Measuring Natural Capital and the Causes of Deforestation

Brian Sturgess

Published: September 2019

This study looks at the measurement of the extent, causes and consequences of deforestation as a depletion of a stock of natural capital, a topic of interest to national statistics offices (NSO) in the preparation of satellite accounts. Currently many anomalies and unresolved issues affect the construction of forest databases, although efforts are currently under way to resolve these data problems. Brazil and Indonesia account for 35% of global forest loss in the sample of countries studied in this paper between 1990 and 2015. This has called beef and palm oil to international attention, especially from environmental activists. The case of Malaysia, where consistent data show that reforestation has followed rising GDP per capita and strong policy on forest management, provides strong empirical support for Forest Transition Theory.