Identification of services, wood and non-wood products in sustainable forest management

Status

completed

Summary

It is an integral element of the European understanding of sustainable forest management to foster the design and marketing of non timber forest products (NTFP) and services. The Pan-European Guidelines for sustainable forest management (PEOLG - criterion 3) are promoting the development of an economic policy framework and financial instruments to support the implementation of guidelines for the management of marketed and non-marketed forest goods. However, regarding the operational management the present insights are scarce on which measures of forest management are concerned by production diversification, which economic effects could be provoked by an adaptation of specified key activities and how sustainability could be evaluated in the light of non-wood products and services.

Within the project forest products and services as well as related management activities are analysed with regard to the effects on sustainable forest management and to their market-ability. Potential sources of income from forest products and services could be demonstrated while considering the boundaries of free product choice within forest management. There has been identification of sustainability actions that ensure a sustainable management and production of products and services.

By means of recherché, 32 bulletins of forest products and services have been created to describe the state of knowledge, intended use, regional sources, legal compliances, potential subsidies and restrictions for forest management. By conducting two stakeholder workshops in Austrian model regions regional priorities and characteristics for producing and marketing products and services could be identified. SWOT analysis was introduced to separate among internal (within the enterprise) strengths (e.g., income) and weaknesses (e.g., decrease of resources) and external opportunities (e.g., marketability) and threats (e.g., legal restrictions) for estimating the potentials of economic success of products and services. By means of SWOT analyses products and services could be categorized according to their potentials for Austrian forestry.

There has been analysis on the required sustainability actions for marketing products and services. The interactions among sustainability actions and selected forest products and ser-vices was worked out by means of cognitive mapping to show the importance of actions for the simultaneous providing of a set of forest goods. The economic impacts of setting sustainability actions were determined by costs and returns for a model forest enterprise.

There is evidence that there is a high efficiency potential of sustainability actions because they have a broad range of impacts. Sustainability actions appear highly valuable to enhance product quality in the short term, support the advancing to new markets in medium-term and are inevitable for sustaining forest resources and the stability of forest ecosystems on the long run.

Project management

Ao.Univ. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Harald Vacik
Universität für Bodenkultur, Wien
Department für Wald- und Bodenwissenschaften
Institut für Waldbau

Project collaborator

• Dr. Bernhard Wolfslehner
  E-Mail: bernhard.wolfslehner@boku.ac.at
• Dipl.-Ing. Herwig Ruprecht
  E-Mail: herwig.ruprecht@boku.ac.at

Ao.Univ. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Harald Vacik
Universität für Bodenkultur, Wien
Department für Wald- und Bodenwissenschaften
Institut für Waldbau
Peter-Jordanstr. 82, 1190 Wien
Internet: www.wabo.boku.ac.at/waldbau.html
Tel.: +43 -01- 47654/ 4050
Fax: +43 -01- 47654/ 4092