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"Eco- labeling programs have become very prominent in many countries.
Today this environmental policy innovation can be found not only in OECD countries but also in developing countries. Although eco- labels should be seen as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, traditional regulatory instruments (Harrison 1999: 110), it can be assumed that these environmental policy instruments will become more important for environmental policy in the near future."
Weilhart as a contiguous forest area with a total area of about 10.000 ha comprises about 5.000 ha of large scale forests owners (Castell and co-onwers) and about 5.000 ha of small holder private forests. The 5.000 ha of core area make up the core of the Weilhart forest area, whilst the small holder private forest make up the fringe zone congregated around the core.
Timber plantations are of high importance for the future wood supply
"European global players on the pulp & paper market - most of them are the product of mega-mergers - have used their heft to go global. For starters, they have invested billions in new pulp mills in South America that are three times bigger than any in Canada. The ability to spread fixed costs over so much capacity is an unbeatable advantage.
The eucalyptus trees that feed these mills grow to maturity in less than a decade in the Brazilian and Uruguayan sun, compared to the 70 or 80 years it takes for Northern tree species in the US, Canada and Europe. The South American pulp is shipped back to Europe and turned into dozens of different grades of paper on the most modern and fastest machines in existence. The equipment is designed by Austrian ones at Andritz, Finnish ones at Metso or German ones at Voith."
The forest association Weilhart (WWGW) has been founded in 1998 by a couple of enthusiastic forest owners in the region of county Braunau, Flachgau, Altötting, Traunstein.
In the meantime more than 100 members have joined the association.
Timberland Valuation and the global economic crises
The issue in today’s post concerns why the transaction price of timberland has shown little or no decline in value but the stock price of the publicly traded companies that own timberland has declined dramatically. I will also look at what I think is happening in the timberland market today and how I see the market for timberland investment. But first, let’s set the stage.
Prince Edward's Provinzregierung (Kanada) erlaubt jedermann die Holznutzung mit Pferden...
Montag, 20.4.2009: Totholz und minderwertige Holzsortimente gehören demjenigen, der das Holz mit Pferden aus dem Wald bringt. Er muss weder für das Holz noch für eine Holznutzungslizenz bezahlen. Ein interessanter Ansatz um Pferderückung in das Blickfeld der Öffentlichkeit zu rücken...
Government offer leads to horse logging comeback
Monday, 20th of April 2009: More forests on P.E.I. are being logged with the help of horses this year following an offer of free firewood.
Forestry returns outperform the rest over three years
London, 24th June 2009: Investment in forestry outperformed domestic commercial property and equities last year, producing a positive annual total return of 7.0%, eclipsed only by bonds, according to the IPD UK Forestry Index.By comparison, UK commercial property delivered -22.11%; UK equities returned -29.92%, while listed property companies and trusts were the most vulnerable to the global market downturn, returning -46.63% over 2008. Bonds, however, gained 154%.
India: Punjab forest dept to distribute one million seedings
Punjab forest dept to distribute 10 lakh seedings
Wednesday, 24 June 2009: CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Forest Department has decided to give a big push to agro-forestry in the State and would distribute 10 lac seedlings of fast-growing and economically important tree species such as Eucalyptus, Shisham and Drek.
28 June 2009: A Quarter Million NZ Raised GE Eucalyptus Trees Intended for Planting in U.S; Soil &Health Association of New Zealand, (Est. 1941), Publishers of ORGANIC NZ
More than a quarter of a million genetically engineered (GE) eucalyptus trees exported from New Zealand stand to shred New Zealand’s clean, green brand and risk large-scale health and environmental damage, according to the Soil & Health Association of New Zealand.
4.7.2009: America's 4 July bonfires served a dual purpose yesterday. They burned the wood of trees destroyed by a trio of bugs that are devastating parts of the nation's forests.
With 750 million acres of forests in the United States, the scale of the problem is massive. Since 1999, the country has lost, on average, 1 per cent of its tree cover per year. This means these small insects have killed about 10 per cent of all US forests in 10 years.
A MOST unusual document landed on your correspondent’s desk recently: a financial report from a rainforest. Iwokrama, a 370,000-hectare rainforest in central Guyana, announced that it was in profit. It added, more intriguingly, that rainforests had entered the “global economy”.
