Forest Ecosystems and Civilization An Overview of the Footprint of Modernity in the Exploitation-Conservation Relationship

Abstract

The main objective of this chapter is to provide an overall assessment of the imprint facilitated by the modern view and some of its concrete expressions (i.e., economic systems) in the profound environmental changes that took place in the forest ecosystems around the globe in the centuries that crowned the expansion of such approach (especially from 16th to 20th). The assessment is made through a contextualized analysis of some of its main indicators and constraints in the overall process of integration of the forest cover into the world system. Regarding indicators, this work seeks to approach the general logic of insertion, both direct and indirect of forest in the world economy fi rst and in the world market later, as well as changes in consumption patterns of forest products, its basic types and their changes over time. With regard to the conditions, special attention is given to what we have called the “utilitarian conservationism”. The latter understood as the strategy that sits halfway between the supply and demand for forest products and has promoted or limited the inclusion of forests in the global market in different spatiotemporal contexts.