Course contents: Emphasis is on the main issues actually related to the market of forest products and services at international level, with special attention to environmental and social responsibilities in trading and using timber and other wood-based products; special attention is also paid to the theories and methods fort the assessment of the Total Economic Value of the flows of goods and services pro-duced by responsible forest management. Central themes are: (i) the relations between forest re-sources, production and consumption patterns and trends; (ii) imports/exports flows; (iii) place of wood processing industries in the global economy; (iv) the connections between international trade of forest products and services and environment and social responsibilities; (v) related is-sues such as globalisation and internationalisation of the companies, possible non-tariff barriers, international agreements on trade, de-localisation processes, development of new markets for public goods supplied by forests (such as Kyoto forests’ carbon credits, recreation and landscape, assignment and distribution of property rights and related conflicts), etc. Subjects include an intro-ductory discussion on the roles of industries, public authorities, civil society, media, end-users, consumers, etc. in shifting the attention from “trade” to “responsible trade” in the forestry sector. In order to let the students to better understand the topics, a number of real case-studies referring to traders, wood-processing companies and other actors acting in the international scenario is presented.
Teaching and learning methods: Lectures present the main items. In addition, the students take advantage of case-studies presentations, which are discussed and commented.
Examination: At the end of the course there will be a written multiple-answers test and an oral examination. Only the students passing the first test are admitted to take part in the oral one. The first examina-tion counts 1/3 in the final marking, while the second counts 2/3. Internal examiner.
Competencies acquired: (i) awareness and general overview of the main global economy on-going processes, (ii) knowledge of the basic information and data on forest products and services trade at international level, (iii) knowledge of the most important and actual trends in forest products and services’ mar-ket worldwide and of the expected developments, (iv) preliminary knowledge of the concepts re-lated to environmental and social responsibility in forestry and trade, (v) capacity to search for data on timber, NWFPs and forest services trade and to analyse and comment them, (vi) determining the reliability of different information sources and understanding of accountability problems.
Course homepage: www.agraria.unipd.it
Teaching material 2007-2008 on International Timber, Non Wood Forest Products and Forest Services Trade by Paola Gatto now available!