@article{Niskanen:295324,
      recid = {295324},
      author = {Niskanen, Anssi and Saastamoinen, Olli},
      title = {Tree Plantations in the Philippines and Thailand Economic,  Social and Environmental Evaluation},
      address = {1996-3},
      series = {Research for Action RFA},
      pages = {64},
      year = {1996},
      abstract = {The area of forest plantations in the tropics has  increased for many reasons, but not the least as a result  of natural forest depletion. Although forest plantations  cannot qualitatively substitute the timber grown in natural  forests, their importance in global forestry is steadily  increasing. At the same time a heated public debate has  been growing with them, focusing largely on the perceived  negative environmental and social impacts of large-scale  industrial plantations. This research report first  discusses tropical plantations in global forestry. It  emphasizes that tree plantations presently include much a  wider range of categories, purposes, species variety and  management forms than is commonly perceived. The study  states that although industrial forest plantations are  mainly established solely for economic reasons, private  farm-forestry and governmental plantations more often have  a variety of reasons for establishment. These reasons  include expectations for positive social and environmental  impacts of forest plantations, e.g. increased household  security and soil conservation. Nevertheless the  environmental and social impacts of plantations deserve  much concern and the second part of the study widely  reviews environmental and social but also economic impacts  of plantations, all of which can be either negative or  positive. One of the major problems in developing  plantation forestry has been that the profitability  analysis of plantations has based only on the economic  criteria. Although financial profitability can be regarded  as the most important single evaluation criteria for forest  plantations in the tropics, the negative and positive  social and environmental impacts should also be attempted  to be included into the analysis. The focus of the  empirical part of the work, therefore, has been to study to  what extent it presently is possible to monetize the  varying impacts of tree plantations and incorporate them  into the "multilevel" profitability analysis. In two case  study countries, Thailand and the Philippines, the  profitability of industrial, community based and private  reforestation was assessed for two most commonly used tree  species in reforestation. The profitability assessments  were aimed to be carried out at four different levels:  based on comparisons between costs and benefits in market  prices (financial profitability), economic efficiency  prices (economic profitability), economic efficiency prices  with the distributional weigh assessments (socio-economic  profitability), and finally with including monetary  valuation of environmental impacts into the economic  analysis (environmental-economic profitability). For the  environmental-economic profitability, the study evaluated  the economic costs of transpiration and nutrient loss in  harvesting, and benefits in erosion control and carbon  sequestration. The results of the two case studies  indicated that the economic profitability of reforestation  is considerably higher than the financial profitability  both in Thailand and the Philippines. It also became  evident that the environmental-economic profitability was  highly dependent on the environmental impact and valuation  assessments; in this study, the environmental-economic  valuation improved the economic profitability of  reforestation. A conclusion derived from the socio-economic  analysis was that the return to labour per hectare is very  low in mechanized reforestation. The empirical basis of  including environmental and social impacts into traditional  profitability analysis of tree plantations requires much  improvement and the work done still carries a character of  methodological experiments. Nevertheless a conclusion is  evident: if the social and environmental costs and  benefits, evaluated in monetary terms, could properly be  included into the solid framework of economic analysis,  that would further encourage for environmentally and  socially sensitive management practices in plantation  forest development.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/295324},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.295324},
}