Cydcoed evaluation project: exploring market and non-market values
John Powell, Matt Reed and Carol Kambites completed the evaluation of the Cydcoed community woodland programme in Wales. The programme consisted of 163 community woodland projects implemented during the period 2001 – 2008. The CCRI evaluation examined the four 'axes' of community development that the Cydcoed programme was addressing and a sample of 24 woodland projects were selected for in-depth study.
The evaluation revealed the localised nature of many project benefits, in particular social benefits arising from partnership work between community organisations, and local environmental improvements. Less significant were benefits arising from employment opportunities and skills training. The evaluation also used market and non-market estimation techniques to derive monetary values for programme benefits, finding that health and recreation impacts were the largest. Cydcoed project benefits were found to be widely distributed across local communities including young and old age groups, and to a certain extent those in vulnerable groups also benefitted.
The evaluation report was submitted in June 2008.
