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Total economic
value of forest resources in Turkey
Mehmet Pak1*,
Mustafa Fehmi Türker2 and Atakan Öztürk2
1Faculty
of Forestry, Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University,
Kahramanmaraş, Turkey.
2Faculty
of Forestry, Artvin Çoruh University, Artvin, Turkey.
*Corresponding author. E-mail:
mpak@ksu.edu.tr. Tel:
+ 90 344 223 76 66 Ext. 465. Fax: + 90 344 221 72 44.
Accepted 25 February, 2010 |
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Forests, like some other natural resources, perform a set of
functions to meet the needs of people. It is usually
impossible to state the monetary value of all the goods and
services provided by forest resources. As a research area,
this topic is gaining importance rapidly in Turkey as well
as in other developing countries. In this study, the
contribution of direct and indirect use values, option
values, existence values and negative externalities to the
Total Economic Value (TEV) were accounted. The most
important share of Turkish forestry in its TEV was
represented by the direct use values including wood and
non-wood forest products. The option and existence values
remained somewhat vague and difficult to calculate. In this
study, the TEV concept was reviewed for Turkish forestry,
and then the TEV components of forest resources were
presented and discussed. From the calculations undertaken
for each TEV component, it turned out that the positive TEV
component of Turkish forests was about US$
1 704 810 889,48.
This figure should be considered as a minimum estimate due
to the fact that the values of many externalities assumed
lower bounds being based on conservative assumptions.
Key words:
Total economic value, Turkish forests, forest goods and
services.
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