A global assessment of potential and anticipated impacts of efforts to achieve the SDGs on forests and related socio-economic systems. This title is available as Open Access via Cambridge Core.

In the Qing period (1644–1912), China's population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse that devastated European forests at the same time. This comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex: as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources. Historian Meng Zhang traces the trade routes that connected population centers of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on China's southwestern frontier. She documents innovative property rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to invest years in growing trees. Delving into rare archives to reconstruct business histories, she considers both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. Of driving concern were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a business network across a thousand miles? This carefully constructed study makes a major contribution to Chinese economic and environmental history and to world-historical discourses on resource management, early modern commercialization, and sustainable development.

The Global Forest Products Model (GFPM) book provides a complete introduction to this widely applied computer model. The GFPM is a dynamic economic equilibrium model that is used to predict production, consumption, trade, and prices of 14 major forest products in 180 interacting countries. The book thoroughly documents the methods, data, and computer software of the model, and demonstrates the model's usefulness in addressing international economic and environmental issues. The Global Forest Products Model is written by an international multi-disciplinary team and is ideal for graduate students and professionals in forestry, natural resource economics, and related fields. It explains trends in world forest industries in the simplest terms by explaining the economic theory underlying the model. It describes six applications of the GFPM, three of which were commissioned by the Food Agriculture of the United Nations, the USDA Forest Service, and New Zealand Research. The authors show how to apply the model to real issues such as the effects of the Asian economic crisis on the forest sector, the effects of eliminating tariffs on international trade and production, and the international effects of national environmental policies. They provide complete explanations on how to use the GFPM software, prepare the data, make the forecasts, and summarize the results with tables and graphs. Comprehensive, and rigorous description of the world forestry sector Written by an international multi-disciplinary team Thorough description of data and methods In-depth applications to modern economic and policy issues Detailed documentation of the computer software Suitable for students, researchers, and decision makers

REDD+ is one of the leading near-term options for global climate change mitigation. More than 300 subnational REDD+ initiatives have been launched across the tropics, responding to both the call for demonstration activities in the Bali Action Plan and the market for voluntary carbon offset credits.

The forests of British Columbia and the U.S. Pacific Northwest have long been key to the biophysical and economic well-being and the cultural identity of the region. During the last two decades these forests have become the subject of increasing conflict due to competing demands, which are a reflection of conflicting economic interests and social/political values and visions. This book examines the sources of conflict and suggests steps toward resolving forest policy issues. It is unique in two ways: First, it examines forest policy in the context of a binational region, exploring how two political systems, facing similar cultural and economic challenges, have treated their forests. Second, the book brings consideration of environmental justice to forest policy discourse by highlighting perspectives of people--Natives, private non-industrial forest owners, citizen activists and workers in the emerging non-timber forest economy--whose voices are often unheard in forest policy debate.

Forest ecosystems include a great variety of communities of organisms interacting with their physical environment: multi-aged natural forests, even-aged monocultures, and secondary forests invaded by foreign species. The challenge is to sustain their ability to function, by adapting to changing climates and satisfying a multitude of human demands. Our first chapter sets the scene with a discussion about the effects of forest management on ecosystem services. Details about forest observational infrastructures are introduced in the second chapter. The third chapter presents methods of analysing forest density and structure. Models for estimating the shape and growth of individual forest trees are introduced in chapter 4, models of forest community production in Chapter 5. Methods and examples of sustainable forest design are covered in chapter 6. New scientific contributions continue to emerge as we are writing, and this work is never finished. We hope to continue with regular updates replacing obsolete sections with new ones, but the general aim remains the same, to introduce a range of methods that will assist those interested in sustaining forest ecosystems.