IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbewp/0105.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Efficient Technology and the Conservation of Natural Forests: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Author

Listed:
  • Gunatilake, Herath

    (Asian Development Bank)

Abstract

Existing policy instruments for conserving tropical forests have shown limited success. This paper investigates the feasibility of improving the technical efficiency of the wood processing industry as an alternative approach to forest conservation, using sawmills in Sri Lanka as a case study. Improved wood processing efficiency decreases the volume of raw material (logs) required to produce a given quantity of processed wood products and, therefore, decreases the pressure on natural forests. A stochastic frontier production function was estimated to assess the technical efficiency of sawmilling in Sri Lanka. Given the considerable inefficiency found in sawmilling operations, current sawn wood output can be obtained with 28% less inputs. Compared with other policy measures, technical efficiency improvement has a potential to play a noteworthy role in conserving natural forests. Technological improvements, as a tool for conservation, deserve the attention of researchers and policy makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Gunatilake, Herath, 2007. "Efficient Technology and the Conservation of Natural Forests: Evidence from Sri Lanka," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 105, Asian Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:0105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/publications/efficient-technology-and-conservation-natural-forests-evidence-sri-lanka
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    conservation; efficiency improvement; Sri Lanka; technical efficiency; wood processing industry;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • Q23 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Forestry
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth

    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:ris:adbewp:0105. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Orlee Velarde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eradbph.html .

    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.