Gary Bull
Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs
Affiliations to Research Centres, Institutes & Clusters
Great Supervisor Week Mentions
I want thank @hishamzerriffi and @garyqbull for being #greatsupervisor 's during appreciation week. I would not be where I am today without all their help, guidance, support. So too Dr.Valerie LeMay, not a supervisor, but helped me as one!
Graduate Student Supervision
Doctoral Student Supervision
Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.
Almost 40% of the global population relies on fuelwood to meet their daily cooking energy needs, accounting for over 50% of all wood extracted in many developing countries. This dependency can have negative impacts on forest stocks and climate change, and is not expected to decline without a major change in current polices. Consequently, there is a need for improved understanding of fuelwood dependency to both inform the transition to cleaner cooking solutions and for sustainable management of local forest resources to ensure supply for dependent communities in the interim. This requires a careful analysis of the long-term management of local forest and agroforestry resources, the particular fuel collection habits of local populations, and the impact of new cooking technologies and fuels on fuelwood consumption. However, understanding biomass extraction and its impacts on forest resources remains under-developed in comparison to demand-side issues of fuelwood consumption. I fill these gaps by first tracking household fuelwood collection behavior in two regions of India. The patterns indicate that fuelwood collection is a function of both socio-economic drivers and the resource base, and collection is not evenly spread out among villages. Next, I demonstrate the need to develop local level estimates of biomass renewability to isolate household fuelwood collection impacts on local forest resources. Then, I estimate the impact of cooking solutions on fuelwood consumption behavior and the circumstances under which households move away from forest fuelwood sources. Finally, I examine a national level transition to clean cooking in India over ten years, and conclude that it reduced pressure on forests and achieved modest climate change mitigation benefits with some uncertainty due to the extent of biomass renewability and inclusion of differing climate-forcing emissions. Overall, the dissertation elucidates the need for local level estimates to isolate household fuelwood extraction impacts on forests and climate change, and the need to carefully consider spatial scale and included emissions in future analyses and policy-making.
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Climate change is altering the nature and condition of vast areas in the boreal forest of Canada. Vulnerabilities associated with drought, fire and forest health are being observed across thousands of kilometres or macroscales. There are great uncertainties in the ecological responses across this macroscale, along with uncertainties in policy and economic responses that need to translate effectively between local and macroscale decision makers. Addressing these uncertainties requires coherent economic and policy analyses that are consistent over different spatio-temporal scales. To meet the challenges, multi-source data must be linked to provide forest information at higher spatial scales, and systems linking ecological and economic information are also needed. Given this informational need, my research question was: How can we improve the linkages of multi-source ecological and economic data to evaluate forest management decisions at macroscales? First, to improve the ecological information, I evaluated alternative multivariate methods to spatially link multi-source data and models of forest attributes for macroscale analysis. The goal was to obtain logical consistency across variables of interest, while improving accuracy and computational simplicity to the analysis. Second, to improve the economic information fed into the analysis, I used price data to develop a multivariate method for generating price information at a finer temporal scale which remains consistent with longer-term price scenarios from global land use models. Third, and finally, I developed a macroscale decision support system (quantify, query and queue, Q3) that demonstrates how to link spatial and temporal ecological and economic information to a forest land-base which is subject to climate change vulnerabilities, the western boreal forest of Canada. As an illustration of the usefulness and relevance of the Q3, I assessed the ability of mitigating drought impacts resulting from possible future climates via planting improved seedling stocks developed in tree genetics and improvement programs. Overall, the methods and the newly developed macroscale decision support system I developed link ecological (e.g., climate change impacts on forests) and economic (e.g., price change) uncertainties enabling the development of appropriate forest and environmental policies, along with forest management practices needed to implement these policies.
