How can policy take into consideration the “full value” of forests?

It is generally considered that sustainable forest development needs to take into account the ‘full value’ of forests, and that forest policies should promote the consideration of this ‘full value’. But for the moment, nobody knows exactly how to measure this ‘full value’, which is largely based on subjective moral values and qualitative assertions. The paper discusses the concept of ‘full value’, and analyses the different ways it is presently used for the promotion of a new kind of forest policy. A special emphasis is placed on two rationalist instrumental approaches which have been developed in the forestry field.The first one is based on the concept of the total economic value of forests and its individual components of value, as developed through a framework matrix combining the forest products and forest-use classifications adopted in multiple use forestry. The second is based on a mapping method for qualitatively assessing the overall value of forests, which consists of attributing an overall score that measures the economic quality of wooded areas derived from a scoring system for the various contributors to this quality, including for instance protective capacity against erosion and aesthetic contribution to the landscape. In fact, the concept of ‘full value’ is a very precise economic one, which does not have a lot to do with the way the decision-making process works in forestry field. For policy decisions, there is neither full nor total (in the sense of additive) value, there is an implicit deduction which is made during the negotiation between actors and which is more or less correctly (generally rather less) translated into monetary terms, due to a poor assessment of public benefits and externalities. An incremental conceptual framework, which takes into consideration as many needs and interests as possible and which associates all the various actors to decision-making and implementing through a negotiation procedure is thought to be a more suitable way to construct a forest policy. A mixed model for forest policy formulation is discussed.