Transparency Index of the Supplying Countries’ Institutions and Tree Cover Loss: Determining Factors of EU Timber Imports? (original) (raw)

Leakage Implications for European Timber Markets from Reducing Deforestation in Developing Countries 3 PUBLICATIONS 3 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE 55 PUBLICATIONS 945 CITATIONS

Forest management strategies and policies such as REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) may have unintentional implications for forest sectors in countries not targeted by such policies. The success of a policy effort like REDD would result in a significant reduction in deforestation and forest degradation and an ensuing reduction in the supply of natural forest timber production within participating countries. This could in turn result in price increases, inducing a supply response outside project boundaries with possible implications for forest management as well as global carbon emissions. This paper reviews the literature to discern potential timber market implications for countries sourcing wood products from developing countries affected by REDD related conservation efforts. The literature reviewed shows varying degrees of market effects leakage—policy actions in one place creating incentives for third parties to increase timber harvesting elsewhere through the price mechanism—ranging from negligible to substantial. However, wood products in the studies reviewed are dealt with on quite an aggregated scale and are assumed to be more or less perfect substitutes for wood products outside conservation effort boundaries. The review suggests that a thorough mapping of the end-uses of tropical timber is needed to comprehensively analyze impacts on wood-product markets in regions such as Europe from conservation efforts in tropical developing countries. The types of tropical timber expected to be affected, in which applications they are used, which are the most likely substitutes and where they would be sourced, are issues that, along with empirical analysis of supply and demand price elasticities and degree of substitutability, should be investigated when assessing the overall effectiveness of REDD.

Leakage implications for European timber markets from reducing deforestation in developing countries

2012

Forest management strategies and policies such as REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) may have unintentional implications for forest sectors in countries not targeted by such policies. The success of a policy effort like REDD would result in a significant reduction in deforestation and forest degradation and an ensuing reduction in the supply of natural forest timber production within participating countries. This could in turn result in price increases, inducing a supply response outside project boundaries with possible implications for forest management as well as global carbon emissions. This paper reviews the literature to discern potential timber market implications for countries sourcing wood products from developing countries affected by REDD related conservation efforts. The literature reviewed shows varying degrees of market effects leakage-policy actions in one place creating incentives for third parties to increase timber harvesting elsewhere through the price mechanism-ranging from negligible to substantial. However, wood products in the studies reviewed are dealt with on quite an aggregated scale and are assumed to be more or less perfect substitutes for wood products outside conservation effort boundaries. The review suggests that a thorough mapping of the end-uses of tropical timber is needed to comprehensively analyze impacts on wood-product markets in regions such as Europe from conservation efforts in tropical developing countries. The types of tropical timber expected to be affected, in which applications they are used, which are the most likely substitutes and where they would be sourced, are issues that, along with empirical analysis of supply and demand price

Leading countries in tropical timber trade and consumption in EU. A quantitative analysis. MPRA Paper, University Library of Munich, Germany, http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:68773

2015

The EU is an important market for both legally and illegally harvested timber entering international trade. The demand from the European countries for tropical wood for national consumption or for trade reasons possibly is connected with illegally harvested tropical timber from origin countries in the Tropics, with the known subsequent degradation of forestland. In this study the trade in tropical timber that takes place in the EU is analyzed, and more specifically with four separate tropical categories. The leading EU countries in imports, re-exports and consumption are presented in order to underline their basic trading role in the European tropical timber market. Belgium is indicated as one of these together with France, Italy, Netherlands and UK. Belgium's trade role was found to be significant, taking the leading role as re-exporter in sawnwood, veneer and industrial roundwood. The leader in consumption per capita seems to be the Netherlands regarding sawnwood and plywood, while Portugal ranked first in tropical industrial roundwood consumption per capita on average during the examined period. Italy seems to be a large consumer of tropical veneer. An analysis of some trade flows is also applied to better understand the role of the other trade partnerships inside the EU. The role of the EU in general with the parallel construction of policy instruments to combat illegal logging is also highlighted.

Leading countries in tropical timber trade and consumption in EU. A quantitative analysis

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2015

The EU is an important market for both legally and illegally harvested timber entering international trade. The demand from the European countries for tropical wood for national consumption or for trade reasons possibly is connected with illegally harvested tropical timber from origin countries in the Tropics, with the known subsequent degradation of forestland. In this study the trade in tropical timber that takes place in the EU is analyzed, and more specifically with four separate tropical categories. The leading EU countries in imports, re-exports and consumption are presented in order to underline their basic trading role in the European tropical timber market. Belgium is indicated as one of these together with France, Italy, Netherlands and UK. Belgium's trade role was found to be significant, taking the leading role as re-exporter in sawnwood, veneer and industrial roundwood. The leader in consumption per capita seems to be the Netherlands regarding sawnwood and plywood, while Portugal ranked first in tropical industrial roundwood consumption per capita on average during the examined period. Italy seems to be a large consumer of tropical veneer. An analysis of some trade flows is also applied to better understand the role of the other trade partnerships inside the EU. The role of the EU in general with the parallel construction of policy instruments to combat illegal logging is also highlighted.

