Three Essays on the Effectiveness of Voluntary Forest Certification.

Abstract

In Central Africa, finite contracts, weak local forest law, and poor monitoring erode incentives for firms to manage forests responsibly. In response, voluntary, independent certification of forest management practices has emerged as a policy tool. If firms choose to participate, in return for certified compliance with the standard they earn a price premium. Is voluntary forest certification effective at improving sustainable forest management? In this dissertation, I focus on Forest Stewardship Council’s Forest Management Certification (FSC) certification in Central Africa. I evaluate FSC effectiveness by investigating three questions. First, do FSC participants improve the environmental quality of their harvesting behavior? Second, does the net effect of FSC activities improve development outcomes for locals? And third, which forests participate in FSC and why? Do the highest priority forests participate?

To answer these questions, I use multiple data sets and identification strategies. The data range from primary data collected from Congolese households along a certified forest border to a national panel of timber outcomes in Cameroon to a regional biogeographical dataset spanning Gabon, Cameroon, and Congo. Across the three chapters, my dissertation finds FSC effectiveness to be compromised by three policy design features: a relative standard for harvesting practices, process indicators for a multidimensional standard, and voluntary selection into the policy.