ABSTRACT
Corporate forest governance has undergone substantial changes since the late twentieth century, in part due to public pressures to demonstrate environmental stewardship and in part due to changes in tax laws that led to a dissolution of the vertically integrated corporate model. A “crisis of legitimacy” in the forest industry led to the emergence of private, third-party forest certification systems as means of assuring compliance with social and environmental standards. While not mandatory, the adoption of various certification systems changed the governance context for many corporate forestlands in the U.S. A separate process led vertically integrated firms to restructure in ways that split mill ownership from forest ownership, leading to the rise of institutional investment in timberland. This chapter considers the drivers and outcomes of these dynamics and examines new markets related to bioenergy and ecosystem services that have become part of the corporate forest landscape.
