Abstract-TheRoleOfFMIS-Berger

=The Role of FMIS in Sustainable Forest Management Practices: Comparison and Future Direction = media type="custom" key="7501237"

Ron Berger, Seoul National University

Abstract
"In the long term, economic sustainability depends on ecological sustainability."

// — “America’s Living Oceans” [Pew Oceans Report, 2003] //

Forest management is gradually changing from a model of maximum economic yield for timber management to a multi-objective, sustainable practice using criteria such as timber production, carbon storage, recreation, and preservation. The failure to account for and balance these elements has led to damaging environmental consequences. Ideally, corporate social responsibility practices which employ self-regulations as part of a company’s business model can be one venue to balance profits with ecological sustainability. Conversely, policies could encourage stakeholders to identify and assess the economic interests of key actors and hold them accountable for sustaining forest ecosystems. Regardless of the approach taken, decision-makers need access to a combination of ecological and socio-economic information for making proper business decisions. Information systems can play a critical role in facilitating sustainable forest management practices and policies. The literature suggests that economic values have been rarely utilized in forest optimization models. The total economic value of a forest ecosystem, whether for timber management (direct-use), soil conservation or carbon storage (indirect-use) or forest protection (non-use), needs to achieve a financial return. Non-market values (existence and bequest values) are acknowledged at the hypothetical level. Non-use values can be measured by conducting a cost-benefit analysis via stated preference techniques such as contingent valuation and travel cost methods. Current forest management information systems (FMIS) mostly provide integrated data from a number of natural sources (e.g., soil type, forest cover type, road networks) and minimal economic information. Optimization tools like Geographic information Systems (GIS) are used for the management of spatial data, system queries and summary display, but lack economic information to develop management plans. Similarly, forest knowledge-based and expert systems (FES) provide silvicultural (cultivation) prescriptions that meet ecological objectives for timber management, vegetative growth, wildlife, and forest health but lack economic indicators. We posit that managing for sustainable forest ecosystems requires adequate economic data, which is rarely utilized by these FMIS. Future applications of GIS and FES should include functionality ranging from modeling, forest and land-use to regional and national long-term resource planning by integrating the above mentioned economic non-market valuations. The first goal of this paper is to provide a critical review of existing FMIS. We compare their functionality and capabilities, stakeholders they service, strengths and limitations, and level of economic analyses. In the second part of the paper, we analyze the extent of non-market valuation methods applied by FMIS. We posit that although reliable and valid non-market values can be difficult to obtain because predicting stakeholder behavior and preferences are not always directly observable, future research should attempt to integrate such measures (e.g., cost-benefit analysis, contingent valuation, hedonic property value and other indirect observed methods) into FMIS.