The Global Environmental Effects of Local Logging Cutbacks

According to a popular slogan, we should think globally and act locally—that is, regard the environment from a global perspective and act locally to protect it. In the context of land-use policy, however, acting locally often means that environmentally risky activities are curtailed in one locality only to be transferred to another. Depending on where these activities shift, a net increase in environmental damage could result. Such an increase might be the unforeseen consequence of restrictions on the volume of timber that can be harvested in western North America.

These harvest restrictions, which now are being authorized in British Columbia also, already have been imposed on both federal lands and private lands in the U.S. West (especially Oregon and Washington). In the case of federal lands, the restrictions are the outgrowth of environmental concerns, most notably those over the spotted owl. In the case of private lands, they have resulted from a general tightening of various western states' forest practice acts.

Even as timber harvest restrictions help to allay some environmental concerns in western North America, they should arouse similar concerns in other parts of the world. This stems inevitably from the response of the world timber market to timber supply reductions: decreases in the timber harvests of one region spur increases in the harvests of other regions. By identifying the location of these increases, we can begin to determine whether global environmental damage associated with logging will be greater than before regional harvest restrictions were imposed.

Using a timber-supply model (TSM) developed at Resources for the Future in 1990, my colleagues and I have assessed where logging is likely to increase as a result of timber-harvest decreases in western North America. Below, I identify these regions and explain why the severity of environmental damage from logging depends significantly on where that activity occurs. In addition, I make some preliminary speculations about net changes in such damage in those regions where logging is potentially on the rise. Taken together, these regional damages can begin to indicate whether a net increase in global environmental damage will result from a regional restructuring of timber production. Finally, I make several suggestions regarding policies that address the environmental concerns associated with timber harvests.

Predicting changes in the timber market

Because western North America is one of the world's largest producers and exporters of timber, major logging restrictions in that region could be expected to reduce significantly the volume of timber sold on the world market. However, the timber market typically adapts to such cutbacks. Consequently, reductions in the timber harvests of the U.S. West, which began in the early 1990s, now are being offset by increases in the harvests of other regions. To pave the way for an estimation of any net change in logging damage worldwide, we used our timber supply model to identify the regions where harvesting would increase.

The TSM projects timber production in response to changes in overall timber demand over the fifty-year period, 1990–2040. Its estimates of harvests are based on the assumption that timber-producing regions fall into one of two categories: those that are expected to be responsive to supply and demand forces and those that are not. The responsive regions are the U.S. South, the U.S. West, British Columbia, eastern Canada, the Nordic countries, the Asia-Pacific countries, and the emerging plantation region, which includes New Zealand, Chile, Brazil, and other major producers of wood grown on plantations. The nonresponsive regions, which are assumed to be increasing their timber production slowly over time in accordance with historical trends, are the former Soviet Union, Europe (excluding the Nordic countries), and all other timber-producing regions of the world. Each of these two groups of regions accounted for about half the world's industrial wood production in the mid-1980s.

In the late 1980s, when we first ran our model to generate a fifty-year timber production forecast, the U.S. West had not yet reduced its timber harvests. In light of its subsequent harvest reductions and the reductions expected in British Columbia, we have revised our earlier forecast. To do so, we decreased the area and inventory of timber available for harvest in each region as originally specified in our model. Specifically, we decreased available inventory levels by 30 percent in the U.S. West and by 20 percent in British Columbia.

In our revised forecast, the level of timber harvests in the U.S. West and British Columbia is lower throughout the entire fifty-year forecast period than in our original base case scenario, and the average real (inflation-adjusted) price of timber is about 5 percent higher. During the first twenty years of this period (1990–2010), the principal focus of the analysis, our revised projections of the average annual volume of harvest in each of the seven responsive regions indicate that the decline in U.S. West timber harvests will be largely offset by harvest increases both in the United States and abroad.

Location of increased timber harvests

Our revised projections suggest that the global timber-supply system can produce large volumes of wood in response to the incentive of higher prices brought about by harvest reductions. These higher prices are predicted to increase timber production in the Nordic region, the U.S. South, eastern Canada, the emerging plantation region, and other timber-producing regions. In turn, this increased production is predicted to replace about two-thirds of the harvest shortfalls created by harvest reductions in western North America. These forecasts are corroborated by recent experience.