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Although forests provide various ecosystem services that support human welfare, forest ecosystems have undergone continuous degradation. To mitigate forest loss from illegal logging, forest certification was launched in the early-1990s, and the interest in certification has been expanding in scope from timber to a range of ecosystem services for a complete approach to sustainable forest management. This thesis defines such a certification scheme as the certification of forest ecosystem services (CFES). In the first part, I propose a conceptual framework for CFES and argue that a key function of the certification system is to disclose information on the provision of ecosystem services to the market. This function distinguishes CFES from forest certification and may support improvements of market-based policy instruments for ecosystem services (Chapter 2). The second part examines the possible development of CFES as an expansion of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) system, and analyzes the key FSC stakeholders, including certification bodies, enabling partners, and certificate holders. Their adaptability to ecosystem services was relatively high for biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, and non-timber forest products (Chapter 3). The adaptability also indicated that watershed and soil conservation services could be bundled to reduce the costs of certifying each service (Chapter 4). The FSC certificate holders preferred CFES that offers a price premium, technical training for forest owners, and/or access to global service markets, but their willingness to pay was low (Chapter 5). The third part focuses on applying CFES to a payment for watershed services in West Lombok, Indonesia. Service buyers, sellers, and intermediaries perceived certification as a potential tool to improve watershed management (Chapter 6). Buyers demanded certified services that disclose water quality, flood risk, and/or environmental and social forest safeguards (Chapter 7).
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The traditional discipline of forest economics has largely overlooked smallholders’ forestland-use decision-making process, which is perplexing given that they are the most numerous type of forest manager in the world. To address this gap, this thesis advances the literature on the economic decision-making context of smallholders’ forestland-use decisions. This advancement is critical to improving the design of smallholder afforestation programs. This research gap is addressed in this thesis through three research chapters. The first research chapter proposes a theoretical construct for modelling smallholders’ forestland-use decisions. The second research chapter assesses the relative contribution of smallholders’ preferences towards the non-market values of trees in their forestland-use decisions and psychometrically segments smallholders based on those preferences. The third research chapter describes and estimates a model of smallholders’ participation in tree product markets using a combination of smallholder-specific transaction costs, shadow prices and preferences. The first research chapter is theoretical whereas the second and third research chapters are empirical using data collected from a smallholder afforestation program in Nicaragua that is currently underway. For the last two research chapters, I conducted a total of 630 surveys and 1 818 discrete choice experiments with 210 smallholders over a 12-month period.My research findings suggest that smallholders’ forestland-use decisions are governed by very different principles than those proposed in much of the existing forest economics literature. My findings are best understood in an agricultural context of competing uses for household assets and interdependent consumption and production decisions. I argue that due to transaction costs, market prices are no longer representative of decision prices; rather these prices are shaped by both endogenous smallholder-specific preferences, and characteristics of the household, farm and landscape.Forest production strategies range from natural regeneration on uncultivated land to intensive management of the forest resource to produce market and non-market values. In the absence of profitable market opportunities, non-market values play a much more important role in smallholders’ forestland-use choices than previously believed. My research offers a new approach for analyzing smallholders’ forestland-use decisions and provides a new set of tools to better assess, design, and target smallholder afforestation program policies.
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Local and regional timber shortages may be ameliorated via planting improved stocks with higher yields. In this dissertation, I addressed an important knowledge gap on the impacts of tree improvement programs on yields of white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) and hybrid spruce (Picea engelmannii Parry ex Engelmann x Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) plantations across the boreal and hemiboreal forests of Canada using meta-modelling approaches. In particular, I used meta-data for white and hybrid spruce provenance trials extracted from the literature to: (i) forecast provenance yields over time for broad spatial and temporal extents; (ii) model yields of provenances relative to standard stocks (termed “gain”) over time; and (iii) test alternatives for forecasting each provenance at a location using available repeated-measures data. In the first study, provenance height over time trajectories were modelled by incorporating the effects of climatic variables, provenances and site characteristics into mixed-effects nonlinear models via a random coefficients modelling approach. Height trajectories were strongly affected by planting site and provenance climates, along with planting site characteristics. The height trajectory meta-model was incorporated into an existing growth and yield model, which can be used to predict provenance yields for long temporal and large spatial extents. In the second study, the impacts of the particular gain definition (i.e., selection age, proportion of top performers) were examined using the model from the first study, and one definition was selected. A meta-model of gain as a function of plantation age, planting density, and planting site climate was developed. Planting site climate strongly affected these gain trajectories. The gain definition and trajectory model can be used to evaluate potential gains of using improved white and hybrid spruce stocks. Forecasts are needed to evaluate provenance (or progeny) performance at harvest, often 80 or more years from planting. In the third study, three alternative procedures (population-averaged, subject-specific, and autocorrelation) to forecast repeated measures for a particular progeny at a location were compared and evaluated by virtually removing some repeated measures. The subject-specific forecasts were best with accuracies similar to the measurement precision using standard height measurement devices given five or more prior measurements.
