This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Forests provide timber as well as many other ecosystem services. An important question is how measures to conserve biodiversity affect the profitability of forest operations focused on wood production.
Researchers from Wageningen University & Research and the University of Freiburg reviewed studies worldwide that compared forest management with biodiversity conservation measures against business-as-usual management without those measures. The work is published in the journal Current Forestry Reports. Of 5,305 publications initially identified, 53 studies met the review criteria.
Together, they contained 814 scenarios involving measures such as harvesting trees later, retaining habitat trees and deadwood, and increasing tree species diversity. In 41 of the 53 studies, the average financial effect of biodiversity measures was negative compared with business as usual; in 12, it was positive. Across all studies, calculated profitability was about 5% lower on average.
An important difference emerges, however, when studies account not only for costs but also for the financial benefits associated with biodiversity. These may include the potential insurance value of more diverse forests under climate change, lower operational costs from less intensive management, higher-quality timber or additional income through payments for ecosystem services. In scenarios where such benefits were included, calculated profitability was almost 20% higher on average than under business as usual.
In scenarios where no financial benefits were attributed to biodiversity, it was more than 20% lower. This is a striking outcome of the study. The profitability of biodiversity measures also depends on the conservation measure, forest type and assumptions about factors such as timber prices, climate change and future disturbances.
The study's first author, Lorenz Schimetka, notes, "Increasing biodiversity can help mitigate the effects of climate change in forests—what we call the 'insurance value' of biodiversity in the face of an uncertain future. Yet quantifying the benefits of conservation in monetary terms is challenging and hence was not done in many studies. This, however, leads to a systematic negative bias against the profitability of biodiversity measures in those studies." The assumptions we make are therefore decisive.
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