Performance-based renewal conditions for tropical forest concessions provide a powerful incentive for loggers to adopt reduced-impact logging practices and to comply with minimum-diameter cutting limits - even with short concession agreements.
In government-owned tropical forests, timber is often harvested under concession agreements with private logging companies.
Forestry departments typically impose logging regulations to minimize the negative environmental impacts of logging, but logging practices throughout the tropics appear to be undermining the sustainability of timber and nontimber benefits from tropical forests.
Boscolo and Vincent use bioeconomic simulations to test the empirical significance of several common recommendations for promoting better logging practices in tropical forests. They find that:
The authors' results also suggest that a cause of premature reentry into logged forests is minimum-diameter cutting limits that exceed minimum commercial log diameters, combined with weak control over access to logged-over forests.
This paper—a product of the Development Research Group—is part of a larger effort in the group to elucidate the economics of conservation policies. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Tourya Tourougui, room MC2-522, telephone 202-458-7431, fax 202-522-3230, Internet address ttourougui@worldbank.org. Marco Boscolo may be contacted at mboscolo@hiid.edu. (52 pages)
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