Lidberg, William
- Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Research article2024Peer reviewedOpen access
Riparian buffer zones in production forests create unequal costs among forest owners
Bakx, Tristan R. M.; Akselsson, Cecilia; Droste, Nils; Lidberg, William; Trubins, Renats
Abstract
Riparian buffer zones (RBZs) are an important instrument for environmental policies for water and biodiversity protection in managed forests. We investigate the variation of the cost of implementing RBZs within different property size classes across the size range of non-industrial forest owner properties in Southern Sweden. Using the Heureka PlanWise decision support system, we quantified the cost of setting aside RBZs or applying alternative management in them, as the relative loss of harvest volume and of net present value per property. We did this for multiple simulated as well as real-world property distributions. The variation of cost distribution among small properties was 4.2-6.9 times higher than among large properties. The interproperty cost inequality decreased non-linearly with increasing property size and levelled off from around 200 ha. We conclude that RBZs, due to the irregular distribution of streams, cause highly unequal financial consequences for owners, with some small property owners bearing a disproportionally high cost. This adds to previous studies showing how environmental considerations differentially affect property owners. We recommend decision makers to stimulate the uptake of RBZs by alleviating these inequalities between forest owners by including appropriate cost sharing or compensation mechanisms in their design.
Keywords
Forest management; Riparian buffer zone; Property size; Distributional fairness; Forest policy
Published in
European Journal of Forest Research
2024, volume: 143, number: 3, pages: 1035-1046
Publisher: SPRINGER
SLU Authors
Trubins, Renats
- Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Associated SLU-program
SLU Forest Damage Center
Global goals (SDG)
SDG10 Reduced inequalities
SDG15 Life on land
UKÄ Subject classification
Forest Science
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-024-01657-1
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/140706