedule of marginal worth; and the relation of such a schedule in a closed city to that in an open city.     

A system dynamics model for evaluating collaborative forest management: a case study in Indonesia

This article presents a system dynamics (SD) method to examine the problem of forest degradation. The model developed takes a system-oriented view of forest management, embracing both social and biophysical factors affecting deforestation. Social factors examined are socio-economic variables or elements that influence behaviour and decision-making choices at the household level. Biophysical factors are four sub-components that are considered major land uses namely, the paddy field component, rattan plantations, coffee plantations and forest stands. The model was applied in a case study located in Pasir District of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The site covers an area that includes a protected forest and a privately allocated timber license concession. Three village communities are examined in the case study. The SD model developed was applied to the case study focusing on three management policies or scenarios, which are based on access rights to the forest resources within the study area. Specifically, the property arrangements examined in each scenario are: Policy 1 – status quo (i.e. continue present property rights arrangements); Policy 2 – local communities manage the forest exclusively; and Policy 3 – collaborative management involving both local communities and a private company. Results from the model show that the third policy is the most viable option, and also lead to a win–win solution.     

Is Chinese trade policy motivated by environmental concerns?

This paper analyses whether China's export VAT rebates and export taxes are driven by environmental concerns. Since China struggles to enforce environmental regulation, trade policy can be used as a second-best environmental policy. In a general equilibrium model it is possible to show that the second-best export tax increases in a product's pollution intensity. The empirical analysis investigates whether the export tax equivalent of partial VAT rebates and export taxes are higher for products which are more pollution intensive along several dimensions. The results indicate that the VAT rebate rates are set in a way that discourages exports of water pollution intensive, SO₂ intensive and energy intensive products from 2007 on. Moreover, the conservation of natural resources such as minerals, metals, wood products and precious stones seems to be a key determinant of China's export VAT rebate rates. There is little evidence that export taxes are motivated by environmental concerns.     

Economic value and management of mangrove forests in Cameroon

Mangrove forests constitute a pantropical ecosystem that has been much misused and mismanaged, without regard for actual and potential value to coastal resources. This paper uses primary and secondary data sources to assesses the economic value and pollution problems affecting a mangrove ecosystem. It concludes that this fragile ecosystem is under increasing biological stress resulting from industrial, agro-industrial, fishing and urban activities because both the private and public sector regard this ecosystem as wasteland. The paper concludes that, in order to achieve sustainability of the remaining forest, there is need for financial evaluation of the potentials of this ecosystem. Finally, the study identifies sustainable development and management options for mangrove forest and challenges scientists, researchers, natural resource managers and mangrove biologists to provide government authorities and society with evidence of the true potentials of mangrove ecosystems.     

Forest age structure as indicator of boreal forest sustainability under alternative management and fire regimes: A landscape level sensitivity analysis

Effective forest ecosystem-based management requires a thorough understanding of the interactions between anthropogenic and natural disturbance processes over larger spatial and temporal scales than stands and rotation ages. Because harvesting does not preclude fire, it is important to evaluate the combined effects of harvesting and fire on forest age structure, a coarse indicator of forest ecosystem state. We performed a sensitivity analysis of landscape scale effects of forest management (strategy, harvest rate and access cost) and fire regime (fire return interval and extent) in terms of combined impacts on forest stand age-class structure on a study area of 3.5 million hectares of boreal forest of Québec. A series of scenarios were simulated over 500 years and replicated 30 times using a previously reported spatially explicit landscape model. Within the parameter space of our sensitivity analysis, we found that harvest rate, fire return interval and management strategy were the most significant parameters affecting stand age-class distribution across the landscape. The former are not so surprising, given that they combine to produce an overall disturbance rate, but the latter shows that the resulting impact on age-class structure can be influenced to some degree through management objectives. A harvesting strategy of clearcutting for sustained timber supply, using a harvest rotation based on minimum merchantable age (approximately 100 years in this analysis), creates a trend for the stand age-class distribution away from the expected range of natural variation for the study area. Within the scope of our simulations, alternative management strategies with extended harvest rotation age proved the most robust forest management practice to absorb variations in fire regime.