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Many initiatives have been designed to reduce illegal logging and to legitimize the associated forest products trade. The latest governmental initiatives include the United States Lacey Act Amendment (US LAA) and the European Union Timber Regulation (EU TR). A key non-governmental initiative is Chain of Custody (CoC) certification. Since China is a very large importer of primary wood products and a major exporter of value-added wood products, it is critical to understand the impacts of these initiatives on China. The study aims to analyze the potential impacts of the US LAA, the EU TR, and CoC certification on China's wood products industry at two levels. First, at the individual producer level, 107 export-oriented Chinese wooden furniture manufacturers were randomly selected to investigate their perceptions of and responses to these initiatives. Guided by an integrated innovation-adoption model, the study identified the factors that affect a firm's legal compliance and its propensity to adopt CoC certification. Second, at the wood products industry level, the potential longer-term impacts of the US LAA and the EU TR on China's wood products industry were estimated using the International Forest and Forest Products (IFFP) trade model. There were several key results. First, at the individual producer level, multiple linear regression identified factors that were statistically significant in determining a firm's willingness to comply with legality requirements. They included the natural logarithm of firm size, the natural logarithm of export proportion, the interaction between opportunity and: client pressure, the natural logarithm of export experience and the natural logarithm of export proportion. Second, at the individual producer level, binary logistic regression suggested that client pressure, firm size, and the expectation of general benefits were statistically significant in determining a firm's decision to adopt CoC certification. Third, at the wood products industry level, the IFFP results indicated that these governmental initiatives in the US/EU might decrease the production and net export of China's plywood, veneer sheet, and fibreboard. The results also indicated an increase in China's sawnwood and particleboard production, and a decrease in their net imports.
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This dissertation describes three improvements to the standard forest products trade model. The standard model typically contains multiple regions, multiple products, multiple manufacturing processes, price sensitive supply, price sensitive demand and transportation costs between regions. The models are used to predict sectoral economic activity and the trade of products among countries while contributing to policy creation, implementation and evaluation. The standard model has remained substantially unchanged since it was introduced in the early 1980s.This dissertation is organized into four manuscripts. The first and second manuscripts introduce structural improvements to the standard model. The first manuscript suggests replacing the standard manufacturing cost component with a theoretically coherent cost component based on variable marginal costs. The second manuscript suggests replacing the idiosyncratic use of trade inertia with the use of Armington elasticities. The third and fourth manuscripts lead to content improvements in the modeling of illegal logging. The third manuscript presents a background analysis that explores the causal links between a country’s development and corruption. The fourth and final manuscript utilizes the results of the three previous manuscripts in calibrating a revised trade model with special reference to illegal logging in Indonesia and its trade with China. This revised trade model incorporates the variable cost manufacturing component from the first manuscript, Armington elasticities from the second manuscript and predictions of corruption from the third manuscript.
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Payments-for-Ecosystem-Services (PES) projects are being developed worldwide to address environmental and economic issues simultaneously. This thesis describes research concerning a PES project in Nhambita Community in Mozambique, where a small agro-forestry based carbon sequestration project is being implemented. The central research question is: Do economic incentives to smallholder farmers result in improved ecosystem services provision and improved household welfare measured by cash income and consumption? Questionnaire-based quarterly household surveys were the main source of data. Data was collected from 290 randomly selected households by eight enumerators who were trained in administering questionnaires in the local language (Sena). The thesis consists of six chapters, two of which are an introduction and conclusion. The remaining four chapters are prepared as manuscripts: the first assesses the contribution of environmental resources to the household economy; the second investigates the miombo woodlands’ use as household safety net against adverse income shocks, using conditional logit analysis; the third investigates socio-economic factors influencing household participation in the PES project, using 3-stage estimation; and, the fourth and final evaluates the impact of the PES-project on household cash income, consumption, forest use and agricultural production, using propensity score matching. It further examines whether there was any discrimination in the flow of benefits, using decomposition analysis.The key results are as follows. 1) Poorer households used miombo resources for subsistence, while richer households used the same for cash income. 2) Women headed households, which had lower level of cash income, used the woodland resources to the same level as did the male headed households. 3) Use of wild products from miombo woodlands was one of the shock coping strategies. 4) Participation in PES-project was influenced by education of household head, length of residence in the community, extent of trust among community members and percentage of cash income derived from sale of forest products. 5) PES-participant households earned higher amount of cash income, had higher consumption and harvested lesser amount of crops, than they would have had they not participated in the project. 6). There were biases in the flow of benefits in favour of richer and male headed households.
