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Tropical deforestation continues at a very alarming rate. Certain forms of deforestation are economically desirable, but economic criteria alone are not sufficient for deciding whether a deforestation project is desirable. Previous studies on deforestation mechanisms are grouped into four general categories, i.e. Neo‐Malthusian, government‐failure, microeconomic and macroeconomic approaches. The Neo‐Malthusian approach sees population pressure as the underlying cause of tropical deforestation. The government‐failure approach looks at misdirected policies that result in unintended deforestation and government’s inability to preclude preventable deforestation. The microeconomic approach examines how, under various forms of market failure, an agent’s economic behaviours can lead to deforestation. The macroeconomic approach explores the possible links between debt and deforestation. We also present micro‐level evidence of a case where deforestation can be associated with farmers’ capital accumulation behaviour, and poverty is a deterrent to, not a cause of, deforestation.

Single-family houses in Vancouver that were built prior to 1940 are a cache of wood from British Columbia (BC) old-growth forests. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the environmental and heritage values of maintaining this finite resource, assess the current policy and regulatory efforts of the City of Vancouver to save this resource and recommend further opportunities to improve and expedite these efforts.

Using the City of Vancouver as a case study, this paper identifies effective policy practices to encourage and facilitate salvaging and reusing old wood resources. Additionally, the paper discusses the key challenges and risks that need to be addressed for these policy approaches to succeed.

Pre-1940 houses constitute about 40 percent of single-family houses that have been demolished in Vancouver in the past few years. The City of Vancouver enacted the Green Demolition Bylaw in 2014 requiring a minimum of 75 percent diversion of demolition waste. However, wood from these houses has been mainly chipped and recycled as biomass fuel or landscape mulch rather than reused. The result shows that regulatory enforcement along with support for infrastructure development may be crucial to protect the remainder of this valuable heritage resource.

This paper considers the environmental and heritage values of wood elements used in old houses and recommends further policy and regulatory interventions to maximize wood salvaging and reuse. Since protecting entire houses may not be always feasible, retention of wood elements is proposed as an alternative path for maintaining and cherishing this ancient and irreplaceable heritage.

The recent impasse over federal forest management in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States has been a living laboratory of conflict and its management, and provides the context for this case study. While most of the media attention has been focused on regional or national events such as President Clinton's Forest Conference of April 1993, a larger number of localized conflicts have shaped the controversy at the grassroots level. This case study focuses on a pivotal meeting in one such conflict: the Shasta Costa planning process. Outside intervenors mediated the meeting, and USDA Forest Service personnel, timber industry representatives, and environmentalists participated Participant observation and a supplemental survey led to the following conclusions: (1) measures of standing (the legal and social basis for legitimate participation) differed between the industry and environmental representatives, (2) reliance on science differed between groups, and (3) the process was not able to overcome a power imbalance. These findings suggest that there may be little hope for local dispute efforts if there is substantial policy uncertainty at the national level. Implications for managing forestry conflict in the region are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a measurable terrestrial ecosystem boundary to answer the question: what extent of landscapes, bioregions, continents, and the global Earth System must remain as connected and intact core ecological areas and agro-ecological buffers to sustain local and regional ecosystem services as well as the biosphere commons?

This observational study reviews planetary boundary, biosphere, climate, ecosystems, and ecological tipping point science. It presents a refinement to planetary boundary science to include a measurable terrestrial ecosystem boundary based on landscape ecology and percolation theory. The paper concludes with discussion of the urgency posed by ecosystem collapse.

A new planetary boundary threshold is proposed based on ecology's percolation theory: that across scales 60 percent of terrestrial ecosystems must remain, setting the boundary at 66 percent as a precaution, to maintain key biogeochemical processes that sustain the biosphere and for ecosystems to remain the context for human endeavors. Strict protection is proposed for 44 percent of global land, 22 percent as agro-ecological buffers, and 33 percent as zones of sustainable human use.

It is not possible to carry out controlled experiments on Earth's one biosphere, removing landscape connectivity to see long-term effects results upon ecological well-being.

Spatially explicit goals for the amount and connectivity of natural and agro-ecological ecosystems to maintain ecological connectivity across scales may help in planning land use, including protection and placement of ecological restoration activities.

This paper proposes the first measureable and spatially explicit terrestrial ecosystem loss threshold as part of planetary boundary science.

