10.2190/6YHE-KB33-NGUX-NTAT 6YHEKB33NGUXNTAT 6 Incorporating Environmental Impacts of Afforestation in Project Appraisal: A Case Study of Western Himalayas, India 339 347 20020509 20020509 20020509 20020509 6YHEKB33NGUXNTAT.pdf http://baywood.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=6YHEKB33NGUXNTAT 4 Devi D. Tewari J. C. Nautiyal Katar Singh Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India University of Toronto, Canada Institute of Rural Management, Anand, India Environmental impacts of forestry projects are often ignored in benefit-cost analysis (BCA), primarily due to lack of hard data on them. The valuation of environmental impacts and their inclusion in BCA is all the more important in developing countries where deforestation is causing a major environmental damage. In this article, a BCA is conducted for the community afforestation scheme in the Ramganga catchment in Western Himalayas of India. The article briefly reviews the various methods of valuing different environmental impacts of forestry projects with special reference to the scheme, and provides the social BCA of the scheme using a simple method of accounting for environmental impacts as suggested by some forest economists in situations where objective assessments of the same are not available. Results of the study suggest that social BCA helps improve the ranking of forestry projects under <i>ceteris paribus</i> conditions. J. C. Nautiyal and J. L. Rezende, Dynamic Investment Considerations in Forestry Project Evaluation, <i>Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 13</i>:4, pp. 640-647, 1983. D. D. Tewari and Katar Singh, Financial Analysis of Afforestation of Community Lands in Ramganga Catchment in Uttar Pradesh Hills, <i>Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 39</i>:2, pp. 223-232, 1984. S. Calish, K. D. Bight, and De. E. Teeguarden, How Do Nontimber Values Affect Douglas Fir Rotations, <i>Journal of Forestry, 96</i>:4, pp. 217-221, 1978. D. W. Pearce and O. A. Nash, <i>The Social Appraisal of Projects</i>, Macmillan, London, 225 pp., 1981. R. G. Ghosh and R. K. Subtra Rao, Forests and Floods, <i>The Indian Forester, 105</i>:4, pp. 249-259, 1979. J. L. Rezende, Application of Benefit-Cost Analysis to Forestry Investment Problems, Ph.D. Thesis, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, Toronto, 1982. W. A. Duerr, <i>Fundamentals of Forestry Economics</i>, McGraw-Hill, New York, 579 pp., 1960. J. C. Nautiyal, <i>Forest Economics: Principles and Applications</i>, Canadian Scholars' Press, Inc., Toronto, 569 pp., 1988. O. P. Gittinger, <i>Economic Analysis of Agricultural Projects</i>, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 221 pp., 1972.