Amenities, non-market functions and forest management planning

Abstract

Taking into account non-market functions in forest management becomes a new stake for forest owners and public institutions. The first of them are claiming their rights linked to their responsibilities in counterpart of the new environmental obligations. To address this issue, some definitions and concepts are first reminded: externalities, amenities, and different values for non-market goods and services. Then, the main attributes of these goods and services are related, with a particular attention paid to the application to forest sector: diverse relations between these functions and the production function, accurate scale of analysis wider than the management scale, high substituality between common areas. The conditions allowing to market amenities are then enounced: allocation of property rights, willingness to produce, and modalities of the exchanges between producers and consumers. A sectorial approach is certainly not efficient and this issue must be considered at the territorial level. There is a lack of research in this field, and some scientific concerns are listed.