Forestry and environmental issues often occur lately. This is caused by several causes including increased deforestation in the interests of development and economy, land conversion, unsustainable natural resource use activities and ineffective policy instruments to reduce forest and environmental damage. Market demand for wood and non-wood demand is also a major cause of forest and environmental destruction. This behavior is carried out without realizing how important the function of the forest is for human life such as producing oxygen, absorbing carbon, preventing floods, controlling erosion and becoming a habitat for plants and wildlife. These problems certainly bring unrest to the Resource Economy and Environment community.

Departing from this unrest that brought the Department of Resource and Environmental Economics, Faculty of Economics and Management (FEM) IPB University in collaboration with the Student Professional Association REESA held a Guest Lecture to broaden understanding of the topics to be discussed.

An online seminar entitled “The Global Issues in Forest and Environment: Perspective on Policy and Human Well-Being” was held on 18/5. This online seminar was attended by sixth semester students of the Department of ESL FEM IPB University as a substitute for lecture in the 14th week and was attended by 100 participants from various work backgrounds and areas of origin. Participants were also attended by foreign participants such as India, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Syria, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Vietnam and Mexico.

Dr. James Thomas Erbaugh from the Department of Environmental Sciences, Darmouth University, USA was the speaker for this online seminar. The seminar was hosted by moderator Prof. Dr. Dodik Ridho Nurrochmat, Vice Chancellor for Cooperation and Information Systems of IPB University as well as Professor of IPB University in Forestry Policy and Economics. In addition, the seminar was led by a host namely Hari Priyadi (Technical Advisor at The World Bank and Senior Associate Researcher of IPB University).

In his discussion Dr. James said that the forestry sector plays an important role for human welfare. The point is that the forestry sector can provide support services, providers, regulation and culture. There are several variables that affect human welfare such as health, education, consumption, income and assets they have. But in the forestry sector the variables that can be given are income and asset variables.

Not only that, there is a flow of relationships from the forestry sector for human welfare, including the first is that forest conservation can support the functioning of ecosystems that will later have an impact on improving human welfare, the second is forest conservation can support human welfare. But to carry out this conservation there are several obstacles that must be faced, among others, the value of land conversion, unclear forest management regulations and the difficulty of conservation to be implemented. As for improving human welfare there are obstacles that occur such as obstacles in converting the benefits of the forestry sector, benefit distribution, and “payoff” schedules. (IAAS / NAS)

Published Date : 20-May-2020

Resource Person : Dr James

Keyword : Forest, Environment , FEM IPB, ESL IPB Department