Problem overview:
Awareness and visions: Tropical rainforest ecology is a global concern because it has an import function in balancing the earth's environment and atmosphere. What needs to be determined is the actual value of these rainforest both in monetary term and non-monetary term, such as, the aesthetic value.
Meeting information requirements: The Rainforest Timber in Kalimantan programme has been deploying various information gathering techniques and information assessment systems in order to determine to true value of these tropical forests.
Background in summary:
The focus of the Rainforest Timber in Kalimantan programme: The "Rainforest Timber in Kalimantan" case study focuses on stocks and flows of timber in Kalimantan. Analysis of stocks and flows is a major assessment concern of the Indonesian government, academics, and research institutes, as well as the international environmental assessment community.
Information from the programme will be useful for policy makers: The value of the technique is that it enables policy makers to determine whether, in the case of a renewable resource, harvesting is occurring at a sustainable level. If harvesting is occurring at a faster than sustainable level, through use of natural resource accounting, such "false" windfall gains to economic product are identified and quantified.
Non-commodity value of forest resources are also considered: Forests throughout the ESCAP region often have higher value for non-commodity harvesting uses, than for harvesting , for example, as eco-tourism, harvesting of forest habitat products, fire protection and other conservation uses, etc. The direct or indirect economic market for these products and services becomes more evident.
Difficulties for determining the intangible values: As is always the case, monitoring (measuring), and assessing indirect and induced effect is very difficult, especially when such effects are not tangible. Valuing forests as a commodity is not particularly difficult (although forecasting future price does present a problem); nor is it extremely difficult to value future experiential value. However, when a third order of value is introduced in which benefits are spread more widely, assessment becomes much more difficult.
Various techniques for information gathering and assessment were used together: The Kalimantan case study illustrates the value of deploying techniques such as GIS systems in conjunction with human judgement (Forest Resource Assessment and Monitoring Teams). It also underlines the importance of collecting time series data (at regular intervals) in support of environmental assessment - forest cutting data is collected and analyzed on a quarterly basis.
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Good practice rating:
(1 for the best, 5 for the lowest score) |
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Sustainability
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Efficiency
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| 3 |
 Improvement in either the environment of economic condition with no harm to the other. |
3 |
Cost efficient. |
| 2 |
Sustainable over time (not one-off) |
Process |
| Adaptability |
- |
Participation of the community |
| 2 |
Location adaptability (can the project be done in other places?) |
- |
Participation of resource owners/users |
| 3 |
Socio-cultural adaptability. |
1 |
Partnerships between various actors (Governments, NGO, Academia, Private) |
| 2 |
Level of development adaptability. |
2 |
Degree of coordination and cooperation between government departments. |
| 2 |
Style of government adaptability. |
2 |
Ability to attract political interest/support |
| 2 |
Degree of decentralization adaptability. |
2 |
Procedures for feedback and review. |
Comments on this example:
- In order to conserve the natural rainforest timber without losing economic profit from forest harvesting, industrial plantation of fast growing tree species, such as, Eucalyptus should be promoted. Because industrial timber, apart from its economic value as commodity, it could also function as carbon sink, to help reduce the atmospheric CO2 level.
- The technique for determining non-commodity value could be interview or questioners from people who live in a certain radius from the forest area, how much they feel that the forest is worth to them, which in the end, non-commodity values might have to be determined in monetary terms.
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Sustainability of the project:
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Awareness and vision: Apart from the benefits mentioned in stock taking and accounting, developing countries would also have the benefit of motivating the respective governments to allocate more finances towards forestry development. In most instances only the value of timber is accounted for in the GDP, while the other indirect benefits such as employment, value addition, environmental services etc are ignored making forestry a less attractive sector in terms of national development. The allocation of the limited budgetory funds mostly depends on this.
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Adaptability of the project to other situations:
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Environmental accounting, simply explaining, is a statistical and economical tool used to integrate social cost into the cost of natural resources in order to reflect the actual value of these resources. The problem is the methodology. There are many methods and tools that can be used to calculate social cost of natural resources but to select the one that could reflect the true value the most is very difficult. Also, social value changes through time, therefore, the value of forestry resources changes along with it. Considering the circumstances, arriving with a universal methodology for forestry accounting that can be used through out time may not be such a viable idea.
| Process of decision making and implementation: |
There have been discussions on the use of forestry accounting in decision-making that these statistical models have not been utilized to its full at the decision-making level, that some models have become a waist of effort because they remain as only a report on a piece of paper. However, this argument is not entirely true, figures and findings from forestry accounting are being used more and more or at least to help forest managers develop a systematic way of thinking about the problems at hand. (Zadnik, Peyron, Kazana, Proctor)
Meeting information requirements: An interesting point in terms of information requirement is the regional and global sharing of information. Since forestry resources in one part of the world does have certain affects to the rest of the world, why not share forestry information from one country to other countries of the world. That way, there would be a location specific and an overall statistics on forestry resources on earth. This idea of information sharing and networking of information has been around for sometime, one organization that is working on promoting this idea is the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO), which is a non-profit, non-governmental international network of forest scientists.
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Documentation: |
Literature or other written project review references
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Source of Information: |
ESCAP, (1997). Modalities for environmental assessment in integrating environmental considerations into economic policy making processes: the case of rainforest timber in Kalimantan, Indonesia, country study conducted under the project (unpublished)
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Contacts: |
ESCAP Project "Integrating Environment Considerations into Economic Policy Making Processes" (coordinating division - Development Research and Policy Analysis Division)
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Submitted by: |
ESCAP
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