Criterion 7. Legal, Institutional, and Economic Framework for Forest Conservation and
Sustainable Management
National Report on Sustainable Forests—2010
Indicator 7.61.
Capacity To Conduct and Apply Research and Development Aimed at Improving Forest Manage­ment and Delivery of Forest Goods and Services and Development of Methodologies To Measure
and Integrate Environmental and Social Costs and Benefits Into Markets and Public Policies, and
To Reflect Forest-Related Resource Depletion or Replenishment in National Accounting Systems
What is the indicator and why is it important?
This indicator assesses the ability to fully account for the costs
and benefits of public and private decisions on forest resources.
Although information on traditional economic measures of forest market values is usually available, information on social and
environmental values is incomplete. Lack of such information
in national accounting frameworks can result in poor understanding of the relative value of all forest goods and services,
including nonmarket and market values. Similarly, this lack of
information could lead to poor allocation of forest resources.
Better national accounting practices can also help identify areas
where public intervention may improve market allocations.
What does the indicator show?
No specifically required mechanisms exist to develop and
inc­or­porate environmental and social costs and benefits into
national accounting systems in the United States and its forest
resources at this time. Many means exist, however, by which
public policies consider environmental effects related to
Federal and State projects, and at times private land actions.
These include the process-based National Environmental Policy
Act, which requires analysis of the impacts of major Federal
actions on the environment.
The Endangered Species Act prescribes specific measures to
protect threatened and endangered species and uses rigorous
means to list such species. The National Forest Management
Act Federal regulations include specific directions to provide
for ecosystem diversity through a combination of process
requirements and prescriptive guidance.
Research and planning are used as part of informational and
educational policy mechanisms to implement these environmental and social components of national forest planning actions.
Various incentives, subsidies, and taxes also are provided for
planning by States, and the protection of endangered, threatened, or rare species and ecosystems. These include specific
Federal or State programs and private market actions in forest
certification, wetlands banking, and cap-and-trade systems for
endangered species or carbon storage. These and other eco­system services are becoming a much greater focus of both
public and private forest management.
What has changed since 2003?
National efforts toward environmental accounting for a broad
range of goods and services, including forests, have been
considered but not adopted, to date. Most forest products firms
and organizations have also now adopted official sustainability
policies and are championing corporate social responsibility
(CSR) actions such as forest certification, ISO 14001 certification, or CSR policies and statements to burnish their positive
environmental image and gain market recognition.
Table 61-1. Policy and Governance Classification.
Mechanism
Nondiscretionary/mandatorya
Informational/educationalb
Discretionary/voluntaryc
Fiscal/economicd
Market basede
Scale:
National (N),
Regional (R),
State (S),
Local (L)
N
N, S
N, S
N, L
Approach
Prescriptive
L, R
Process or
Systems Based
Performance or
Outcome Based
Private
Enterprise
L, R
R, A
I, S, T
C, W, T, M
Laws (L), Regulations or Rules (R), International Agreements (I), Government Ownership or Production (G).
b
Education (E), Technical Assistance (T), Research (R), Protection (P), Analysis and Planning (A).
c
Best Management Practices (B), Self-regulation (S).
d
Incentives (I), Subsidies (S), Taxes (T), Payments for Environmental Service (P).
e
Free enterprise, private market allocation of forest resources (M), or market based instruments and payments, including forest certification (C) wetland banks (W), capand-trade (T), conservation easement or transfer of development rights (E).
a
Last Updated June 2011 1