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In rural China, forest and agricultural lands are undergoing major reforms, leading to many new challenges. I chose to understand the factors affecting a farmer’s investment decision on their lands.The first manuscript focuses on the role of property rights, social capital and contractual rules in the design and implementation of the world’s first Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) afforestation project in China. Using village-level surveys, I found: [1] although the project facilitates participation through carbon pooling and a share-holding system, much of the project land remained unforested; [2] the primary reasons for the unforested lands included constrained contractual rules, property rights allocation disputes, and low levels of social capital in some villages.The second manuscript identifies determining factors of villagers’ trust in their peer members. I used a unique data set collected by household surveys and trust games con-ducted in 30 administrative villages in Yunnan Province of southwestern China. I found: [1] the survey measure and experimental measure of trust were strongly correlated; [2] evidence that the positive individual social interactions and positive past experiences had a significant and positive effect on the villagers’ mutual trust; [3] that while formal village institutions might have gradually substituted for the traditional informal institutions, the formal institutions has not effectively replaces the roles of informal village institutions in maintaining villagers’ mutual trust; [4] openness to the outside world and the market could have eroded mutual trust among rural villagers in Yunnan Province. In the third manuscript, I used a data set collected through artefactual field experiments and household surveys from 30 villages in Yunnan Province. I linked the experimental measure of risk preference to household investment decisions on input use on farmlands. Major findings in this chapter include: [1] farmland size was negatively and significantly correlated with the intensity of both chemical fertilizer and pesticide use; [2] a family head’s risk aversion level was significantly and positively correlated with intensity of both chemical fertilizer use and pesticide use; [3] a family’s connection to social networks negatively and significantly predicts its decision regarding the intensity of pesticide use.
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This dissertation describes the development of CAMBIUM, an agent-based forest sector model for large-scale strategic analysis. This model is designed as a decision support tool for assessing the effect that changes in forest product demand and resource inventories can have on the structure and economic viability of the forest sector. CAMBIUM complements existing forest sector models by modeling aggregate product supply as an emergent property of individual companies’ production decisions and stand-level ecological processes. Modeling the forest products sector as a group of interacting autonomous agents makes it possible to introduce production capacity dynamics and the potential for mill insolvencies as factors in modeling the effects of market and forest inventory based disturbances. This thesis contains four main manuscripts. In the first manuscript I develop and test a dispersal algorithm that projects aggregated forest inventory information onto a lattice grid. This method can be used to generate ecologically and statistically consistent datasets where high-quality spatial inventory data is otherwise unavailable. The second manuscript utilizes this dataset in developing a provincial-level resource dynamics model for assessing the timber supply effects of introducing weevil-resistant spruce. This model employs a stand-level approach to simulating weevil infestation and associated merchantable volume losses. Provincial-level impacts are determined by simulating harvest activities over a 350 year time horizon. In the third manuscript I shift the focus to interactions between forest companies. I analyze the effects of strategic decisions on sector structure by developing CAMBIUM as an agent-based model of competition and industry structure evolution. The forest sector is modeled as a group of autonomous, interacting agents that evolve and compete within the limitations posed by resource inventories and product demand. In the final manuscript I calibrate CAMBIUM to current conditions in the British Columbia forest sector. Industry agents compete for roundwood inputs, as well as for profits in finished product markets for pulp, panel products, and lumber. To test the relevance and utility of this model, CAMBIUM is used to quantify the cumulative impacts of a market downturn for forest products and mountain pine beetle induced timber supply fluctuations on the structure of the forest sector.
