Forest Resources Management and Sustainability: The Specific Case of European Union Countries

Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho and António José Dinis Ferreira
Additional contact information
Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho: CERNAS-IPV Research Centre and Agricultural School (ESAV), Polytechnic Institute of Viseu (IPV), 3504-510 Viseu, Portugal
António José Dinis Ferreira: CERNAS—Study Center for Natural Resources, Environment and Society, Escola Superior Agrária de Coimbra, P-3045-601 Coimbra, Portugal

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: Forest land provides several environmental services and goods with significant implications for different socioeconomic and environmental dimensions. Forestry and its management are determinant activities for sustainable development, specifically in the current context of urgent mitigation of climate change. In this perspective, one objective of this research was to survey the main insights from the literature about the forest and management dimensions put together, highlighting the contributions of these activities to mitigate climate change. Another objective was to explore indicators related to forest management (land, employment, output, and net emissions) in order to obtain a forest sustainability index through factor analysis. As main insights from this study, we can quote that the literature survey pinpoints the most relevant factors framing forest management: soil characteristics, ecology, ecosystems, biodiversity, deforestation, climate change, socioeconomic frameworks, local knowledge, public policies, institutional context, and new technologies. Forest indicators reveal a strong relationship between forest land, employment and output, and a weaker relation with net emissions. We concluded that there is a need for stakeholders to explore and improve the interlinkage with climate change impact, specifically with regard to improving the relationships of forestry greenhouse gas emissions impacts with forest size and output.

Keywords: European Union; forest indicators; factor analysis; forest sustainability index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/58/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/58/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2020:i:1:p:58-:d:467049

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().