Valuing forest services missing from the national accounts: The contribution of cultivated forests to wealth accumulation in Swaziland

The present study developed and used a forest resource accounting framework to correct wealth measures and indicators of economic performance derived from the SNA in Swaziland for the true contribution of plantation forests. The study revealed that the economic importance of plantation forestry and its contribution to wealth accumulation in Swaziland is highly underestimated and hence current measures of sustainable growth are seriously distorted. The study showed that accounting only for net accumulation of timber and carbon stocks in plantation forests improves measures of genuine savings for the country by 112%, which was about 7.9% of the country's GDP. Although the study does not account for the many other omissions of environmental values of forests and other natural resources, it demonstrates the substantial magnitude of error in signals to policy making and sustainable development planning conveyed by conventional measures of economic performance derived from the current SNA and illustrates the importance of environmental accounting for prudent use of natural and environmental resources for economic development.