Unasylva: 300 years of sustainable forestry
Foresters tend to take a long-term view because trees take so long to grow. That may explain why foresters have led the way in developing the modern concept of sustainability. There are debates on where, when and by whom this concept arose, but in this edition of Unasylva, Schmithüsen makes a case for Hans Carl von Carlowitz as the catalytic figure. Three hundred years ago this year, von Carlowitz, a German mining administrator, was vexed by the dwindling supply of wood for the silver mines he o versaw, and he was critical of the profitdriven thinking that was causing overharvesting of the forest. He published a book, Sylvicultura oeconomica, in which he coined the German term for sustainability, Nachhaltigkeit. Von Carlowitz said that the Nachhaltigkeit principle should be applied to the management of forests to ensure the perpetual supply of timber, and he urged the adoption of measures that would make forests a permanent economic resource. Over the next decades and centuries, the Nac hhaltigkeit principle spread through Central Europe and to India, the United States of America and elsewhere. Arguably, it was the start of the modern approach to sustainable forest management (SFM). According to an article by Küchli, forestry in Switzerland was influenced strongly by German approaches, but in the late 1800s it diverged towards what became known as close-to-nature forestry. This approach moved away from the earlier tendency to simplify forest stands towards the development of mi xed, naturally regenerating stands composed mainly of local species. Küchli thinks that close-to-nature forest management could be the most effective strategy in the face of climate change.
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| Format: | Document biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
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2013
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| Online Access: | https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/20.500.14283/I3364E http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3364e.pdf |
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