Indonesian Government: Production forests will reach 10m hectares by 2014
The government is optimistic its production forests (HTI) will span over 5 million hectares by the year-end, and over 10 million hectares by 2014 as targeted, because the forestry industry can now resort to financing supported by government, an official says.
Higher Carbon Dioxide May Give Pine Trees A Competitive Edge
ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2009) — Pine trees grown for 12 years in air one-and-a-half times richer in carbon dioxide than today's levels produced twice as many seeds of at least as good a quality as those growing under normal conditions, a Duke University-led research team reported Aug. 3 at a national ecology conference.
Kenya to Plant 7.6 Billion Trees to Check Deforestation
NAIROBI - Kenya said on Wednesday it would plant 7.6 billion trees over the next 20 years to redress decades of chopping down forest cover, the effect of which is now being felt in acute water and power shortages.
Germany and US to finance a Reforestation Project in India
The United States and Germany have agreed to donate $19 million for the reforestation of a Bangladesh wildlife sanctuary under a global climate change mitigation project, the U.S. embassy said on Wednesday.
SEATTLE, August 14, 2009 - US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has outlined his vision for the future of America’s forests. In his first major speech regarding the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, Vilsack set forth a new direction for conservation, management, and restoration of these natural treasures.
Austrian Farmers have taken care of both - Farmland and Forests - since centuries because of the close interconnection of agriculture and forestry. Holistic land use management is obligatory for every Austrian farmer. Therefore it's not quite new for Austrian Farmers what the World Agroforestry Centre is concluding:
International Paper Treads Monsanto’s Path to ‘Frankenforests’
Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- International Paper Co., the world’s largest pulp and paper maker, plans to remake commercial forests in the same way Monsanto Co. revolutionized farms with genetically modified crops.
Certified Forestry Is In Trouble, U.N. Report Says
The certified-forestry movement is running out of steam, a United Nations report suggests.
"The pace of expansion of global certified forest area has slowed dramatically in the last three years," says the international agency's recently released Forest Products Annual Market Review, 2008-2009. The proportion of "industrial roundwood" coming from forests certified by such environmental organizations as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has actually decreased recently, to 25.9%, it says.
"Certified forest area increased by around 50 million hectares a year between 2001 and 2005 – mainly due to a rapid increase in certified forest area in North America – then the rate slowed by half to 25 million hectares a year in 2006 and 2007. More recently the rate has stagnated even further, not exceeding 4 million hectares between May 2008 and May 2009." Certified forestry has actually lost some ground in North America and Europe, the U.N. report adds.
One culprit is that the sustainable-forestry movement is running out of low-hanging fruit: "Now that many of the largest state- and industry-owned lands in the developed world are already
certified, the certification movement faces the significant challenge of expanding in more difficult
areas" such as small forestry operations and developing countries.
Forest certification in war - some interesting insights...
Now that the forest-certification movement is running out of steam, two groups involved in promoting sustainable forestry have responded by declaring war on each other.
ForestEthics fired the first shots a few days ago, filing complaints of both tax fraud and greenwashing against the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. It sent letters last week asking the IRS to revoke SFI's tax-exempt status and requesting that the Federal Trade Commission investigate SFI's "unfair and deceptive" marketing practices. ForestEthics claims that SFI's forestry-certification program is inferior to Forest Stewardship Council certification.
SFI responded today by calling the ForestEthics complaints "an affront to the tremendous efforts by foresters, businesses, governments, consumers, SFI and other standards groups to preserve and protect our forests for future generations."
“We should all be focusing our resources and efforts on supporting responsible forest management and fighting deforestation and illegal logging, not wasting energy on bickering among ourselves," SFI added. A United Nations report recently concluded that the once-rapid growth of forest-certification efforts has stagnated during the past three years, Dead Tree Edition reported last month.
I'm skeptical whether FSC, which has had its own credibility issues in places like Indonesia, is significantly superior to SFI, but I welcome comment on the subject. I think the most useful service Dead Tree Edition can offer at this point is extensive excerpts from the complaints and SFI's response. Note: The rest of this article consists entirely of statements from ForestEthics and SFI that do not necessarily represent the views of Dead Tree Edition:
Woodplantations will help developing countries to establish Sustainable Forest Management
“The world needs more effective and focused international action on tropical forests. That will help
reduce poverty, protect biodiversity and also mitigate the effects of climate change.”
