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In this chapter the authors present the potential contribution that forest products can make to rural development. The production and marketing of forest products is an important source of rural employment and income. Benefits often extend beyond the forest area itself, as the products move from production to end use through different stages of processing and marketing. The basic concepts of value chain analysis and social accounting matrices are introduced in the chapter, and their relevance and application in understanding and harnessing the employment and income potential of forest product value chains for rural development discussed.

The interconnectivity among various business entities and physical functions of woody biomass supply chains requires a system-wide perspective. Extant studies largely focus on individual business units or sets of activities. This paper takes a supply chain perspective to gain an understanding of potential woody biomass supply chains. The study draws insights from an extensive review of literature to conceptualize potential woody biomass supply chain scenarios. Three woody biomass supply chain scenarios and associated logistics activities were defined from the analysis of literature content. They are woody biomass sourcing from forest product manufacturers, forest landowners, and biomass pre-processers. Findings suggest that woody biomass as a marketable commodity creates business opportunities for loggers and forest product manufacturers. In moving forward, infrastructure and technological development is vital, encompassing logging capability and transportation and industrial infrastructure.

Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) were hailed as a “silver bullet” to provide the economic incentives to conserve standing forests while contributing to local livelihoods. While the livelihood benefits of NTFPs have been widely acknowledged, the contribution of the NTFP sector to biodiversity conservation is less certain. Despite increasing skepticism of the ability of NTFPs to contribute to conservation, their promotion and development remains a readily implemented tool for many site level conservation projects. However, this chapter dispels certain assumptions related to NTFP sustainability and the links between NTFP extraction systems and conservation. We conclude that the links are generally tenuous to say the least and suggest that perceptions of the relative value of NTFPs in terms of biodiversity conservation need to be revised.

Millions of rural and urban dwellers across the world make use of a wide diversity of forest products to fulfill several livelihood requirements, from direct household provisioning to cash income, cultural needs, and as a fall back in times of emergency or a means to income diversification. All these roles are significant, and often NTFPs perform multiple functions simultaneously. Valuing NTFPs therefore requires a holistic perspective that considers these products in relation to multiple livelihood strategies, and within particular contextual settings. The context within which people operate has major implications for the perceived importance and value of NTFPs. Chapter 3 deals with these issues, drawing on data from several countries to illustrate the benefits NTFPs bring to different types of households and how such forest products perform an important function in reducing vulnerability and ameliorating poverty.

Many individual non-timber forest products (NTFPs) were historically mainstream trade commodities, but their diminished importance in international trade after World War II meant that they become almost invisible in forest statistics, management, and policy. They were rediscovered as a category in the late 1980s, provoking high hopes by many, suspicion by some, and a new research agenda on their potential role in the sustainable development of tropical forest regions. This was followed by general disenchantment with NTFPs that dominated the literature and policy discussion at the turn of the century, which in turn gave way to today’s more nuanced understanding and policy recommendations, as described in many chapters of this book. We identify four themes in recent literature that serve as guideposts to a realistic and moderate assessment of NTFPs (1) centrality of culture and tradition, (2) local and regional markets, (3) value of diversity in and of itself, and (4) continuum of forest management.

The preceding discussions have dealt with basic biophysical processes associated with forests and the global carbon (C) cycle, and the technical feasibilities of intervening in those processes so that forests play a stronger role in sequestering C from the atmosphere. Such discussions are a vital component of a full understanding of how humanity might mitigate what we shall call the C problem—what will it take to manage and use forests to lessen climatic change due to increasing atmospheric CO2? Any meaningful answer requires that we put the technical possibilities into the social, economic, institutional and political contexts within which all human endeavour takes place. Are these contexts—current and future— facilitative of strong implementation of the technically feasible actions, or will they pose constraints? If the latter, what will it take to remove the barriers?

This chapter reports on the effects of Western European novel forest damage on the Finnish forest sector. A model revised from the global forest sector model developed at IIASA (International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis) is used in the analysis. Five different air pollution scenarios are compared to a base case scenario with no forest damage. The main result of the analysis is that impacts in the forest sector as a whole are slow and the market mechanism efficiently smoothens the impact of changes in timber supply caused by forest damage. Except in the case of really catastrophic and widespread forest dieback, harvests and forest industry production in Finland are affected only to a minor extent. Indirect linkages of international forest product markets may, however, cause unexpected long-term impacts.

Forestry is a performance of service. The profession of “forester” hence was born only in societies which needed this service, because they started lacking either forest products or forests, in this order. The production of wood and other forest products in many places and at many times was the business of farmers. The Roman Empire and its human society were great forest destroyers. Wood served to yield energy for energy-devouring installations, such as the public baths (thermae), central heating in villas, or bakeries. The construction of fleets and the war industry in general (bows and arrows; lances; clubs; fortifications and camps) required much wood of a high quality. The solution for growing wood, however, was not found in the planting or conserving of forests, but mainly in planting hedges and coppice on farms (Piussi pers. commun. 1983). Problems in regreening the much-polluted Roman cities were solved by planting plane trees (Platanus orientalis), which still are known to be very resistant, also to 20th-century chemical pollution, but which now are dying back from an introduced pest.

In the area of wood products protection one of the greatest challenges facing the pathologist is not the discovery of new knowledge but the dissemination of existing knowledge. The fact that billions of dollars are spent every year repairing or replacing wood damaged by fungi bears strong witness to this, particularly when relatively cheap and effective methods are available for preventing decay.