IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ise/isegwp/wp022018.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social risks of forest fires: a methodological proposal for their monetary evaluation

Author

Listed:
  • Isabel Mendes

Abstract

The risk of forest fire in Portugal ranks among the highest in Europe. In recent times, fears have risen over the incidence of major forest fires with a scale and dimension that generate extremely high economic, environmental and social costs. Combatting this type of fire represents a particularly difficult and expensive objective and, in some cases, with a far from desirable level of efficiency. Particularly due to the national context characterised by severe budgetary restrictions, guaranteeing greater effectiveness and efficiency in forest fire prevention and fighting represents core objectives. One of the ways of improving the decision making process involves the monetary estimation of the total costs caused by fires and their respective risk levels, thus the cost of the risk of fire (in the sense of the economic cost calculated from the perspective of society in contrast to the concept of economic cost calculated according to the private ownership perspective) and that includes the probability of the incidence of fire and its propagation and the total cost of the damage that incorporates both the specific social costs, the economic cost and the environmental cost. This working paper holds the objective of contributing towards the conceptual and methodological discussion around this theme.

Suggested Citation

  • Isabel Mendes, 2018. "Social risks of forest fires: a methodological proposal for their monetary evaluation," Working Papers Department of Economics 2018/02, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    • Handle: RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp022018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://depeco.iseg.ulisboa.pt/wp/wp022018.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nunez, Daisy & Nahuelhual, Laura & Oyarzun, Carlos, 2006. "Forests and water: The value of native temperate forests in supplying water for human consumption," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 606-616, June.
    2. Guo, Zhongwei & Xiao, Xiangming & Gan, Yaling & Zheng, Yuejun, 2001. "Ecosystem functions, services and their values - a case study in Xingshan County of China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 141-154, July.
    3. Charles D. Kolstad, 2000. "Spatial Environmental and Resource Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1918.
    4. Octavio Ramirez & Carlos Carpio & Rosalba Ortiz & Brian Finnegan, 2002. "Economic Value of the Carbon Sink Services of Tropical Secondary Forests and Its Management Implications," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 21(1), pages 23-46, January.
    5. Prestemon, Jeffrey P. & Abt, Karen L. & Barbour, R. James, 2012. "Quantifying the net economic benefits of mechanical wildfire hazard treatments on timberlands of the western United States," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 44-53.
    6. Baumol,William J. & Oates,Wallace E., 1988. "The Theory of Environmental Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521322249, October.
    7. Richardson, Leslie A. & Champ, Patricia A. & Loomis, John B., 2012. "The hidden cost of wildfires: Economic valuation of health effects of wildfire smoke exposure in Southern California," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 14-35.
    8. EEPSEA & World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), 1998. "The Indonesian Fires and Haze of 1997: The Economic Toll," EEPSEA Research Report rr1998051, Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA), revised May 1998.
    9. Mercer, D. Evan & Prestemon, Jeffrey P., 2005. "Comparing production function models for wildfire risk analysis in the wildland-urban interface," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(5), pages 782-795, August.
    10. Riera, Pere & Mogas, Joan, 2004. "Evaluation of a risk reduction in forest fires in a Mediterranean region," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(6), pages 521-528, October.
    11. Abildtrup, Jens & Strange, Niels, 2000. "The option value of non-contaminated forest watersheds," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 115-125, August.
    12. Mendes, Isabel, 2010. "A theoretical economic model for choosing efficient wildfire suppression strategies," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(5), pages 323-329, June.
    13. Lykke E. Andersen, 2015. "A Cost-benefit Analysis of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon," Discussion Papers 0065, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA.
    14. Bennetton, Julia & Cashin, Paul & Jones, Darren & Soligo, James, 1998. "An economic evaluation of bushfire prevention and suppression," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 42(2), pages 1-27.
    15. Prestemon, Jeffrey P. & Mercer, D. Evan & Pye, John M. & Butry, David T. & Holmes, Thomas P. & Abt, Karen L., 2001. "Economically Optimal Wildfire Intervention Regimes," 2001 Annual meeting, August 5-8, Chicago, IL 20470, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    16. Isabel Mendes & Isabel Proença, 2009. "Measuring the Social Recreation Per-Day Net Benefit of Wildlife Amenities of a National Park: A Count-Data Travel Cost Approach," Working Papers Department of Economics 2009/35, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    17. Matero, Jukka & Saastamoinen, Olli, 2007. "In search of marginal environmental valuations -- ecosystem services in Finnish forest accounting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 101-114, February.
