Environment and Social Page

Today forestry is at the sharp end of some of the testing issues of our time.

"Intrinsic values", "externalities" and "ecosystem services" have been part of the forest industry's whispered vocabulary for some years. Today those services are at the forefront of public discussion as real economic costs and benefits are being attributed to carbon and nitrogen emissions, clean water, hill country stability and biodiversity. Perhaps for the first time the real meanings and implications behind the words sustainability are beginning to be discussed at an every day level.

Forest owners, regulators and policy-makers have all developed an urgent and growing interest in the social and environmental benefits of forests. However the means of quantifying, valuing and predicting the economic values and tradeoffs associated with land use decisions have remained elusive.

At the same time, plantation forests are under challenge throughout the world as increasingly sophisticated markets demand credible verification of the source and environmental pedigree of the wood products they consume.

The Future Forests Research Environment and Social Theme are being structured to meet these challenges.

FFR Environment - Closing the Cycles

The guiding research framework has been developed around the concept of placing the industry to the fore as the primary industry with the "the lowest (ecological) footprint" least "net cost" (to NZ inc) primary production system, as well as improving the industry's own product economic value and market penetration through lowered cost and improved environmental performance and credentials.

Taking a long term view, research will be aimed to participate in the development of knowledge and tools to address questions critical to "integrated resource management" and true environmental and economic accounting. These are the very tools also needed by policy makers and regulators alike! As such, the programme is envisaged to incorporate a strategy of incrementally adding to a broad spectrum of knowledge culminating in tangible, usable outputs. Those outputs, ranging from management tools to reduce chemical use and multidimensional landscape models to optimize land use in environmental and economic terms, to fundamental knowledge, improving productivity from biological systems with reduced artificial inputs are just some of the positive ideals being pursued. Many of these outputs are also expected to have cross-sectoral value and be of considerable "public good" as well as "industry good", informing a more sophisticated and discriminating operating environment.

Environmental and Social Theme Overview