Ambiguity in Timber Trade Regarding Efforts to Combat Illegal Logging: Potential Impacts on Trade between South-East Asia and Europe

Forests, 2013

Raised public concern in the European Union (EU) about the legality of its timber imports has pushed the European Commission to raise its standards and legality demands for wood imports. Combining literature reviews, structured interviews and trade data analyses, this study assesses the potential influence from Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) (with its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) system and new legislation EU Timber Regulation (EUTR)), and third party verification schemes on the timber trade between tropical countries and Europe. These instruments have the potential to reduce the amount of illegally sourced timber being placed on the market, and they seem to have resulted in both increasing support of legality verification and certification uptake. However, there are signs of increased ambiguity in trade that could originate as a side effect of the transition towards a stricter regulation for tropical timber. Such ambiguity is explicitly taken into account here. Possible consequences from increased ambiguity are substitution of oak lumber for tropical hardwood lumber, and a diversion of exports of tropical timber to destinations with a less stringent regulatory framework than the EU. Evidence of these trade patterns in the literature reviews,

Ambiguity in Timber Trade Regarding Efforts to Combat Illegal Logging: Potential Impacts on Trade between South-East Asia and Europe 11 PUBLICATIONS 6 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE 32 PUBLICATIONS 113 CITATIONS

Raised public concern in the European Union (EU) about the legality of its timber imports has pushed the European Commission to raise its standards and legality demands for wood imports. Combining literature reviews, structured interviews and trade data analyses, this study assesses the potential influence from Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) (with its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) system and new legislation EU Timber Regulation (EUTR)), and third party verification schemes on the timber trade between tropical countries and Europe. These instruments have the potential to reduce the amount of illegally sourced timber being placed on the market, and they seem to have resulted in both increasing support of legality verification and certification uptake. However, there are signs of increased ambiguity in trade that could originate as a side effect of the transition towards a stricter regulation for tropical timber. Such ambiguity is explicitly taken into account here. Possible consequences from increased ambiguity are substitution of oak lumber for tropical hardwood lumber, and a diversion of exports of tropical timber to destinations with a less stringent regulatory framework than the EU. Evidence of these trade patterns in the literature reviews, interviews, and trade data analyses seems to confirm that ambiguity in international trade markets has actually increased since the introduction of these instruments

Impacts and interaction of political and economic driving forces in the international timber trade

2018

The direction of the development of the international forest market and the trade of timber products is largely determined by factors external to the traditional boundaries of the forestry sector. External factors can include international economic changes, environmental and energy policies implemented by international or national institutions, technological advancements and the response of civil society and public authorities to the most critical environmental changes, like deforestation, forest degradation and illegal behaviour of the actors in the supply chain (FAO, 1998) More precisely, changes in international economic situations, such as the 2008 economic crisis, and the growth of emerging economies, are having diverging and sometimes opposite effects on the demand for timber products in specific countries and are modifying the composition of the types of timber products consumed (ITTO, 2013). At the same time, specific laws enforced by developed countries to fight the illegal...

Forest harvest index: Accounting for global gross forest cover loss of wood production and an application of trade analysis

Global Ecology and Conservation, 2015

Forest cover loss is a major cause of both the decline in global biodiversity and the increase in carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Focusing on the effects of logging, this study introduces an index of wood production, the forest harvest index (FHI), which calculates the expected gross forest cover loss (GFCL) reflecting the demand for timber and wood products at the global scale. We examined the accuracy and precision of the index by investigating the relationship between the FHI and actual GFCL measured through remote sensing. The index incorporates wood-and climate-specific biomass expansion factors and countryspecific growing stock densities to convert wood production volume to expected GFCL. We quantitatively examined the effect of data uncertainty in the growing stock density values obtain from FRA 2010 on the predicted relationship between the FHI and actual GFCL. We quantified the FHI for both industrial roundwood and wood fuel during a 5-year period (FY2000-FY2004) in each of the 139 nations considered. Results demonstrated that the FHI of industrial roundwood (18.6 million ha yr −1) corresponds well to actual GFCL (19.3 million ha yr −1) during the same period. The data uncertainty analysis suggested that increasing the frequency of forest monitoring at the national level can improve the precision and accuracy of the FHI, but discrepancies between the FHI and actual GFCL were also identified. Furthermore, to demonstrate the utility of our index as a metric of virtual GFCL of wood products, we disaggregated the FHI into export, import and domestic based on global wood trade data and compared the strength of the relationship with actual GFCL. Export FHI had a strong positive relationship with GFCL, which effect far exceeded the compensating effect of import FHI, indicating that wood trade overall increased GFCL at the global scale.