Dana Coelho

The business of managing private forestland is changing. Globalization of markets, broad economic forces, government regulations and ecological stresses (such as fire and climate change) have completely altered the operating environment for forest landowners seeking to manage their land. Large multinational timber companies are able to achieve the financial efficiencies to deal with global-scale market forces, but smaller operators have few tools to help them adjust to the increasing complexity. A new business model within a new policy framework is needed to address the needs of private forest landowners, as well as those of the local, state and federal agencies and environmental organizations who offer financial and technical assistance. In the interest of helping members of the forestry community "retool" to allow them to continue managing their forests without relying solely on traditional timber harvest models, the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition (WFLC) convened ...

As science continues to bring clarity to present and future global climate change, policymakers are beginning to respond in earnest and proposing policies that aim to curb greenhouse gas emissions and help society adapt to the impending impacts triggered by ...

A general systems analysis of current approaches to payments for ecosystem services reveals a weakness, a missing feedback that ought to be in place pushing the system toward its goal of balancing human needs with the adaptive capacity of ecosystems. In situations of rising demand for ecosystem services, among limited means for producing them, the likelihood that payment systems effectively shift, but do not preclude ecosystem service losses is high. We propose that explicit price or information signals to ecosystem services consumers would create the necessary feedback, thereby “closing the loop”, and increasing the likelihood that efforts to stem declines in ecosystem services will succeed. To date, attention for this feedback loop has been more casual, than concerted. As a result, PES systems have perhaps left unharnessed the full range of opportunities to reduce the growing defi cit between rates of ecosystem service supply and the rate that society utilizes (and in many cases, ...

A general systems analysis of current approaches to payments for ecosystem services reveals a weakness, a missing feedback that ought to be in place push- ing the system toward its goal of balancing human needs with the adaptive ca- pacity of ecosystems. In situations of rising demand for ecosystem services, among limited means for producing them, the likelihood that payment