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Session: Valuing forest externalities
(organized jointly by Unit 6.11.00 and EU COST E45 European Forest Externalities (EUROFOREX))
Key organisers:
Ms. Paula Horne, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Unioninkatu 40 a, 00170
Helsinki, Finland, email: paula.horne@metla.fi
- chairperson of the Forest Economists' Club, Finland
- coordinator of 6.11.00 – Social and economic aspects of forestry
Dr. Janaki Alavalapati, University of Florida, School of Forest Resources
and Conservation, PO Box 110410, Gainesville 32611-0410, Florida, United
States, email: janaki@ufl.edu
- deputy chairperson of 6.11.00 – Social and economic aspects of
forestry
Prof. Pere Riera, Centre Tecnologic Forestal de Catalunya, MEDFOREX
Pujada del Seminari, s/n, E-25280 Solsona, Spain, email: pere.riera@uab.es
- co-ordinator of EU COST E45 European Forest Externalities (EUROFOREX)
Brief description of session:
In most societies, the provision of non-timber services by forests
has increased its social importance over the last decades, and the trend
seems to continue. Forests provide non-timber products, like mushrooms,
berries, medicinal herbs, and alike. Also, forests provide other services
to society, like recreation, attractive landscapes, CO2 sequestration,
erosion prevention, hydrological regulation, biodiversity preservation,
etc. Those products and services can be accounted for from at least
two perspectives. First, from the physical characteristics and measurement
of the forest impacts on services and products. Second, the social perception
of the costs and benefits of those impacts, beyond the effect to the
forest owner, called externalities. A forest externality is the change
in welfare by third parties (other than the forest owner) due to economic
forest decisions taken by the forest owner. In economics, welfare changes
are usually measured in monetary units, while the impacts that origin
the externalities are typically measured in physical or non-monetary
terms. Different methods have been developed to value non-marketed forest
externatilies. The session overviews the recent development and use
of valuation methods in policy making in the context of forest externalities.s.
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