Early in 1993, timber prices in the United States approximately doubled in a period of less than six months. During that period, rising wood prices around the world led to increases in timber harvests in the U.S. South and elsewhere. The upsurge in log prices was volatile, however, and fell rapidly after the initial rise, before rising once again. Today, timber prices have declined substantially from their peak levels, although they have yet to drop to their pre-1993 levels.

While prices were increasing in many other timber markets, they changed much less in the European market. The soft European prices, together with devaluations in the currencies of the Nordic countries, reduced the competitiveness of many North American timber producers, forcing them to curtail their activity in the European market. These producers redirected their production to the North American market. Thus, eastern Canada and the U.S. South, both of which had increased their timber production in response to rising wood prices, have been able to offset much of the reduction in timber harvests in the U.S. West. Likewise, the 50 percent decline in the U.S. West's wood exports, which resulted from the reduction in the U.S. West's timber harvests, has been offset by yet other regions. New Zealand, Chile, and Russia have filled most of the gap left by the decrease in U.S. West timber exports to the Pacific Basin.

This restructuring of the timber market indicates that the market has adapted well to the harvest reduction in the U.S. West. As British Columbia also reduces its timber harvests, the Nordic countries, eastern Canada, the U.S. South, and the currently major forest plantation regions will be joined by other regions in increasing their timber harvests. Notable among these other regions are Latin America, parts of Asia and Oceania, and Europe.

Latin America is likely to be a major wood supplier during the next century because it has established highly productive plantation forests. Brazil has assumed a major role in the production and export of wood pulp over the past decade or so. Argentina, Venezuela, and Chile are becoming important wood producers, as well as actual or potential wood exporters.

Plantation forests are not the only source of timber in Latin America. The vast timber resources of the Amazon are also potentially exploitable. Traditionally, wood exports from the Amazon have been modest, due in large part to the high degree of heterogeneity in the region's timber species and the inability of markets to utilize effectively lesser known species. These obstacles are being overcome, and tropical timbers are being used increasingly. Given limitations on supplies of tropical timbers from Asia, increased timber exports from the Amazon are anticipated. Nevertheless, environmental concerns might severely limit the volume of timber produced from the Amazonian native forest.

Like some countries in Latin America, several countries in Asia and Oceania may become bigger timber exporters in the near future. New Zealand, Vietnam, and Myanmar have increased their timber exports in recent years, a trend that is expected to continue. In Malaysia and Indonesia, timber from plantations and second-growth tropical forests could be for sale in major world markets within a decade.

Europe is already a major wood-producing region and is likely to remain so. Because its forests and wood production potential are expanding substantially, it could increase its timber harvests in the event that timber supplies become tight. The Nordic countries have already done so.

As suggested above, in a world where wood products are heavily traded internationally, logging restrictions in one region will simply be offset by logging increases elsewhere. The issue, then, is not whether to log but where to log. Moreover, even if logging were to decline worldwide, the environmental consequences would not be altogether positive.

The issue of where to log is important because the environmental damage associated with logging may vary considerably from location to location. For example, damage that results from tree extraction (such as soil erosion) is greater on steep terrain than on flat terrain. Damage to old-growth and other unique forests, which are often highly prized for their preservation values, can be considered more serious than damage to either second-growth or plantation forests. Thus, the global environmental damage associated with logging can increase or decrease, depending on where the logging occurs.

Yet it would be a mistake to assume that net changes in environmental damage can be calculated simply by adding up damage in each locality where logging occurs. In assessing these changes, other factors must be taken into account, including the size of any particular type of forest being logged relative to the total area of forests of the same type. If the damage to a harvested forest is severe but the total area of that type of forest is large, the marginal damage to local and global biodiversity is likely to be modest. By contrast, if the damage to a harvested forest is modest but the total area of that type of forest is small, the marginal damage to local and global biodiversity could be large. As these considerations suggest, the damage associated with logging is not limited to the areas where timber is actually harvested.

Nor is logging damage necessarily the direct result of timber harvests. If timber production were reduced significantly worldwide, the consequent decline in timber availability would likely promote the substitution of other materials for wood. Although such substitution may appear to be environmentally desirable, it is not an unmixed blessing.

Most, if not all, alternative materials create their own serious environmental problems. For example, metals, cement, and other substitute materials are obtained through potentially environmentally damaging mining or quarrying activities. In addition, most substitute products require considerably more energy to produce than wood products. Increased use of fossil-fuel energy raises the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change. Finally, few wood substitutes are renewable, recyclable, and biodegradable.