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No abstract available.
Master's Student Supervision
Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.
The iconic Canadian aboriginal culture is deeply rooted in the lives of Canadian aboriginal people. It is widely spread and represented across Canada by distinctive and sophisticated art styles. However, Canadian aboriginal designed products are sold mainly on the domestic market. Expanding to international market will be attractive to some aboriginal designers. The Chinese household product market is desirable since it is very large but there are a host of unique domestic designs and cross-cultural designs preferred by Chinese consumers. The purpose of this research is to evaluate Chinese culture and consumers and designers/artists’ preferences toward household products, in order to assist in designing a cross-cultural wood household products marketing strategy for Canadian aboriginal designers. This study collected exploratory information through open-ended questionnaire surveys of 407 Chinese household product consumers at 22nd China International Furniture Expo in Shanghai, China. Semi-structured interviews with 22 Chinese designers and artists at the home show and Dongyang Woodcarving City Centre were conducted to develop further insight into Chinese design preferences. The results indicated that Chinese household product market is currently dominated by “New Chinese” style designs, which is a representative of a cross-cultural style that combines traditional Chinese design elements and modern design elements. Most Chinese consumers at the home show preferred cross-cultural designs other than traditional designs. The surveyed consumers and the interviewed designers/artists revealed their preferences in household product designs with a focus on design style, design elements, and materials. Both consumers and designers/artists indicated that they preferred to use Alibaba-Taobao as a purchasing/selling channel due to its enormous consumer base in China.
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Increasing carbon stock in forests is fundamental for climate change mitigation. Forest carbon management can also play a critical role in keeping forests healthy, while addressing multiple wildlife and human needs. To fulfill this potential, forest management practices require an improved understanding of annual carbon stocks and carbon dynamics. However, this information is oftentimes not properly accounted for in forest management plans, particularly in the case of developing countries. This thesis focuses on a case study in Turkey to demonstrate the potential to enhance Turkish forest management plans by including carbon stock accounting. The Forest Planning Studios Atlas (FPS-Atlas) and the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Service (CBM-CFS3) software programs were used to assess three alternative forest management scenarios in the case study. Carbon stock estimates for each scenario were compared to a baseline based on the current management plan. The first alternative scenario assumed an accelerating harvest rate over time, driven mainly by population growth. The second alternative scenario assumed rehabilitation of non-productive areas, a practice that has been gaining attention in Turkey over the last two decades. The third alternative scenario assumed the rehabilitation practices are combined with a low harvest flow. A carbon price analysis was conducted comparing the baseline with the third alternative scenario. Results showed that accelerating harvest can negatively affect the carbon stocks in a period of one hundred years. Rehabilitation, on the other hand, showed a positive impact on carbon sequestration potential when compared to the baseline after a hundred years. The rehabilitation scenario with low harvest flow showed promising results for international carbon trading. Overall, the methods used in this research proved useful to improve current forest managements strategies in Turkey, particularly in relation to climate change mitigation.
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In order to limit the effects of anthropogenic climate change the world is moving away from the use of fossil fuels as a primary energy source. Bioenergy is expected to form a substantial contribution to this transitional strategy. In order to increase bioenergy production, underutilized forest harvest residues are being targeted as a fuel source. Even with favorable policies in place to encourage their use, the processing and collection of these previously disregarded resources is often prohibitively expensive. Quality factors such as material moisture content also impact the viability of harvest residues for fuel purposes. As a result, careful operational planning is of great importance to sourcing high quality, economically feasible biomass. To gain a better understanding of the forest biomass supply chain, a simulation model was developed for a case study located in coastal British Columbia, Canada. A seasonal moisture content trend was identified and incorporated to help develop a strategy for sourcing high quality materials. It was found for BC’s coastal temperate rainforest environment that by delaying biomass collection until the second summer after timber harvest an average delivered moisture content of 28% can be achieved rather than 38% is operations proceed in the first summer. This reduction in delivered moisture content also led to a decrease in delivered cost from $72.08 to $67.95 per oven dried tonne. Trucking and equipment configurations were also examined to identify least cost approaches to biomass collection under varying conditions. Comparing high productivity and low productivity equipment configurations showed a $26.08/ODT cost increase when switching to less productive equipment. By employing an electric centralized grinder transporting unprocessed harvest residues, costs were shown to decrease for all cutblock groups with a cycle time of less than four and a half hours. Least cost fleet size was found to be largely dependent on the average cycle time to the biomass source. And the volume of available biomass at a given cutblock was found to have an impact on delivered costs with a 20% increase in biomass volume resulting in a cost decrease of greater than $2/ODT.
