In recent decades, new scientific information has transformed our understanding of forest ecosystems, driving forest policy changes in both Canada and the United States. The extraction-oriented policies that dominated forest management for more than a century have given way to new approaches, leading often to acrimonious public debate, controversy over the interpretation of science, and frequent litigation by groups who support conflicting points of view. Today, the U.S. and Canada face a common challenge: to achieve a sustainable form of forest management that has wide public support. Many books discuss the scientific changes underlying forest policy, but this is the first to examine the social and economic aspects of sustainable forestry and the resulting impacts on resource policy in the two countries. The authors attempt to make sense of citizens' expectations for forests, and the responses by public-land managers and policymakers. Contributors include sociologists, research foresters, economists, political scientists, and geographers, as well as scholars in recreation and tourism. Together, their writings provide an in-depth interdisciplinary perspective on Canadian and U.S. efforts to manage public forests on a sustainable basis. The premise of "Two Paths toward Sustainable Forests is that academics and students, resource professionals, policymakers, and members of industry, environmental, and forest community groups can benefit from a comparison of the situations on either side of the border. By comparing the challenges of sustainable forestry and the different approaches adopted in Canada and the U.S., this book points the way towards potential solutions to common problems.

Market globalization and the globalization of environmental concerns have spurred demand for greater international accountability for forest stewardship. In response, a range of multi-lateral governmental and non-governmental initiatives have emerged to redefine the rules of global trade, and demand verification of the legality and/or sustainability of forest products originating from within and outside national boundaries. At the same time there is a lack of transparency and shared understanding about the environmental forest policies that already exist within the world's leading forest producing and consuming countries. The result is that many stakeholders have developed perceptions about a country's regulatory environment that are not consistent with what is actually taking place. This book provides a uniquely detailed and systematic comparison of environmental forest policies and enforcement in twenty countries worldwide, covering developed, transition and developing economies. The goal is to enhance global policy learning and promote well-informed and precisely tuned policy solutions.

A collection of essays that examine the challenges the US Forest Service faces and propose solutions that would addressthem.

USDA Forest Service Experimental Forests and Ranges (EFRs) are scientific treasures, providing secure, protected research sites where complex and diverse ecological processes are studied over the long term. This book offers several examples of the dynamic interactions among questions of public concern or policy, EFR research, and natural resource management practices and policies. Often, trends observed – or expected -- in the early years of a research program are contradicted or confounded as the research record extends over decades. The EFRs are among the few areas in the US where such long-term research has been carried out by teams of scientists. Changes in society’s needs and values can also redirect research programs. Each chapter of this book reflects the interplay between the ecological results that emerge from a long-term research project and the social forces that influence questions asked and resources invested in ecological research. While these stories include summaries and syntheses of traditional research results, they offer a distinctly new perspective, a larger and more complete picture than that provided by a more typical 5-year study. They also provide examples of long-term research on EFRs that have provided answers for questions not even imagined at the time the study was installed.

An incisive examination of community forestry in a pan-national context, highlighting both the possibilities and challenges associated with its implementation.

With The Lumberman's Frontier, Thomas Cox has reconstructed a groundbreaking history that stands apart from all previous studies of American forests. Forests were ubiquitous in early America, but it was only in selected areas that trees, rather than farming, attracted settlement. These areas constitute the lumberman's frontier, which appeared first in northern New England in the seventeenth century, followed by upstate New York, the Allegheny Plateau, the upper Great Lakes states, the Gulf South, and the Far West. The forest frontiers generated capital and building materials important in the nation's development, but they also left a legacy of environmental problems, class and urban-rural divisions, and economic frictions. The 1930s marked the end of the lumberman's frontier, but these consequences continue to shape attitudes and policies toward forests, most notably the questions "Whose forests are they?" and "How and by whom should forests be used?" Drawing upon recent work in social and economic history, as well as a wealth of historical data on forest industries and individuals, The Lumberman's Frontier neither glorifies economic development nor falls into the maw of gloom-and-doom. It puts individual actors at center stage, allowing the points of view of the workers and lumbermen to emerge. The Lumberman's Frontier will appeal to students and scholars of forestry, public policy, and environmental history, as well as to general readers interested in the history and settlement of the United States.

Doing Environmental Ethics explains how we may transform our fossil-fuel-burning economy, which continues to intensify our ecological crisis, into a circular and ecological economy. The text resists political corruption and personal greed by gleaning ethical insights from our philosophical and religious cultures and by embracing the scientific Gaia hypothesis for the Earth. Its reasoning ascribes intrinsic worth to uplifting duties and rights as well as inspiring virtues and relationships, and tests applying these values by predicting the likely consequences of acting on them. It affirms all life has value for itself, and that human life also values reasoning and feelings and being ethical. The third edition examines US and international environmental policies through 2018. It analyzes the Trump administration’s repudiation of the environmental policies of the Obama administration and its new rules slashing the social costs of climate change. The text reviews a draft UN treaty that would impose human rights and environmental constraints on transnational corporations, but it also highlights outstanding examples of corporate upcycling and low-carbon innovation. Finally, the third edition explains why food security requires protecting the food sovereignty of farming communities and cooperatives, as well as public policies ensuring fair profits for farmers practicing agro-ecology.

Canada is experiencing an unparalleled crisis involving forests and communities across the country. While municipalities, policy makers, and industry leaders acknowledge common challenges such as an overdependence on US markets, rising energy costs, and lack of diversification, no common set of solutions has been developed and implemented. Ongoing and at times contentious public debate has revealed an appetite and need for a fundamental rethinking of the relationships that link our communities, governments, industrial partners, and forests towards a more sustainable future. The creation of community forests is one path that promises to build resilience in forest communities and ecosystems. This model provides local control over common forest lands in order to activate resource development opportunities, benefits, and social responsibilities. Implementing community forestry in practice has proven to be a complex task, however: there are no road maps or well-developed and widely-tested models for community forestry in Canada. But in settings where community forests have taken hold, there is a rich and growing body of experience to draw on. The contributors to Growing Community Forests include leading researchers, practitioners, Indigenous representatives, government representatives, local advocates, and students who are actively engaged in sharing experiences, resources, and tools of significance to forest resource communities, policy makers, and industry.