Background
...
1. The conference „New Frontiers of Forest Economics“ (neFFE)
The goal of the conference is to continue the work on forest economics for the 21st century that started in 2012 at ETH Zurich (Switzerland).
For the realization of this goal we seek to widen the angle of view on what forest economists “should” do. That means first and foremost, scientific progress needs a never-ending development of new and venturous theories for solving problems, and second, scientific progress needs strong attempts to refute, critically assess and test empirically the new theories.
After identifying possible future directions of forest economics at the inaugural 2012 Zurich conference, the second conference in Beijing, China in 2015 focused on analyses beyond the perfectly competitive commodity markets. The third international neFFE conference was held in 2018 at Vancouver, Canada. The participants in this conference dealt with the evolving political economy of multiple values and multiple stakeholders in relation to the governance of our forests.
The fourth international neFFE conference will be held in Dresden, Germany, on September 25-27, 2023. At this conference we will study entrepreneurship in forestry. Among other things, prospective topics will comprise innovation, uncertainty, responsibility and profit. We would like to invite all interested parties to attend the conference.
2. Key features of the conference
The key features of the conference are:
- The number of participants will be restricted to approximately 30,
Only 12 papers will be orally presented and these papers will include 2 papers by invited keynote speakers, - Each oral presentation will be allocated 1.5 hours including comments from two discussants. The time allocation will be: 30 minutes for the author for initial presentation; 15 minutes each for the two discussants, and 30 minutes for discussion by other participants,
- Each participant of the conference will be required to be a discussant for one paper.
3. Entrepreneurship in forestry
Forestry is always in a constant state of flux. It is mostly not in a state of economic equilibrium.
Oftentimes, forestry practitioners assume that these many changes are induced by exogenous phenomena such as climate change, extreme weather events and population growth. This is obviously true. However, forestry also changes because of entrepreneurial action. Humans always and continuously discover new means and new ends and realize these discoveries.
Entrepreneurs see new opportunities which others may not recognize or fail to grasp. During the last few decades the world’s forestry sector was full of new attempts and accomplishments. For example, at the beginning of the 1990s harvesters and forwarders became ripe and were introduced numerously. Another result of entrepreneurial action was the move of timber production forestry in the United States from the Pacific Northwest to the Southern US during the second part of the twentieth century.
A third example of entrepreneurial action is the formation of timberland investment management organizations and of timberland real estate investment trusts in the US which was the discovery of new types of organization. In 2010 nearly 10% of timberland and about 26% of planted forest in the 11 southern states of the US were owned by these two types of organizations. Fourth, there are many examples of entrepreneurships in markets for ecosystem services, such as biodiversity, carbon, ecotourism, nature conservation, and watershed management. Finally, in the last decade there has been a rapid rise of socially and environmentally responsible enterprises driven by the values and preferences of Generation – Y(Millennials) and Generation-Z.
In summary, forestry is full of entrepreneurial actions and the scope of these actions is changing rapidly.
The constant state of flux in forestry is not only induced by new discoveries, but also the result of the competition between the new and the old. For example, the harvester-forwarder technology obsolated the age-old chain-saw technology and destroyed the traditional labor market in forestry. The new technologies disrupted the plans of many forest owners and lumbermen. They also forced all forestry entities to adjust their old plans and look for improvements. Similarly, entrepreneurship in ecosystems services has attracted new players and added new perspectives while Generation-Z is driving the transformation of the concept of entrepreneurship by the dimension of social and environmental responsibility.
The success of the entrepreneurial action cannot be taken for granted automatically. It is dependent on the correctness of the anticipation of the future events. These anticipations are uncertain. Therefore, while some entrepreneurs will succeed, earn a profit and make an impact of our wellbeing others will fail, suffer losses and close.
As we can see, entrepreneurship is essential in the course of forestry. However, academics and practitioners understand very little about the fallacies and fortunes of forestry entrepreneurship. The fourth conference of “New Frontiers of Forest Economics” will aim to contribute to enhancing our understanding.