Brad Stennes

Carbon sequestration and land management under uncertainty

Uncertainty about the role of forestry and land-use change in mitigating global warming is addressed using a possibilistic linear programming model of forest and agricultural land management. The objective is to maximize the cumulative net discounted returns in the two sectors, while meeting specific carbon-uptake goals and maintaining stable flows of timber over the planning horizon. Because of ambiguity related to timber yield and carbon parameters, and vagueness of policy targets (economic returns, timber production and carbon-uptake), ordinal measures of uncertainty are applied. While ordinality entails loss of precision, it makes it possible to solve complex problems. This paper compares land-use policies in the boreal forest zone of Northeastern British Columbia under uncertainty with those from a more typical scenario that applies best-guess parameter values. Including uncertainty explicitly into the possibility analysis changes optimal land-use and forest management, and leads to different levels of projected timber supply, economic performance and carbon sequestration. The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) removed from the atmosphere and the economic cost of carbon uptake are sensitive to how the decision-maker tackles uncertainty.

An analysis of lumber trade restrictions in North America: application of a spatial equilibrium model

Abstract The impact of different trade restrictions on Canadian softwood lumber exports to the United States are examined using a spatial equilibrium trade model of the North American (NA) lumber market. Scenarios designed to result in equivalent US domestic market impacts including ad valorem tariffs quotas and a unit tax increase on Canadian timber inputs are simulated. The 27.2% tariff and the quota have the same overall welfare impacts in the two markets with US producers gaining and US consumers losing for an overall market loss of approximately

Impacts of tariff and non-tariff trade barriers on the global forest products trade: an application of the Global Forest Product Model.

520 million in the US. Ignoring quota rents, Canadian producers lose and consumers gain as prices fall in Canada for an overall loss of

Linking forests and economic well-being: a four- quadrant approach

880 million. Tariff revenues or quota rents, at over

Economics of fossil fuel substitution and wood product sinks when trees are planted to sequester carbon on agricultural lands in western Canada.

1 billion per year, mean that tariffs (collected by the US) clearly yield a benefit for the US over Free Trade and quotas (rents accruing to Canadian producers) an overall benefit for Canada. If US producer protection is gained through increased Canadian unit timber fees, it has markedly different consequences. Markets that import NA lumber face higher prices in this situation and domestic Canadian prices rise as much as those in the US as the price wedge present in the other scenarios disappears.

Economics of afforestation for carbon sequestration in western Canada

SUMMARY Although there has been considerable analysis on the effects of trade measures on forest product markets, these have tended to focus on tariffs. There is growing concern about the impact of non-tariff trade measures on the global forest product sector. The objective of this study is to fill a gap and estimate trade and economic impacts of non-tariff barriers and compare them to the impacts of tariffs. Ad-valorem equivalent estimates for a set of well-defined non-tariff trade restrictions are incorporated into a global forest products trade model. Non-tariff barriers are found to be less common than tariffs but have similar or bigger aggregate impacts on trade, production, producer revenues, consumer expenditures and value added as tariffs. There is uncertainty in the estimation of ad-valorem equivalence of non-tariff barriers that serves as a caveat on the results. Impacts of reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers are often different across regions and products. While not free from uncertainty, the results underscore the importance of analysing both types of trade policy and the need for continuing comprehensive trade liberalization.

Mountain Pine Beetle, Global Markets and the British Columbia Forest Economy

This paper has three main objectives: (1) to investigate whether the four-quadrant approach introduced by Maini (2003) reveals a useful typology for grouping countries by GDP and forest cover per capita, (2) to determine if the framework can enhance our understanding of the relationship between forest cover and GDP per capita, and (3) to investigate why countries in the four-quadrant world occupy different quadrants, and to determine the principal factors affecting country-movement across and within the individual quadrants. The examination reveals that countries can be classified into four broad categories, and that GDP and forest cover per capita have a low but consistent level of negative association. After regressing economic, institutional, social capital and other variables on a country’s occupancy and movement in the four-quadrant world, the results suggest that countries in each quadrant share different characteristics and that factors underlying country-movement varies according to the quadrant being observed. Overall, countries with less corruption and higher education are likely to experience increases in both forest cover and GDP per capita, while countries exporting a significant proportion of forest products have a reduced probability of increasing both variables.