Convention on biological diversity

Types of forest values

(a) Direct use values: values arising from consumptive and non-consumptive uses of the forest, e.g. timber, fuel, bush meat, food and medicinal plants, extraction of genetic material and tourism.

(b) Indirect use values: values arising from various forest services such as protection of watersheds and the storage of carbon.

(c) Option values: values reflecting a willingness to pay to conserve the option of making use of the forest even though no current use is made of it

(d) Non-use values (also known as existence or passive-use values): these values reflect a willingness to pay for the forest in a conserved or sustainable use state, but the willingness to pay is unrelated to current or planned use of the forest.

There are other notions of value, for example, moral or ethical value, spiritual and religious value and cultural value. Moral and ethical values tend to relate to 'intrinsic' qualities of the forest and are generally not subject to quantification. The same is true of spiritual and religious values whereby forests embody characteristics venerated by individuals and communities. There are, however, links between these notions of value and economic value. In particular, non-use values are known to reflect many different motivations, motivations that include the individual's concern for intrinsic values. But notions of value based on intrinsic qualities are different to economic values in that the latter are always 'relational', i.e. they derive from human concerns and preferences and are therefore, values conferred by human beings.

2. Stakeholders and Forest Values

An important feature of Table 7 is that forest conversion values can accrue to local communities (e.g. shifting agriculture) but that such practices are increasingly unsustainable as less open access forest is available. The effect of the 'diminishing frontier' is that fallow plots are revisited before regeneration has fully occurred, so that second and third round crop production takes place on increasingly 'mined' soils. Indigenous peoples and local communities may benefit at least in the short term from other conversion activities, e.g. employment from logging operations. Often, however, the converted land use involves ownership by other agencies, e.g. national or regional government and larger corporations, with the effect of displacing local communities. For indigenous peoples this can also create dependence on the monetary economy and trigger far-reaching social and cultural disruption, without opportunities for earning money.

Table 7 also shows that local communities already benefit substantially from forest goods and services. In particular, fuelwood and other NTFPs can account for a substantial fraction of local community income. Communities could benefit further from the monetization of carbon storage and sequestration flows through private carbon trades and/or trades as envisaged in the flexibility mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol. The same is true of market creation in watershed protection benefits, as shown in Costa Rica's Forest Law of 1996, and in the formalisation of intellectual property rights in genetic information under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Local communities might therefore be beneficiaries of processes designed to appropriate the benefits from forest non-market values. [Check comments]. The inverse of this proposition is also true - they are likely to be the major losers from processes that continue to convert forest land. However, there are many potential negative impacts with these flexibility mechanisms, such as displacement of indigenous peoples and local communities from their lands, forest destruction, denial of land and land use rights, commercialization and monetization without corresponding development opportunities.

Development of a CBD action plan for FBD should include a thorough stakeholder analysis at global level, in order to ensure that the interests and potential contributions of different key groups and organizations are appropriately and fully taken into account.