Forest negotiations recently have been featuring a lot of talk about something called “sustainable forest management,” or in climate policy parlance, SFM.
Study shows trees have impact on Georgia’s economy
As Americans mark National Forest Products Week from Oct. 18-24, a new report shows Georgia’s forest products industry has a significant impact on the state’s economy.
2009 Nobel prize for economics and forest property
The 2009 Nobel prize for economics recently was awarded to two Americans – Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson – for complementary ideas on economic governance.
After Typhoon, Illegal Logging Back in Spotlight in Vietnam
When rains slowed enough for people living in the central coast of Vietnam to venture outside and assess the damage, they were stunned at what they saw.
XIII World Forestry Congress 2009: Forest Development: A Vital Balance
PREAMBLE
We, the 7,075 participants from 160 countries gathered at the Thirteenth World Forestry Congress to consider the theme of the Congress, “Forest Development: A Vital Balance” and through it explore the numerous existing and emerging environmental, social and economic challenges facing us . For the first time the Congress incorporated discussion fora, business meetings and a session on communication.
Major timberland transactions have slowed considerably but some continue to close. I wrote an article for Forest Landowners Magazine (THE TREND IN TIMBERLAND PRICES) that was supposed to be published in October but the publishing date was postponed until late November so I thought I would do a little update on transactions to date for this year. From the list below, you can see that there are quite a few transactions but relatively few large ones.
Logged forests support biodiversity after 15 years of rehabilitation
With the world facing global warming and a biodiversity crisis, a new study in Conservation Biology shows that within 15 years logged forests—considered by many to be 'degraded'—can be managed in order to successfully fight both climate change and extinction.
A recent FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) study set out to assess whether the requirements set for FSC Controlled Wood are met by PEFC (Program for Endorsement of Forest Certification) schemes.
The Walt Disney Company intends to invest US$7 million in forest conservation projects in the U.S.A, the Amazon and the Congo Basin in an effort to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Special Session of the United Nations Forum on Forests
November 6, 2009: The United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) met in Special Session at UN Headquarters in New York on Friday, 30 October 2009. At the special session, delegates reached a decision on the need for urgent global action to catalyze funding for sustainable forest management around the world. (Link)
Costing the Earth: Investing in protecting Ecosystems
Coral reefs around the world are worth a staggering $172 billion dollars a year to the global economy. But the wealth of the oceans' reefs, and their amazing monetary value, is on the verge of being destroyed.
Buying up forest property is a different kind of property investment and can be traced all the way back to when Tarzan and Jane first settled down seventy years ago.
PARIS (AFP) – Investing billions today to protect threatened ecosystems and dwindling biodiversity would reap trillions in savings over the long haul, according to a UN-backed report issued Friday.
Prince Charles announces funding scheme to protect rainforests
A global emergency funding scheme to drastically reduce the destruction of tropical rainforests over the next five years was announced by the Prince of Wales today, with the US pledging $275m (£165m) towards rainforest protection.
According to data of United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Cuba is one of the few countries of the world where forest areas grow every year.
TIMBER company Gunns is poised to further increase control of Australian forests, emerging as favourite to take over the running of Great Southern's management investment scheme plantations.
Public perceptions of forestry in the European Union
The report of the study Shaping forest communication in the European Union: public perceptions of forests and forestry was published in September 2009.
Ecotourism may be a solution to the tourism industry’s climate threat
Tourism is considered to be a highly climate-sensitive economic sector similar to agriculture. This has encouraged industry players to look at new ways to respond effectively to these problems.
SANTIAGO, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Chilean industrial conglomerate Copec COP.SN said on Friday its nine-month profit tumbled 43.3 percent from a year ago, but its businesses were recovering from the worst of the global financial crisis.
Billion hectares of land have potential for forest restoration
Land areas around the world totalling more than the size of Canada have been identified as having potential to be restored to good quality, healthy forests, a new study has found.
The rainy season in Brazil is from December to July and is universally recognised by the forestry operators in situ as the optimum time for planting out the seedlings destined for the forestry plantations.
Boreal forests in wealthy countries being rapidly destroyed
Boreal forests in some of the world's wealthiest countries are being rapidly destroyed by human activities — including mining, logging, and purposely-set fires — report researchers writing in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
The following section is a quantitative look at primary forest loss.
