2002 World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists

Forest certification is a voluntary market tool that was devised in response to the failure of a series of policies aimed at forestalling deforestation and unsustainable practices in forests. It has become an influential way for achieving sustainability as well as becoming a commercial platform in the marketplace for forestry based products.Evidence has shown that the ones most interested in obtaining certification are, broadly speaking, the large producers in industrialized countries. Because there is no price premium for certified timber and as it adds to the cost of forestry management as a whole, certification could be a discouragement to the industry. This is particularly evident in those countries where the most important biodiversity reserves exist and where no proper value is placed on preserving the resource. This can then lead to intensifying those problems forest certification originally set out to resolve.Therefore this work proposes the adoption of a scheme of differentiated requirements for certification with stringency increasing over time, and centered on resolving the most urgent environmental problems.



	Paper Title:	The Economics Of Sustainable Forest Management Certification
	Presenting Author:	Aldo Cerda Molina (Universidad de Chile)
	Coauthor 1:	Valentina Lira
	Coauthor 2:
	Coauthor 3:
	Abstract:	Forest certification is a voluntary market tool that was devised in response to the failure of a series of policies aimed at forestalling deforestation and unsustainable practices in forests. It has become an influential way for achieving sustainability as well as becoming a commercial platform in the marketplace for forestry based products.Evidence has shown that the ones most interested in obtaining certification are, broadly speaking, the large producers in industrialized countries. Because there is no price premium for certified timber and as it adds to the cost of forestry management as a whole, certification could be a discouragement to the industry. This is particularly evident in those countries where the most important biodiversity reserves exist and where no proper value is placed on preserving the resource. This can then lead to intensifying those problems forest certification originally set out to resolve.Therefore this work proposes the adoption of a scheme of differentiated requirements for certification with stringency increasing over time, and centered on resolving the most urgent environmental problems.
	Link to paper:	http://weber.ucsd.edu/~carsonvs/papers/60.pdf

	Session / Day / Time	1C / Monday / 8:00 - 10:00 am

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