Circular economy is presented as an approach to economic growth that is in line with sustainable development. However, the recent literature has highlighted the limits of the concept in terms of environmental sustainability. The study examines the relationship between circular economy and conservation of ecosystems, using a case study on the implications of a circular economy for Slovak forests and forest sector.

This study adopts a qualitative methodology through a focused review of the relevant literature on circular economy and sustainable development and primary data gathered through semi-structured interviews with 15 experts and practitioners in the forest sector, forest conservation and circular economy context, both from within as well as outside of Slovakia.

The study finds that the forestry sector has an important role to play in a shift to a circular economy in Slovakia, with significant opportunities for improved efficiency as well as substitution of wood for non-renewable resources. There is also growing potential for ecosystem stewardship and restoration. However, the increased application of biomass could crowd out other needs, including for biodiversity. Safeguarding these services depends ultimately on good governance.

The study highlights that circular economy taken in a narrow focus on resource efficiency is insufficient to ensure environmental sustainability but rather needs to be set within the broader environmental and social context.

An important part of the Northwest Forest Plan was 1.2 billion dollars of community development assistance made available to northern California, Oregon, and Washington through the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative (NEAI). The NEAI developed a complex institutional structure to eliminate regional administrative gridlock and enable workers and families, businesses, communities, and tribes that depended on forest product-based economies to regain or improve their economic and social well-being. As part of an evaluation of NEAI that included 31 community case studies, institutional analysis gauged how the initiativeʼs institutional and organizational structure affected program implementation. This paper examines how the institutional analysis complemented the community case studies, the use of Schneider and Ingramʼs policy design framework as a tool for describing and assessing the initiativeʼs institutional design, and the lessons learned from the overall evaluation.

Findings from earlier legitimacy based accounting studies provide evidence that firms respond to threats to their perceived legitimacy by increasing communication to the public. This communication is meant to demonstrate that their actions are commensurate with the values and norms of relevant stakeholder groups. Questions remain, however, as to whether it is merely a form of impression management or a reflection of the congruent activities of the firm. In the late 1990s, a unique situation arose in British Columbia’s coastal forestry industry that enabled us to examine this issue. For many years, this industry had been the target of environmental non‐government organisations’ (ENGOs) campaigns to influence change in forest management practices and conserve the coastal rainforests. In late 1999, a subset of the industry responded by forming a coalition with key ENGOs. The aim of the coalition was to develop a consensus package of recommendations for the Government of B. C. founded on eco‐system based forest management practices. Facing threats to their critical export markets, the firms viewed this initiative as their best chance for long‐term survival. We found that during this period of time there was an increase in the amount of environmental disclosure in coalition firm annual reports as compared to pre‐ and post‐coalition periods, as well as to that in a matched set of non‐coalition B.C. forestry firms. This finding provides evidence of the use of annual reports for social disclosure beyond their use as a vehicle for impression management.

A study carried out by the Gateway supermarket chain and Landbank Environmental Consultancy partnership into environmental damage caused by the production, distribution and disposal of packaging materials produced a report providing Gateway′s packaging strategy for the 1990s. The report is summarised, identifying those packaging materials or systems which offer the clearest environmental benefits, noting the principal environmental problems associated with particular packaging materials, and setting a target for reducing energy consumption in their production. The principles of an environmental approach to packaging materials are also defined.

This article aims to compare the LiDAR handheld mobile laser scanner (HMLS) scans with traditional survey methods, as the tree gauge and the hypsometer, to study the efficiency of the new technology in relation to the accuracy of structural forest attributes estimation useful to support a sustainable forest management.

A case study was carried out in a high forest located in Tuscany (Italy), by considering 5 forest types, in 20 different survey plots. A comparative analysis between two survey methods will be shown in order to verify the potential limits and the viability of the LiDAR HMLS in the forest field.

This research demonstrates that LiDAR HMLS technology allows to obtain a large amount of valuable data on forest structural parameters in a short span of time with a high level of accuracy and with obvious impact in terms of organisational efficiency.

Findings could be useful for forest owners highlighting the importance of investing in science and technology to improve the overall efficiency of forest resources management.

This article adds to the current knowledge on the precision forestry topic by providing insight on the feasibility and effectiveness of using precision technologies for monitoring forest ecosystems and dynamics. In particular, this study fills the gap in the literature linked to the need to have practical examples of the use of innovative technologies in forestry.