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Optimization and improvement techniques have been employed to improve truck transportation in the forest industry. Most studies in this area focus on log transportation and there is not much literature available on wood chip transportation which is distinct from log transportation in several ways : chip-truck transportation usually considers a longer planning period, requires a more complex driver scheduling, involves strict limitations on truck unloading capacity, and considers service priorities for major suppliers.The objective of this thesis is to model and improve truck transportation of wood chips to a pulp mill. To achieve this, a network that transports wood chips from a number of sawmills to a pulp mill with limited truck unloading capacity was studied and an optimization model was developed to consider wood chip production plan at supplier sawmills, transportation of wood chips and unloading at the pulp mill. A simulated annealing metaheuristic was adapted to solve the model and the results for a case study in British Columbia are presented. The results of the metaheuristic showed that the total penalties for truck waiting times could be reduced by 7 percent ($31,000) compared to solutions obtained through simulation. The results also suggested that the fleet size could be reduced by one-third of the actual fleet size used by the pulp mill.In order to explore the impact of various structural parameters on the transportation network, sensitivity and scenario analyses were used to study the impacts of fleet size, an additional truck dumper, truck types, and switch point locations for truck drivers. The results indicated that the pulp mill could reduce its fleet size and an additional truck dumper could reduce transportation costs. The study also suggested that half of the fleet should be replaced by self-unloading trucks and the investigation of the switch point locations for drivers indicated that the existing switch points were the best available options. The simulated annealing model could assist the pulp mill truck dispatchers to achieve better transportation plans. The scenario and sensitivity analysis could help the pulp mill manager to adapt the most profitable changes in the structure of the transportation network.
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The forests of coastal British Columbia are some of the most productive in the world, providing a wide range of values including timber production, carbon sequestration, and wildlife habitat. Forest management often requires weighing competing values and implementing decisions to promote them, while avoiding negative impacts to other values. Forest ecosystems models such as FORECAST and Habitat Suitability Indices provide a means of analyzing alternative management strategies for their impacts on multiple values, and serve as a tool for informing adaptive management decisions. The objectives of this thesis were to model and assess the impacts of different forest management practices on wildlife habitat, carbon storage, and timber harvesting in coastal British Columbia.This analysis consisted of a number of alternative harvesting prescriptions, including clearcut harvesting and low intensity thinning treatments. Each treatment was quantified on its ability to simultaneously generate timber, carbon and habitat value. Results of the study suggest that extension of rotation periods between harvest treatments can provide gains in all three values over shorter rotations. Low intensity thinning treatments can also be applied to further promote habitat value with only minor reductions in carbons stocks. In addition, thinning treatments can decrease the time required to develop high quality habitat over that of either unmanaged or clearcut management. If selectively applied over a landscape scale, these management prescriptions could be used to provide a range of forest values and address a variety of resource demands.
