8.2 Fines de las sanciones utilizados en el tratamiento dado a los adolescentes infractores en el
8.2.1 Modalidades de Atención para las Sanciones establecidas en el SRPA
Raw wood is a basic input to wood product manufacture, and there are strong
economic incentives to reduce the costs involved in raw wood supply—this
induces innovation. Ajani (2011b, p. 53) refers to the ‘uncoupling of wood from
finished wood products through wood saving,’ in her review of the divergence
of relatively stagnant world log production versus growing consumption of
wood products. Innovation in industry is focused on saving on the limiting
factors in production (especially those with highest costs) which includes the
raw logs and labour (Ajani 2011b, p. 53). The use of wood for paper has
undergone similar innovation. For the period 1980 to 2007 global paper
consumption grew by 3.2 per cent per annum while the use of wood pulp to
meet this demand only grew by 1.4 per cent a year. The shortfall was made up
by a 5.2 per cent per annum growth in recycled paper and a 3.0 per cent per
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global demand for pulp logs growing by just 10 per cent from 1980 to 2000 while
paper and paperboard production grew by 90 per cent in the same time period.
The volume of logs harvested has not needed to keep pace with increases in the
consumption of wood products. This is born out in international data showing
per capita wood consumption declining consistently over previous decades
despite increases in per capita economic growth and consumption (Sewall 2003).
Changes in the technology of wood processing have had a number of effects on
wood production. Technology has made tree harvest easier, with chainsaws and
heavy machinery being obvious examples. But, equally, in the area of wood
processing there has been ongoing improvement. In the latter half of the
twentieth century commercial wood processing operations became more
integrated. Parts of logs that were once wasted are now used in secondary
products such as pulp, energy, and reconstituted wood products. The Vice
President of Weyerhaeuser, speaking to the Forest Products Society in 1975,
observed that in 1948 only 20 per cent of their logs in Western Oregon were
turned into usable product. By 1963 this was 61 per cent and by 1973 it was 79
per cent (Meil et al. 2007, p. 84). In the thirty years from 1975 to 2005 significant
efficiencies continued to be made in the North American wood products
industry. Meil et al. (2007) calculated that 15,000 hectares of annual forest harvest
were avoided as a result of these efficiencies. And it was not just better log
utilisation—an ability to utilise smaller and poorer quality logs so that harvest
activity can be more contained with lower harvesting costs also occurred.
Ongoing improvements in logging efficiency also support the shift of wood
production to intensive wood cultivation through the draw of efficient
mechanised harvest of uniform stands of trees in wood plantations (Lucier,
Changing technologies (along with growing populations) are likely to have
contributed to the speeding up of the process of forest exploitation in tropical
countries in the later part of the twentieth century (Shearman, Bryan, and
Laurance 2012), compared to the longer pattern of exploitation in places such as
Europe, and North America when there was not the advantages of chainsaws
and motorised transport.
A commonly cited source of future industry growth is the predicted ongoing
growth in China’s economy. On the other hand, Ajani (2011b) argues that China
has been highly successful at adopting wood saving strategies that have avoided
triggering the much‐publicised wood shortage of earlier decades. China also
leads the world in terms of recycled content in its paper production. Indeed, this
could even be seen as a deliberate strategy—by not forcing up global demand
China has helped maintain the low international wood pulp prices that work in
its favour. Prices for China’s wood imports declined by 3.7 per cent per annum,
despite a fourfold (423 per cent) increase in volume, over the decade
commencing 1997 (Ajani 2011b, p. 59). These figures also suggest that the rest of
the world has had no shortage in supply of wood, given that the increased
demand from China has failed to evoke any sort of price rise. In addition, China
has embarked on an ambitious project of plantation establishment, which is
aimed to reduce import dependence. Ajani (2011b) also observes that if the
world as a whole copied China’s paper efficiency global wood consumption
could be shrunk in the order of 11 to 21 per cent. She adds the qualification that
there would be problems in achieving this, such as limits to total world volumes
of recycled paper and the half‐life of fibres. Nevertheless, it is a classic case of
resource scarcity inducing innovation.
Another significant factor in reducing costs is labour. Like most manufacturing
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involved in processing wood. Aside from driving a globalised demand for wood
and agricultural land, industrialisation also developed the mechanisation that
dramatically altered rates of processing timber. A hand powered pit‐saw sawmill
of the Middle Ages could output 100‐200 board feet19 a day, water powered sawmills of the seventeenth century increased this to 500‐3000 board feet a day,
before the steam powered sawmills of the nineteenth century boosted output by
another order of magnitude to 20,000‐40,000 board feet a day (Williams 2002).
Hyde (2012) makes the observation that as wood product manufacturing has
become much more capital intensive the incentive for those capital owners to
have uninterrupted wood supplies has increased. One of the significant
advantages that plantations offer over natural forests is their ability to grow
relatively large volumes of logs with a consistent size, thereby allowing for more
efficient processing (reducing both wood costs and labour costs).
These processes of induced innovation are consistent with expectations of the
Boserup theory. The theory espoused by Danish economist, Ester Boserup, was
that technological innovation comes about in response to increased demand
resulting from population growth. This was proposed in opposition to a
Malthusian perspective that population growth is limited by available food
production (Boserup 1965). Applied to wood production, this theory would
support the idea noted here that technological change in wood production is
caused by increased demand or restricted supplies. Changes in demand for non‐
wood services and values from natural forests and forests more generally are
also creating pressure on wood supply, either through regulatory restrictions on
19 A board foot is a volume of wood of 144 inches cubed (usually described as a volume 12
inches by 12 inches by one inch—one inch is 2.54 centimetres). It is commonly used in the US and Canada to measure wood volumes (Oester and Bowers 2009).
harvest or increased protection of forests. In the same way that population
increase or growing wealth increases demand, these restrictions on supply can
act to induce innovation in wood cultivation and wood product development.
Ecosystem services are both non‐excludable and non‐rivalrous, or public goods,
mostly without any established pricing signal mechanisms. Therefore, it is often
left to governments to determine their allocation, which entails regulatory
restrictions on harvest in natural forests. These can also occur in relation to tree
cultivation but they are less likely to impact on wood productivity, as it is
accepted that the land has been allocated primarily for that purpose.
The above is also consistent with the Porter hypothesis, that environmental
regulation can induce innovation and thus have a positive effect on economic
competitiveness (Howarth 2012). Restrictions on forest harvest arising from
environmental regulation (through harvest restrictions and regulation) will
generally contribute to a reduced harvest. It is possible that environmental
regulatory restrictions on harvest combine with increasing marginal harvest
costs as a double act to raise the costs of natural forest wood production. It seems
the experience of wood production from natural forests would contradict the
Porter hypothesis in relation to wood productivity in natural forests. However,
as noted above, it is probably the case that innovation is finding expression in
the development of intensive wood cultivation and wood saving technologies. In
this sense then, the effect of increasing environmental regulation can be seen to
have an additional positive impact on natural forests by furthering the wood
sourcing transition, and thereby supporting the Porter hypothesis.