The Role of Natural Resource Valuation in Australian Regional Forestry Management

Wildfires during the 2019–2020 Australian fire season killed 33 people and more than 1 billion animals, destroying almost 40 million acres of bushland and more than 3,500 homes. The objective of this analysis is to identify regional forestry management weaknesses that may have exacerbated these losses, focusing on economic components of existing Regional Forestry Agreements (RFAs). I accomplish this objective by reviewing the RFA development process, mapping RFA content to international climate change frameworks, and comparing RFA contents with pertinent economic literature findings. I find that RFAs’ development and implementation relied on market valuation of forest products while excluding nonmarket environmental values. The connections from RFAs to international climate and domestic wildfire policy were weak. Furthermore, RFAs disregarded moral hazard around plantation forest management and wildfire mitigation risk. Future RFA development needs to include nonmarket valuation of a suite of environmental resources, recognition of dynamic wildfire risks in the midst of climate change, precise descriptions of private and federal plantation forest wildfire prevention responsibilities, and explicit connections between RFAs and state and federal policy to mitigate wildfire risk.