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The iconic forests of British Columbia are deeply rooted in the lives of its inhabitants. Known for its lush green landscape and old growth trees, BC forests are home to over 1,300 plant and animal species, and provide a playground for recreational activities. The forest industry is also a key contributor to the provincial economy. Over the last decade, the forest sector has experienced a number of challenges as a result of the global economic crisis, the US housing crash, changing markets, low-cost competitors, the strength of the Canadian dollar, and the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Since, the provincial and federal governments have made a commitment to transform the forest sector through innovation, enhanced environmental performance, and new markets. One such area of innovation has been in forest genomic technologies. Marker-assisted selection (MAS) is a biotechnological tool that allows desired traits to be flagged on the genome. This tool may assist tree breeders with the early selection of preferred genotypes, thus reducing the breeding cycle and more accurately and efficiently selecting for improved qualities. However, there is a poor understanding of perceived acceptability towards the adoption of this technology. The objectives of this research were to investigate how the implementation of marker-assisted selection is perceived by forest stakeholders and First Nations in BC, and if this perception is dependent on the context of implementation. To accomplish these objectives, a mixed methods research approach was taken, employing semi-structured individual interviews, followed by a Likert scale questionnaire. Participants were categorized into four groups: government, industry, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), and First Nations.The results of this analysis found that government and industry participants held positive perceptions towards MAS, supporting its use and continued research in BC. Both agreed that the advantages of MAS outweigh the disadvantages, frequently identifying its benefits in forest regeneration and to tree breeders. ENGOs and First Nations demonstrated a less favourable attitude towards MAS. Their attitudes lie between neutral and negative. Concerns were most strongly focused on environmental impacts, ecosystem degradation, and reduced genetic diversity; while identified benefits were specific to tree breeders and improved tree resiliency.
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Forests contain a multitude of values, many of which are incorporated within the existing economic system, allowing us to create an economic value for forests. These values compete with alternative land uses to ascertain which is the most economically efficient. The continued process of forest land use conversion indicates that existing monetized forest values are insufficient to prevent global deforestation.Recognition of the importance of previously un-monetized forest values, such as forest carbon for climate regulation and species habitation for global biodiversity levels, has stimulated efforts to incorporate these values within the existing economic system. Previous efforts to ‘ring fence’ these assets by regulatory means has met with limited success. The creation of market based incentive systems to monetize these forest values has gained increasing support over the years as policy makers seek to build on earlier successes.Adaptations within and creation of new institutions has been required in order to establish these market based incentive systems. Ensuring that the correct institutional arrangements exist is vital for their institutional effectiveness. This is of particular importance with regards existing institutions as concerns abound about their governance, transparency and accountability arrangements. This thesis focuses on large scale publicly owned international banks and identifies various weaknesses in existing institutional arrangement and seeks to ascertain whether they have the adaptive capacity to address these shortfalls. The thesis also studies the creation of an entirely new institution, the International Forest Bank, as a viable alternative to adaptation processes. Despite the many shortfalls in existing institutional arrangements an International Forestry Bank was found to be too aspirational and of too great a scale. The research concludes that research into the creation of a smaller more regional International Forestry Bank would be warranted.
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Non-industrial fuelwood plantations are commonly seen as a means of improving rural livelihoods while helping to meet energy demand. However, for smallholders to invest in the establishment of fuelwood plantations, economic viability is required. Two of the greatest sources of uncertainty in evaluating the economic viability of fuelwood plantations are the effects that market-specific requirements can have on the stumpage price a plantation owner can hope to receive and the lack of appropriate growth and yield information. The primary objective of this thesis was to determine if Caesalpinia velutina and Gliricidia sepium fuelwood plantations in Nicaragua could be economically viable in the smallholder context if sold within the market place. To improve the accuracy of the economic viability assessment, a novel approach was used that forecasted fuelwood yields by market-specific product segments, thereby accounting for the effects of market requirements on differential revenues and costs. Data on market demand, product segment dimensions and prices were collected by measuring fuelwood logs and by interviewing fuelwood consuming business owners. To forecast fuelwood log volume by product segments, species-specific yield models based on three separate sub-models were developed: 1) mean diameter at breast height (DBH) predicted over time; 2) mean height as a function of mean DBH; and 3) taper as a function of mean DBH and mean height. Mortality was assumed to be zero, following establishment mortality. To assess economic viability, information on costs, discount rates, market requirements and fuelwood yields by product segment were combined using the net present value (NPV) and the internal rate of return (IRR). It was concluded that fuelwood plantation yields according to product-specific requirements were essential for the economic viability analysis. In the context of this study, farm-based Caesalpinia velutina and Gliricidia sepium fuelwood plantations could be economically viable over longer rotations. However, barriers to entry such as access to capital and the need for reaching economies of scale made it unlikely that fuelwood plantations could be economically viable for smallholders without institutional support.
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