This book, which contains 8 chapters, provides a framework for the general public, forest managers and policy makers to understand what factors need to be included when working towards using and protecting the world's forests so that they can be sustained. Topics covered include: historical perceptions and use of forests; the creation of today's forest landscapes by global societies; decision making related to forests becoming democratic and globalized; changing views about the ecology and conservation of forests; the historical and continuing impacts of human disturbances (i.e., air pollution, climatic change, salt injury, introduced plants, introduced insects, introduced pathogens, forest management activities and wars) on forests; the relevance of natural disturbances (i.e., wildfires, wind, extreme temperature and moisture, volcanic eruptions, pathogens, and insect and vertebrate pests) in maintaining sustainable forests; the relationship of human health to forest management; and the relationship among forests, humans and the carbon cycle. Case studies from Australia, Bolivia, Botswana, China, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and the USA, are also included.
Ken Drushka analyses the changes in human attitudes towards the forests, detailing the rise of the late nineteenth-century conservation movement and its subsequent decline after World War I, the interplay between industry and government in the development of policy, the adoption of sustained yield policies after World War II, and the recent adoption of sustainable forest management in response to environmental concerns. Drushka argues that, despite the centuries of use, the Canadian forest retains a good deal of its vitality and integrity. Written in accessible language and aimed at a general readership, Canada's Forests will be a must-read for anyone interested in the debate about the current and future uses of this precious natural resource.
Northern Europe was, by many accounts, the birthplace of much of modern forestry practice, and for hundreds of years the region’s woodlands have played an outsize role in international relations, economic growth, and the development of national identity. Across eleven chapters, the contributors to this volume survey the histories of state forestry policy in Scandinavia, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, and Great Britain from the early modern period to the present. Each explores the complex interrelationships of state-building, resource management, knowledge transfer, and trade over a period characterized by ongoing modernization and evolving environmental awareness.
Devoted conservationist, environmentalist, and explorer Robert Marshall (1901-1939) was chief of the Division of Recreation and Lands, U.S. Forest Service, when he died at age thirty-eight. Throughout his short but intense life, Marshall helped catalyze the preservation of millions of wilderness acres in all parts of the U.S., inspired countless wilderness advocates, and was a pioneer in the modern environmental movement: he and seven fellow conservationists founded the Wilderness Society in 1935. First published in 1933, "The People's Forests" made a passionate case for the public ownership and management of the nation's forests in the face of generations of devastating practices; its republication now is especially timely. Marshall describes the major values of forests as sources of raw materials, as essential resources for the conservation of soil and water, and as a OC precious environment for recreationOCO and for OC the happiness of millions of human beings.OCO He considers the pros and cons of private and public ownership, deciding that public ownership and large-scale public acquisition are vital in order to save the nation's forests, and sets out ways to intelligently plan for and manage public ownership. The last words of this book capture Marshall's philosophy perfectly: OC The time has come when we must discard the unsocial view that our woods are the lumbermen's and substitute the broader ideal that every acre of woodland in the country is rightly a part of the people's forests.OCO"
This book addresses current global and regional issues concerning the world's forests, societies and the environment from an independent and non-governmental point of view. A main message is that cooperation on a global scale is not only commendable, but essential if solutions to the problems facing the world's forests are to be found. To achieve this, modern science needs to find a clearer picture of relationships between forests, human activity and the environment and of the consequences of environmental change for the ability of societies to survive. Part I, Editorial Perspectives, is analyzing the ongoing globalization processes of forests, societies and the environment. Part II, Society and Environment, reviews worldwide trends with significance for the future of forests and forestry. While the trends are influenced by forest sector issues, that sector is influenced to a much larger extent by external factors - such as demography, urbanization, or technological development. Part III, Importance of Forests, looks at the value of the goods and services of forests; tangible and intangible; market and non-market; and concludes that failure to recognize their full value is one of the crucial impediments to sustainable development. In Part IV, Global Forum, scientists take up global forestry themes - deforestation, trade and the environment, climate change, biodiversity - with the aim of stimulating wider discussion. Part V, Regional Forum, looks at major themes of particular relevance to Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, North America and Europe, such as farm and agroforestry, corruption and concessions, urban forestry and environmental conflicts. Part VI introduces the special theme - forest sectors in transition economies. Teams of scientists from Russia and China focus on the implications of the transition from plan to market economy, illuminating both the very different nature of the forest sector in the two countries and the different transition paths that they have adopted. In the past millennium the entire world has been discovered. In the past half century the contribution of forests to the economy worldwide has been perceived, while only recently have their societal and environmental benefits been globally recognized. Globalization is a demanding process requiring knowledge and information. This book offers knowledge, facts and information – but also values from diverse human and cultural perspectives – about world forests, society and environment to help us towards equity in our use of the global forest, to create a clearer vision on a unasylva.
Forests Are Gold examines the management of Vietnam's forests in the tumultuous twentieth century—from French colonialism to the recent transition to market-oriented economics—as the country united, prospered, and transformed people and landscapes. Forest policy has rarely been about ecology or conservation for nature’s sake, but about managing citizens and society, a process Pamela McElwee terms “environmental rule.” Untangling and understanding these practices and networks of rule illuminates not just thorny issues of environmental change, but also the birth of Vietnam itself.
Forests—and the trees within them—have always been a central resource for the development of technology, culture, and the expansion of humans as a species. Examining and challenging our historical and modern attitudes toward wooded environments, this engaging book explores how our understanding of forests has transformed in recent years and how it fits in our continuing anxiety about our impact on the natural world. Drawing on the most recent work of historians, ecologist geographers, botanists, and forestry professionals, Charles Watkins reveals how established ideas about trees—such as the spread of continuous dense forests across the whole of Europe after the Ice Age—have been questioned and even overturned by archaeological and historical research. He shows how concern over woodland loss in Europe is not well founded—especially while tropical forests elsewhere continue to be cleared—and he unpicks the variety of values and meanings different societies have ascribed to the arboreal. Altogether, he provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary overview of humankind’s interaction with this abused but valuable resource.
In the Qing period (1644–1912), China's population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse that devastated European forests at the same time. This comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex: as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources. Historian Meng Zhang traces the trade routes that connected population centers of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on China's southwestern frontier. She documents innovative property rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to invest years in growing trees. Delving into rare archives to reconstruct business histories, she considers both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. Of driving concern were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a business network across a thousand miles? This carefully constructed study makes a major contribution to Chinese economic and environmental history and to world-historical discourses on resource management, early modern commercialization, and sustainable development.
