Sustainable Forestry: Linking Economics and Management

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Economics, Policy, and Social Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2026 | Viewed by 415

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Forest Inventory and Management, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, University of Zagreb, Svetošimunska 23, Zagreb, Croatia
Interests: forest economics; environmental economics; capital budgeting; techniques for forestry

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Guest Editor
Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
Interests: natural resource economics; forest resource economics and management; uncertainty and risk
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In an era marked by deepening climate crises and mounting ecological pressures, forests are increasingly recognized as pivotal carbon sinks, biodiversity reservoirs, and providers of essential ecosystem services. However, leveraging their full potential requires an integrated understanding of both ecological function and economic value—particularly in light of evolving global carbon governance frameworks.

This Special Issue aims to explore how sustainable forest management can be aligned with economic instruments for climate change mitigation. The focus is on integrating forest-based carbon activities into existing and emerging carbon pricing mechanisms—such as Emissions Trading Systems (ETSs) and carbon taxes—as well as examining policy readiness in countries that have not yet adopted these instruments.

We invite contributions that address the following:

  1. The role of forests in compliance and voluntary carbon markets;
  2. Economic valuation of forest ecosystem services in carbon accounting;
  3. Comparative analysis of global ETSs and carbon tax systems;
  4. Governance challenges in integrating forests into climate finance frameworks;
  5. Design and implementation of incentive schemes for afforestation, reforestation, and conservation;
  6. Policy options and financial tools for countries without carbon pricing mechanisms.

This Special Issue invites original research and reviews at the intersection of sustainable forest management (SFM), economics, and climate mitigation. We aim to gather multidisciplinary contributions that analyze forests through the lens of emissions reduction policies, carbon pricing instruments, and forest-based climate solutions.

Dr. Karlo Beljan
Dr. Andres I. Susaeta
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • forest economics
  • carbon policy
  • land-use governance
  • international climate policy
  • carbon accounting
  • policy analysis
  • sustainable forest management (SFM)

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

20 pages, 1095 KB  
Article
The Problem of Enforcing Environmental Clauses in the EU–Mercosur Partnership Agreement in the Context of the Discrepancy in Deforestation Indices
by Igor Olech, Katarzyna Krupska and Katarzyna Kosior
Forests 2025, 16(12), 1821; https://doi.org/10.3390/f16121821 - 5 Dec 2025
Viewed by 222
Abstract
The EU–Mercosur Partnership Agreement (EMPA), whose ratification process started following the European Commission’s decision on 3 September 2025, is one of the EU’s most comprehensive trade agreements. From the outset, it raised serious concerns among environmental organizations about the risk of accelerating deforestation [...] Read more.
The EU–Mercosur Partnership Agreement (EMPA), whose ratification process started following the European Commission’s decision on 3 September 2025, is one of the EU’s most comprehensive trade agreements. From the outset, it raised serious concerns among environmental organizations about the risk of accelerating deforestation in the Amazon, potentially exacerbated by the liberalization of trade in agricultural products. This article analyzes the problem of enforcing the environmental provisions of the agreement in the context of deforestation. We argue that the effectiveness of these clauses is fundamentally undermined by two interrelated challenges: the limitations of the legal mechanisms enshrined in the agreement and the increasing ambiguity of data used to monitor deforestation. Using statistical analysis of time series (2002–2024)—including Student’s t-test for dependent samples, Spearman rank correlation, and trend regression models—the nature and trend of increasing divergence between two major indicators of deforestation, namely the official Brazilian PRODES and the Global Forest Watch (GFW), were quantified. The results show a systematic and statistically significant discrepancy between indicators, which has structurally widened since 2015. This fundamental ambiguity of data creates a serious “enforcement gap”, allowing us to challenge the scale of the violations and may, in practice, prevent the effective application of the environmental clauses of the agreement, undermining the EU’s policy objectives related to the EUDR and the Green Deal. The article also outlines institutional options to address this enforcement gap by strengthening the transparency, consistency, and evidentiary use of deforestation data in the implementation of the agreement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Forestry: Linking Economics and Management)
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