تنظیم درآمد اقتصاد کلان و حفاظت از جنگل های گرمسیری: تجزیه و تحلیل تعادل عمومی مالزی

This article examines the loss in “metered” aggregate income that could occur if Malaysia surrendered the lumber value of its tropical forest resources to nonlumber uses. We estimate these losses under a variety of assumptions about what “business as usual” and “conservation” might entail. We also consider the sensitivity of income losses to variations in our model's parameter values and to some of its maintained hypothesis. In a context where lumber's initial contribution to aggregate income is around 2 percent, we estimate that a switch from lumber to nonlumber uses of tropical forests could cost up to 4 percent of baseline income. Of broader significance is the implication that the associated dynamic general equilibrium multipliers are consistently greater than unity, and often close to two in value. These large income multipliers are observed despite an assumed recovery of income through the reallocation of mobile factors initially employed in lumber activities, and an increase in returns to capital. In this study, a terms of trade deterioration, prompted by the loss of lumber foreign exchange revenue, accounts for about one-half of the total income losses we observe. For economies that rely to a greater extent than Malaysia on lumber foreign exchange revenue, these terms of trade-induced losses could be more important still. From a policy perspective, our results provide a benchmark against which the contingent valuations and other imputations of the monetary value of nonlumber use values of tropical forests may be gauged.

Policies that seek to correct environmental externalities raise distributional tensions not only within countries but also sometimes between them. Where a nation owns resources that others regard as part of the global commons, it could be compensated for exporting that part of any conservation benefit stream not captured locally. This principle has appeal, and may be a political precondition for conservation, where the resource economy is “poor” and other countries are “rich.” While disagreement about environmental cost–benefit calculus is likely to be commonplace, partly because of uncertainty about the associated science (Cline, 1991), the economic principles that might govern compensation are clearer. The costs borne by a nation that conserves a global resource will be bounded from above by the sacrifice of consumption that conservation entails. The actual costs will almost certainly be less than this ceiling, because some residents of the resource-owning economy will benefit from conservation. The minimum other nations should be prepared to pay for conservation is what it would cost them to secure equivalent net benefits by alternative means. In this paper, we attempt to measure the loss of “metered”1 income that could occur when an economy surrenders the lumber value of its forests to nonlumber uses. We estimate these costs for Malaysia, one of the world's largest producers of tropical lumber products. However, our analysis, which is largely counterfactual in nature, has more general applicability. We find that the indirect income loss entailed by a switch of forest resources to nonlumber uses dominates the direct loss, and that the associated general equilibrium income multiplier is greater than one. In this study, a terms of trade deterioration triggered by a loss of lumber foreign exchange revenue has a large adverse effect on household real income. In principle, there is no difficulty in weighing these income losses against the environmental benefits that conservation would secure. But, in practice, there are formidable measurement problems. Many of the markets in nonlumber uses of forests (e.g., biodiversity) are largely missing, and obtaining reliable estimates of existence and option values is problematic. While contingent valuation and other methods of imputation promise some progress in the assignment of monetary values to conservation benefits, these exercises are costly, and not without their limitations.2 For these reasons, we do not attempt to measure those offsetting conservation benefits that would accrue to Malaysian residents, nor do we measure those benefits whose incidence might be more widely felt. In the next section of the paper, we describe the contribution of lumber resources to Malaysian economic development. In Section 3, we motivate our approach to the analysis of forest conservation, and describe the main features of the general equilibrium framework that we use in our calculations. We explain the design of our stimulations in Section 4. Section 5 discusses the main results of our paper, and tests their sensitivity to key assumptions. The concluding section briefly considers some of the policy issues raised by our analysis.

In this paper we have estimated the loss in “metered income” that Malaysia might experience if it conserved its tropical forest resources. Because no account has been taken of the possible benefits of conservation that arise through the increase in the nonlumber value of trees preserved, our estimates should not be interpreted as net costs, nor should they be identified with prospective changes in “welfare.” Our principal findings are summarized in Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3, and the results of our sensitivity analyses in Table 4 and Table 5. For a given conservation policy, “metered” income losses are smallest if mobile resources are efficiently and quickly reallocated, foreign exchange revenues are resilient to the loss of lumber output, and “business as usual” would have entailed fast deforestation. However, even under these conditions, a 10-year moratorium on lumber harvesting and associated land use restrictions could easily generate income losses of over 2 percent of the capitalized stream of GDI. A more probable estimate of the income losses would be between 3 to 4 percent of GDI. Of more general significance are the large values of the dynamic general equilibrium income multipliers that these numbers reflect. Where lumber makes a significant contribution to foreign exchange earnings and these are adversely affected by conservation, direct income losses are amplified by terms of trade losses that more than outweigh the income, which is recovered as mobile factors are reallocated, and profits rise. To facilitate the calculation of the compensating variation we have assumed that Malaysian residents are directly compensated by nonresidents by an amount sufficient to maintain their preconservation consumption stream. In reality, arrangements like this would be impractical. Therefore, in concluding, it is worth briefly considering mechanisms through which the delivery of environmental benefits could be tied to compensating resource transfers. “Debt for nature swaps” are one way in which resource transfers have been linked to environmental rehabilitation and protection programs. However, “debt for nature swaps” have typically relied on the resources of nongovernment organizations and, in practice, have only involved small projects and resource transfers. It seems unlikely that such arrangements could work for large areas of forest, and large debt write offs. Coordination problems and the risk of moral hazard would be just two obstacles that would prevent “debt for nature swaps” working at a macro scale. Another route through which widely shared environmental concerns, including tropical deforestation, could be addressed is through the establishment of an appropriate multilateral structural adjustment facility. However, the scale on which such a facility would have to be funded makes this unlikely.32 Perhaps, more realistically, trade policy could be used to encourage sustainable forest management and pricing practices. However, a carrot rather than a stick approach is required (see Repetto, 1994). Impeding trade in tropical lumber (e.g., through boycotts, quotas or tariffs) would depress stumpage values, and thereby hasten deforestation. Besides, such actions would probably now contravene WTO rules. On the other hand, arrangements linking tropical forest conservation to improved market access for both the processed and manufactured goods of tropical lumber nations would be both environmentally beneficial and trade creating.33Government Press. 1990 and Repetto Gillis 1988