Effects on the economy of a decrease in forest resources: An international comparison

Severe deforestation has prompted consensus among governments on the need to conserve and rehabilitate forest. As a consequence policy responses have been implemented to maintain and restore national forest stocks. However, forest protection programs and the political processes underlying them have initially given too limited attention to the related economic consequences. Conservationist policies often decrease the forest resources which means not only a decrease in the forest sector's output but also on the total economy. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate, through the consistency and flexibility of the Input-Output (I-O) approach, the potential contracting effect from a disruption of a supply of the forest resources on the rest of the economy. With this aim the I-O methodology is applied to several countries of the European Union (EU) where the forest sector takes on the most importance.