And the Beat Goes On

LETTERS And the Beat Goes On Rene Noel Jr., ACF North Windham, ME 202 Journal of Forestry • March 2015 perhaps understandable. The readers of the Journal of Forestry should know, however, that private landowner responses to increased demand for wood are far more important to carbon outcomes than suggested by the Ter-Mikaelian et al. (2015) paper, especially in places like the United States where most industrial roundwood comes from private land. We are also concerned that a number of accounting options are dismissed by the authors without considering the range of applications for carbon accounting. In this context, the authors accuse us of erroneously suggest[ing] [in NCASI 2013] that the consequential LCA approach is appropriate only for large-scale evaluations of forest carbon policies. This is not what NCASI (2013) says. Instead, in that report we make a more nuanced point. NCASI (2013) agrees with Ter-Mikaelian et al. (2015) in suggesting that when the objective is to understand the carbon implications of pursuing a new policy (e.g., a policy that increases demand for wood) compared to a counterfactual (e.g., business as usual demand) a consequential framework is used. In NCASI (2013), we go on to suggest that policymakers need to be aware of the uncertainties inherent in consequential assessments and because some of these uncertainties are reduced by using large spatial boundaries, we observe that “addressing these considerations will normally dictate that the spatial scale of the assessment be as large as possible.” It is important to note that we are not alone in suggesting that policymakers need to take a broad view of the uncertainties and implications of different accounting approaches when implementing policies on forest carbon. Regarding baselines, for instance, Buchholz et al. (2014) studied the practical impacts of several forest carbon baseline approaches and found that [g]iven the challenges in predicting the future status of forest resources, anticipated future baselines might be best suited for planning and policy development, while constant reference baselines might be more appropriate for monitoring and regulatory frameworks. The need to consider the intended application for carbon accounting is echoed in I’ve enjoyed Dr. Coufal’s writing over the years and compliment him on his ability to make me think. I believe there are a couple of reasons that Coufal does not address in his Nov. 2014 article about why the public confuses “foresters, loggers, and other timber beasts” (“And the Beat Goes On,” Journal of Forestry 112(6):607– 610). There are some small sections of the profession which clearly state to whom their member foresters owe fiduciary duty. To members of the Association of Consulting Foresters, they are clearly their clients’ fiduciaries. For members of the Forest Guild, it is “The Land.” However, neither most individual foresters nor the profession as represented by the Society of American Foresters (SAF), identify well to whom they owe a fiduciary duty. The result is the public perception of foresters who are trying to serve several masters and are not sure of who or what they are. In my opinion, SAF’s writings read more like we are trying to avoid offending anyone, rather than identifying the high ground. This contributes to many in our profession accepting what brokers working in financial markets described as suitability rather than fiduciary. There is a gulf of difference between the two. Additionally, there are many in the timber industry who are content with, or even promote, the public’s confusion between foresters, loggers, and timber beasts. I long ago lost count of landowners who have said that timber buyers told them, “You don’t need to hire a forester. We or our loggers have worked in the woods a long time and know which trees need to be cut.” This usually comes complete with the offer to pay a “fair” price. When members of the landowning public are regularly told that timber harvesters can do a forester’s job, we have a problem. There are many good, ethical timber buyers in the world and then there are the others. When we associate with or become one of those others, we have a problem. Forest Carbon Accounting The paper “The Burning Question: Does Forest Bioenergy Reduce Carbon Emissions? A Review of Common Misconceptions about Forest Carbon Accounting” (Ter-Mikaelian et al. 2015) summarizes a number of important issues faced when attempting to understand the impacts of using forest biomass for energy. The review would have benefited, however, from additional discussion of two of the primary causes for the current confusion about forest carbon accounting: (1) a lack of attention to landowner responses in the face of increased demand, and (2) a tendency to promote a one-size-fits-all approach to forest carbon accounting when, in reality, there are many different applications for forest carbon accounting and the accounting approach must be aligned with the specific technical, policy, legal, and practical considerations associated with each application. The evidence on the importance of landowner responses to forest carbon accounting is overwhelming, particularly in the case of private landowners. Where land use is managed within a framework of good governance and the rule of law, private landowners usually react to increased demand in ways that help offset the carbon impacts of increased harvesting. This occurs because, with increasing demand, landowners have incentives to produce more wood, resulting in more land remaining in forests and forests being managed more productively. The specific benefits of these activities depend on many things including forest growth rates, the magnitude and rate of increase in new demand, and the type and timing of landowner responses. While the benefits vary, both empirical studies of land use (e.g., see Hardie et al. 2000, Lubowski et al. 2008) and modeling studies (e.g., see Abt et al. 2012, Daigneault et al. 2012, USDA 2012, Wear and Greis 2012) show that when calculating the carbon impacts of using wood from private forestland it is essential to consider the response of landowners to the increased demand for wood. Given the Canadian authorship of this paper and the small role of private landowners in producing wood in Canada, the modest attention to private landowner responses in the article is  (...truncated)