TITLE:
Forest Transition and Changes in the Socio-Economic Structure of a Developed Country: A Long-Term Analysis
AUTHORS:
Valerio Moretti, Agostino Ferrara, Andrea Colantoni, Margherita Carlucci, Luca Salvati
KEYWORDS:
Forest Transition, Turning Point, Forest Policies, Socio-Economic Structure, Urbanization, Industrialization, Land-Use Change
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.5 No.9,
August
5,
2014
ABSTRACT: The present study analyses historical trends (1861-2011) in the
socio-economic structure in Italy using 12 statistical indicators and their
latent relationships with the long-term forest expansion with the aim to assess
how changes in the socio-economic context have influenced Forest Transition
(FT) at the country scale. Indicators include 3 population and human settlement
variables, 3 demographic variables describing population structure, 3
socio-economic variables describing changes in the economic structure and the
productive base and 3 environmental variables illustrating changes in forest
land cover and protected areas. By developing an exploratory data analysis
framework, the study identifies in the time window encompassing 1936-1951 the
most probable turning point in the forest-socioeconomic system in Italy
indicating also two groups of indicators according to the diverging (linear vs non linear) time trends. The paper
also provides an empirical understanding of political, economic, and social
forces driving FT at the national level.