From woodfuel to industrial wood: A socio-metabolic reading of the forest transition in Spain (1860–2010)

Juan Infante-Amate, Iñaki Iriarte-Goñi, Alexander Urrego-Mesa and Simone Gingrich

Ecological Economics, 2022, vol. 201, issue C

Abstract: After centuries of deforestation, many, mostly industrialized countries have recently been experiencing net increases in forest area and biomass stocks, a phenomenon described as ‘Forest Transition’. In this article, we analyse the Spanish forest transition over the last 150 years from a socio-metabolic perspective. We provide the first estimation on forest surface, wood production and biomass stocks and we relate these changes to the socio-metabolic transformations of Spain's economy. Between 1860 and 1950, within a context of organic metabolism and growing population pressure, the stock of forest biomass decreased by 25.3%, falling to its lowest level in c. 1950. By conducting a decomposition analysis, we show that deforestation (i.e., declining forest area) explains 33.7% of the decrease in stock, while the reduction of biomass density accounts for 66.3%. Since 1950, and coinciding with the industrial socio-metabolic transition, forest biomass stocks multiplied by a factor of 2.5. Cropland intensification, the outsourcing of land use to third countries and agricultural policy encouraged the expansion of forest areas. Nevertheless, the substitution of firewood with fossil fuels was the main explanatory factor of the stock increase, since it enabled a dramatic decline in wood appropriation and the consequent increase in biomass density.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800922002105
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:201:y:2022:i:c:s0921800922002105

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107548

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().