Environmental effects of timber reductions in western North America

The magnitude and nature of the global environmental effects of harvest reductions in western North America will depend significantly, but not solely, on the location of offsetting harvest increases. Assessing these global effects will require additional research, but the predictions of the TSM enable me to speculate about net changes in regional environmental damage. Such speculation is a starting point for determining whether the harvest reductions in western North America will lead to a net change in global environmental damage.

As noted above, the TSM predicts that the harvest reductions in western North America will trigger harvest increases in parts of Europe (notably the Nordic countries and probably Russia), parts of Asia and Latin America, and other parts of North America (notably the U.S. South and eastern Canada). Recent timber production and trade information suggests harvests have already increased in some of these regions. A consideration of the natural features of the forested area of three of the regions—the Nordic countries, the South American tropics, and eastern Russia—illustrates how increased logging could affect the severity of local logging-related environmental damage.

Increased harvests of the forests in the Nordic countries may generate only modest additional environmental damages. Logging in these forests does not cause serious erosion and water runoff problems because the forested terrain is generally flat. Since few of the forests contain old-growth timber, the loss of preservation value resulting from logging is negligible. Therefore, a sizable, but not huge, increase in harvest levels probably poses little additional risk to biodiversity.

Increased timber harvests in South America may involve either logging old-growth timber or expanding plantation forests. While the risk to biodiversity is great where old-growth habitat is destroyed, the risk to native habitat from plantation forests can be small. Contrary to popular impression, plantation forests are usually established on degraded agricultural lands, rather than on land cleared of native forests. Accordingly, the environmental effects of plantation expansion are usually negligible. Selection logging in tropical forests, in which only a few trees are harvested per hectare, could lessen damage, particularly if road building is minimized and if large areas of fairly inaccessible forest remain largely undisturbed. These precautions could be especially important in preventing erosion, although this problem is likely to be a small one in the Amazon, much of which is flat.

The environmental effects of increased logging are more difficult to assess in eastern Russia than in South America or the Nordic countries. Several natural features of the forests in eastern Russia suggest that damage resulting from logging is likely to be modest. The areas of native forest are vast, and much of the terrain is relatively flat. In addition, Russian forests, like other forests in cold climates, contain considerably less, yet more broadly distributed, biodiversity than tropical forests. However, other natural features of eastern Russia's forests suggest that logging could have serious environmental consequences. The relatively low volume of timber in many of the forests necessitates logging over large areas. In addition, timber regeneration is difficult in many eastern Russian forests, especially in the more northerly regions. Land that remains without an adequate forest cover for a long period of time is at increased risk of susceptibility to environmental damage.

These speculations suggest the difficulty of making comparisons among different localities' logging-related environmental damage. In general, however, logging in plantation forests is likely to be the most environmentally benign, especially when these forests are established on former agricultural lands. Plantation sites are usually flat, and their volumes of old-growth timber and biodiversity are small. By contrast, logging in old-growth tropical forests is likely to be the most environmentally damaging, primarily because the biodiversity is greater in these forests than in any others.

Policy implications

At the beginning of this essay, I referred to the slogan "think globally and act locally," and I suggested that acting locally to protect the environment sometimes could lead to a net increase in global environmental damage. This is certainly a possibility in the case of timber harvest restrictions in western North America. Because much of the damage associated with timber harvests is localized, many people presume that reducing the harvests in their own region will be environmentally beneficial. What they often do not consider is that much environmental damage is, in its essence, global. Thus the charge to think globally should be emphasized in planning any local action that affects the environment, even in a seemingly positive way.

At a minimum, policymakers should understand that a decision to protect the environment by reducing timber harvests in one region will not necessarily shield that region from the environmental effects of logging. Ultimately, new or increased timber harvests in other localities will affect the global environment. Whether the environmental effects of these harvests is positive or negative depends in large part on where the activities occur.

For this reason, national policies to address the environmental concerns associated with logging ought to follow the example of international policies to control climate change and to protect biodiversity. These international policies recognize that the most efficient way to deal with global environmental problems is to identify the regions of the world where the problems are most severe and to concentrate mitigation efforts there. With regard to logging-related damage, then, the most efficient strategy is to identify the areas where this damage is likely to be greatest and to devise incentives that discourage timber harvests in these areas. Such a strategy may even encourage timber harvesting in areas where that activity is likely to be most environmentally benign.