24,895 research outputs found
Optimal forest rotation age under efficient climate change mitigation
This paper considers the optimal rotation of forests when the carbon flows of
forest growth and harvest are priced with an increasing price. Such an
evolution of carbon price is generally associated with economically efficient
climate change mitigation, and would provide incentives for the land-owner for
enhanced carbon sequestration. With an infinitely long sequence of even-aged
forest rotations, the optimal harvest age changes with subsequent rotations due
to the changing carbon price. The first-order optimality conditions therefore
also involve an infinite chain of lengths for consecutive forest rotations, and
allow the approximation of the infinite-time problem with a truncated series of
forest rotations.
Illustrative numerical calculations show that when starting from bare land,
the initial carbon price and its growth rate both primarily increase the length
of the first rotation. With some combinations of the carbon pricing parameters,
the optimal harvest age can be several hundred years if the forest carbon is
released to the atmosphere upon harvest. This effect is not, however, entirely
monotonous. Consequently, the currently optimal harvest ages are generally
lower with higher rates of carbon price increase. This creates an interesting
temporal aspect, suggesting that the supply of wood and carbon sequestration by
forests can change considerably during subsequent rotations under an increasing
price on carbon.Comment: in Forest Policy and Economics, 201
Global governance approaches to addressing illegal logging: Uptake and lessons learned
One of the most challenging tasks facing development agencies, trade ministries, environmental groups, social activists and forest-focused business interests seeking to ameliorate illegal logging and related timber trade is to identify and nurture promising global governance interventions capable of helping improve compliance to governmental policies and laws at national, subnational and local levels. This question is especially acute for developing countries constrained by capacity challenges and “weak states” (Risse, 2011). This chapter seeks to shed light on this task by asking four related questions: How do we understand the emergence of illegal logging as a matter of global interest? What are the types of global interventions designed to improve domestic legal compliance? How have individual states responded to these global efforts? What are the prospects for future impacts and evolution?
We proceed in the following steps. Following this introduction, step two reviews how the problem of “illegal logging” emerged on the international agenda. Step three reviews leading policy interventions that resulted from this policy framing. Step four reviews developments in selected countries/regions around the world according to their place on the global forest products supply chain: consumers (United States, Europe and Australia); middle of supply chain manufacturers (China and South Korea) and producers (Russia; Indonesia; Brazil and Peru; Ghana, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo). We conclude by reflecting on key trends that emerge from this review relevant for understanding the conditions through which legality might make a difference in addressing critical challenges
An Investigation into Animating Plant Structures within Real-time Constraints
This paper is an analysis of current developments in rendering botanical structures for scientic and entertainment purposes with a focus on visualising growth. The choices of practical investigations produce a novel approach for parallel parsing of difficult bracketed L-Systems, based upon the work of Lipp, Wonka and Wimmer (2010). Alongside this is a general overview of the issues involved when looking at growing systems, technical details involving programming for the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and other possible solutions for further work that also could achieve the project's goals
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What Green Economy? Diverse agendas, their tensions and potential futures
The 'green economy' has become a prominent global concept for debating desirable futures, while recasting or marginalising ‘sustainable development’. The dominant agenda promotes state incentives for private-sector solutions through two parallel approaches: A techno-environmental Keynesian agenda attempts to stimulate eco-innovation which can become more resource-efficient and economically competitive. And a green markets agenda seeks to make natural resources more economically visible, as a basis to alleviate poverty.
Like sustainable development, green economy agendas claim to redress the socially unequal access to natural resources. These claims have been widely questioned, thus generating extra remedial proposals, opposition and alternative frameworks. The debate features diverse agendas for co-constructing ‘green’ with ‘economy’, especially for assigning economic value to natural resources or environmental burdens. Struggles over potential futures take the form of disputes over defining, allocating and valuing resources – i.e. what counts for a ‘green economy’
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