More than seven million hectares of primary forest were lost on an annual basis between 2000 and 2005, the most recent period for which data is available from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Roughly half this loss occurred in Brazil, which is home to the largest extent of tropical forest in the world: the Amazon.
2009 may prove to be an important turning point for tropical forests.
Lead by Brazil, which had the lowest extent of deforestation since at least the 1980s, global forest loss likely declined to its lowest level in more than a decade. Critical to the fall in deforestation was the global financial crisis, which dried up credit for forest-destroying activities and contributed to a crash in commodity prices, an underlying driver of deforestation.
First-Ever Study Quantifies the Economic Impact of Private, Working Forests in the U.S.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (December 2009) - A new study, commissioned by the National Alliance of Forest Owners (NAFO) and conducted by Forest2Market®, quantifies the economic impact of private, working forests on the U.S. economy.
URUGUAY: Forestry Industry Boom Brings Jobs and Challenges
PAYSANDÚ, Uruguay, Jan 6 (IPS) - "After work, when I'm on my own, I'm bored to death. If you want amenities, you have to bring them yourself," says young forestry worker Alejandro de Leiva, who works on a tree plantation in the western Uruguayan province of Paysandú, where he lives and works for 10 to 12 days in a row, with just two days off.
Mozambique: Government Approves Eucalyptus Plantations
Maputo — The Mozambican government approved on Tuesday a project to plant eucalyptus trees for industrial purposes across large swathes of the northern province of Nampula.
Uganda: Growing Trees for Cash; a Long Term Lucrative Venture
When Mr Ponsiano Besesa sold his four-storey-hotel in Kampala to invest in forestry in February last year, people thought he was going mad. But the old man had calculated and knew very well that trees would reap him more than what a hotel would.
Guwahati, Jan. 18: The French development agency, Agence Française de Développement, has given the go ahead to the Assam forest department to undertake a feasibility study of the Rs 450-crore Assam project on forestry and bio-diversity conservation.
This report provides an update on the status of tropical moist forests in Central Africa. It covers the 6 countries containing this forest type, namely Gabon, Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Central African Republic.
The Alliance For Change (AFC) says that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government is being “inept and opportunistic” in requesting that the World Bank remove forestry activist, Dr Janette Bulkan from a Technical Advisory Panel.
Over the past 20 years there have been many changes impacting the output of our nation's timberland but none have impacted it as much as the management of our National Forests. First, let’s talk big numbers and try to put the whole thing into perspective.
Forest managment planning in the Congo Basin Rainforests
Forest management planning in Congo Basin rainforests : a critical analysis of the state of art and design of a new planning system as a contribution to sustainable forest management
Forestry report urges province to manage carbon storage
Maximizing the carbon stored in B.C.'s forests could provide benefits both economically and environmentally over the long-term, says a new report, Managing B.C.'s Forests for a Cooler Planet.
Negotiators at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen didn't see eye to eye on much last month, but almost everyone agreed on one thing: To protect the planet we need to save its forests.
Mid-term evaluation of the implementation of the EU Forest Action Plan
The mid-term evaluation of the EU Forest Action Plan was presented at the 112th meeting of the Standing Forestry Commission (11-12 December 2009). The evaluation report has recently been made available on the DG Agriculture web-site. The study contains both an inventory of the implementation of the 18 Key Actions of the EU Forest Action Plan and an evaluation of its relevance, effectiveness, efficiency. It contains recommendations for the EU Forest Action Plan in the period until 2011.
Forestry sector needs transparency to reduce risks of REDD
A new project aims to increase transparency in the forestry sector, an area long plagued by corruption and mismanagement.
The Forest Sector Transparency Report Card, launched by Global Witness, an environmental NGO, assesses 70 transparency indicators, evaluating the public availability of land use maps, logging contracts, and other forestry-related information in Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia and Peru. The effort will eventually be expanded to other countries.
"Cutting down the worlds forests is responsible for about a fifth of global carbon emissions, but what many people may not realise is that this is linked to the illegal trade in timber. This is a major problem for many timber-producing countries in the developing world. It not only causes environmental damage, but costs governments billions of dollars in lost revenue, often involving corruption and funds armed conflict."
Report: British Columbia to spent 50% of it's land for forest conservation
Nature, Carbon and Climate Change in British Columbia by Dr. Jim Pojar; Commissioned by the Working Group on Biodiversity, Forests and Climate, an alliance of ENGOs including ForestEthics
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