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Return
Return on investment applications in forest management and landscape restoration: current practices and future directions
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DOI：10.3389/ffgc.2026.1746687.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Maintaining and promoting forest ecosystem health and landscape management is a global challenge; given the social; ecological; and economic value of forests; the threats that they face from climate change and other stressors; and the substantial funding gap relative to the need to accomplish management objectives. The practice of calculating an economic Return on Investment (ROI) in business applications has migrated to conservation and land management planning as a means of informing and improving the positive impact of investments on forested landscapes. Forest management yields a large and complex array of benefits; each with its own spatial and temporal extent; with many being challenging to monetize. Standard ROI applications; although currently being used to represent monetizable costs and benefits of public land management options; can fall far short of representing the full suite of important; and in some cases irreplaceable; values associated with forested ecosystems. We present and discuss a conceptual framework of six key topics in ROI applications to forest management that merit attention: (1) the overarching challenge of bias from excluded benefit categories; (2) navigating uncertainty related to ROI components; (3) accounting for risk; (4) reconciling economic discounting and environmental improvement; (5) common pitfalls in summing up of benefits; and (6) the relationship between ROI and socio-ecological sustainability. Further development of mechanisms to address the complexities inherent in forest ecosystems; and to quantify and represent their diverse and substantial values would greatly enhance incentives for conservation finance and expedite forest conservation and restoration outcomes.
Keywords:
sustainability
resilience
ecosystem services
benefit calculation
conservation finance
environmental markets
public land management
Journal
F
IF:
3.2
Papers:
373
Citations:
4.0K
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Cited Papers