Forest Roads Economics

Analysis of the economic impact of forest road rehabilitation

introduction

Under the Forestry Development Project a total of 22 road rehabilitation projects were undertaken repairing approximately 220 Kilometers of forest roads. At the time of ICRR preparation, data had been collected for 15 of the 22 road projects, the remaining roads still being finalized. The road projects for there are data are summarized below in Table 1.

Table 1 Roads Rehabilitated Under By the Forestry Development Project

[pic]

The roads have been rehabilitated for a number of economic benefits:

• To reduce the costs of harvesting (by reducing the tractor extraction distance and increasing the accessibility by timber trucks);

• To increase the accessibility to parts of the resource which would otherwise be inaccessible to harvesting at all;

• To reduce the environmental damage caused by poorly maintained roads (through clogged drains leading to localized flooding and erosion) and by utilizing poorly maintained roads, which frequently results in trucks and tractors driving through stream beds; and,

• To increase the accessibility for other forest and non forest resources such as mushrooms, berries, honey and upland pasture.

This annex tries to assess the economic impact of the first two bullet points. There are insufficient data to assess the other benefits. The reduced costs of harvesting are demonstrated by comparing the auction prices for standing timber immediately before and after the rehabilitation of the road. In all cases where the data are available the auction price increased. Increased prices can be expected due to the decreased costs for the harvesting companies. Where the NFA sold the timber at roadside their own harvesting costs decreased, leading to a benefit attributable to the road rehabilitation. Increased access to the resource is demonstrated by increased harvesting levels after the road rehabilitation was completed....