2.3 Marco legal
8.1.5 Reglas de Naciones Unidas para la Administración de Justicia
Forests have long been used for values other than wood, in particular hunting
and as a source of other natural materials such as honey and gathered foods.
Agricultural societies tended to develop cultures that saw forests as other; as
places separate from the cleared agricultural land from which sustenance was
derived. In some cases this developed into a religion‐sanctioned suspicion of
forests, as displayed in the ordering by a Benedictine Abbot to bless the wood
cutters because ‘… a wild spot…is, as it were, in a state of original sin’ (quoted in
Leclercq 1911, p. 136). As the economic drive to clear forests for agricultural land,
and to provide wood for fuel and building increased pressures on forests, a
counter current in conceptions of forests developed. This saw forests as
reservoirs of positive virtue and value: as places such as hunting grounds for the
well to do, a symbol of wealth both of the individual and the state in general,
and as links to the Garden of Eden and purity. Schama (1995) describes western
civilization’s fraught relationship with forests going back to classical times. This
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its sylvan inhabitants, and fear of the dense forests north of the Alps and their
resident barbarians.
Williams (2002, p. 166) outlines the growth of new sentiments towards forests as
Europe rose to global pre‐eminence. These started with utilitarian exploitation.
From this, a second stage, stewardship, emerged in the face of recognition of
limits to the forests and their importance. Then came what he refers to as the
‘third stage’; a cherishing of beauty in forests. This later stage was likely to
include a growing cohort seeking outdoor recreation opportunities away from
the cities they increasingly inhabited. This group had an entirely different set of
expectations of forests as affluence and recreational time spread from the upper
classes through to the middle and working classes (Simmons 2008, p. 127).
As part of changes in how people have valued forests there has been an
increasing recognition of the role of other ecosystem services supplied by forests,
particularly biodiversity, water and carbon services. These, in turn, have become
part of the political‐economic dynamic shaping the transition of wood
production away from natural forests to cultivated trees. Using forests for wood
production has been one of the most conflict‐riven natural resource issues
(Lindenmayer and Laurance 2012). Questions of the ecological impacts and
sustainability of natural forest logging have been widely researched, although,
Lindenmayer and Laurance (2012) argue there is a widespread use of poorly
executed studies. In particular they note the small scale of the temporal and
spatial parameters often used and the problems associated with ‘shifting
baselines’. Given this, they caution against the often simplistic assertions made,
particularly, by organisations and researchers asserting a pro‐logging case.
Wood extraction can have significant impacts on ecological values. The impacts
are greatest when the wood is harvested in a way that is quite different to
resulting forest (Gustafsson et al. 2012, p. 633). Thompson et al. (2011) note that
when ecosystems such as forests are managed for wood only then other
ecosystem services tend to get less attention.
Gustafsson et al. (2012, p. 633) make the claim that; ‘[m]ost … forest owners will
need to manage forests to supply ecosystem services simultaneously with the
production of revenue from wood products to help pay for that management’.
They clearly distinguish wood harvest as a ‘product’ as opposed to an ecosystem
service, with the clear implication that they believe only the ‘products’ can pay
for the management of the forests. This approach downplays possible emerging
market and financial instruments being considered for payment for ecosystem
services (Kinzig et al. 2011).
This demand for more non‐wood ecosystem services from natural forests is also
an increasing challenge to the forest property rights of wood. The transaction
costs15 associated with this, whether conducted through an adversarial political
environment or through ever more intensive and demanding negotiation
processes, such as certification, will increase the costs of natural forest wood
harvest (Gan 2005) At the same time if increasingly concentrated production
from wood cultivation, with its higher yields and less contested range of
ecosystem services, does not attract these same transaction costs this gives wood
cultivation a distinct comparative advantage over more extensive and lower
yielding natural forested lands. Zhang notes the difficulties in assigning
property rights, which lead to free rider problems, for the many ecosystem
services that forests provide. These are associated with much higher transaction
15 Transaction costs are the costs of ‘defining, protecting and enforcing the property rights of
goods’ and are contrasted with the transformation costs of turning materials into higher value goods (North 1990, p. 28).
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costs. Critically this leads Zhang to the insight that ‘[t]he evolution of forest land
tenure and persistency of public forestry, community forestry and household
forestry can be well explained by the transaction costs’ (Zhang 2001, p. 199).
As well as increased transaction costs for natural forest wood harvesting the
demand for better non‐wood values management also leads to natural forest
being removed from production altogether. This has occurred through bans on
logging including by changing land tenure to conservation reserves, or private
land owners buying land for non‐wood values and choosing not to realise the
economic value of wood harvest. As this reduces supply of natural forest wood
it can act to increase costs and so increase the competitive advantage of
cultivated wood sources. Combined with increased use of reengineered wood
products from chipped and pulped wood these cost pressures act to shift wood
production to cultivated wood sources.
A significant claim made about wood in these discussions is its low embodied
energy compared to other materials. Sutton (1999) highlights the irony in
increasing environmental pressure to protect forests from wood harvest for non‐
wood values when there is a clear environmental advantage to wood products
over materials that embody considerable fossil fuel energy in their production or
are derived from non‐sustainable mined sources. This is often deployed as a
rationale for continuing to produce wood from extensive natural forests.
However, the counter point could also be made that the demand for wood and
its benefits could be met from other sources of wood production, specifically,
cultivated wood sources. In these, the ability to produce large volumes of wood
quickly can be land efficient and cost effective compared to harvesting wood
from extensive forests with their relatively high costs of managing for conflicting
non‐wood values and higher haulage and management costs resulting from
and valuing wood for its environmental qualities is not necessarily ‘ironic’, or
contradictory, then. It is possible to derive the environmental benefit of wood
using cultivated wood sources while also deriving the environmental benefits of
protecting natural forests from wood harvest.
Using a dynamic model of ecological and economic change, Sohngen,
Mendelsohn, and Sedjo (2001), predicted that climate change would increase
global wood production, lower prices and increase welfare from these markets.
They also found it would further the trend of wood production shifting from
primary natural forests in high latitudes to plantations closer to the equator, as
predicted by Sedjo and Lyon (1983). Cultivated trees are likely to offer greater
flexibility for wood production in a world of fast changing climate and biosphere
conditions. The short rotations and ability to shift production to more suitable
climates and regions give significant advantages over natural forests, which are,
relatively fixed to where they now exist. In addition, increased demands on
natural forests to supply non‐wood ecosystem services in response to climate
change could further push extensive natural forest management for these values.
Climate change responses are also likely to include pressure for an increased
forest estate. Where this is met by the planting of new trees on previously
cleared land it is likely that part of this will be through species and plantings that
are suitable for wood production further increasing wood cultivation
development.
As a number of authors have noted, there is a significant opportunity to address
key global concerns for biodiversity and other ecosystem services from natural
forests, and to mitigate the perceived conflict with wood supply, as the global
plantation estate and ongoing wood saving technologies reduce pressure on
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