    18. David Tàbara & David Saurí & Rufí Cerdan, 2003. "Forest Fire Risk Management and Public Participation in Changing Socioenvironmental Conditions: A Case Study in a Mediterranean Region," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(2), pages 249-260, April.
    19. Scarpa, Riccardo & Hutchinson, W. George & Chilton, Susan M. & Buongiorno, Joseph, 2000. "Importance of forest attributes in the willingness to pay for recreation: a contingent valuation study of Irish forests," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(3-4), pages 315-329, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mendes, Isabel, 2010. "A theoretical economic model for choosing efficient wildfire suppression strategies," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(5), pages 323-329, June.
    2. Varela, Elsa & Jacobsen, Jette Bredahl & Soliño, Mario, 2014. "Understanding the heterogeneity of social preferences for fire prevention management," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 91-104.
    3. Biao, Zhang & Wenhua, Li & Gaodi, Xie & Yu, Xiao, 2010. "Water conservation of forest ecosystem in Beijing and its value," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 1416-1426, May.
    4. Abildtrup, Jens & Garcia, Serge & Stenger, Anne, 2013. "The effect of forest land use on the cost of drinking water supply: A spatial econometric analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 126-136.
    5. Sattout, E.J. & Talhouk, S.N. & Caligari, P.D.S., 2007. "Economic value of cedar relics in Lebanon: An application of contingent valuation method for conservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2-3), pages 315-322, March.
    6. S. Rousseau, 2005. "Effluent Trading to Improve Water Quality. What do we Know Today?," Review of Business and Economic Literature, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Review of Business and Economic Literature, vol. 0(2), pages 229-260.
    7. Romina Cavatassi, 2004. "Valuation Methods for Environmental Benefits in Forestry and Watershed Investment Projects," Working Papers 04-01, Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO - ESA).
    8. Ebert, Udo & Welsch, Heinz, 2011. "Optimal environmental taxes and standards: Implications of the materials balance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2454-2460.
    9. Ambrey, Christopher L. & Fleming, Christopher M. & Manning, Matthew, 2016. "The hedonistic cost of the Black Saturday bushfires," 2016 Conference (60th), February 2-5, 2016, Canberra, Australia 235304, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    10. Ninan, K.N. & Inoue, Makoto, 2013. "Valuing forest ecosystem services: What we know and what we don't," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 137-149.
    11. Bergquist, Ann-Kristin & Söderholm, Kristina & Kinneryd, Hanna & Lindmark, Magnus & Söderholm, Patrik, 2013. "Command-and-control revisited: Environmental compliance and technological change in Swedish industry 1970–1990," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 6-19.
    12. Ben Abdallah, Skander & Lasserre, Pierre, 2016. "Asset retirement with infinitely repeated alternative replacements: Harvest age and species choice in forestry," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 144-164.
    13. Kotchen, Matthew J. & Salant, Stephen W., 2011. "A free lunch in the commons," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 245-253, May.
    14. Frans P. Vries & Nick Hanley, 2016. "Incentive-Based Policy Design for Pollution Control and Biodiversity Conservation: A Review," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 63(4), pages 687-702, April.
    15. Yu-Bong Lai, 2004. "Trade liberalization, consumption externalities and the environment," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 17(5), pages 1-9.
    16. Ni, Jinlan & Wei, Chu & Du, Limin, 2015. "Revealing the political decision toward Chinese carbon abatement: Based on equity and efficiency criteria," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 609-621.
    17. Giancarlo Giudici & Massimiliano Guerini & Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, 2019. "The creation of cleantech startups at the local level: the role of knowledge availability and environmental awareness," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 815-830, April.
    18. Grüll, Georg & Taschini, Luca, 2011. "Cap-and-trade properties under different hybrid scheme designs," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 107-118, January.
    19. Na Li Dawson & Kathleen Segerson, 2008. "Voluntary Agreements with Industries: Participation Incentives with Industry-Wide Targets," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(1), pages 97-114.
    20. Sam Fankhauser & Cameron Hepburn, 2009. "Carbon markets in space and time," GRI Working Papers 3, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    forest fires; social cost; monetary evaluation; methodology.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q23 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Forestry
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp022018. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vitor Escaria (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://aquila.iseg.ulisboa.pt/aquila/departamentos/EC .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.