Public attitudes toward environmental protection in the most developed countries: The Environmental Concern Kuznets Curve theory.

This paper presents the Environmental Concern Kuznets Curve (ECKC) theory about decreasing environmental concern in the most developed and protected area-rich countries. We analyzed the relationship between the protected area (PA) coverage, environmental concern and GDP per capita in the 42 most developed countries in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Our conclusion is that 1) as countries develop, environmental protection becomes less dependent on economic development; 2) at high levels of economic development, environmental concern decreases; 3) environmental concern reaches a maximum at 20-30% of PA coverage and decreases beyond this point. The influence of human values and factors at the local level was determined by a national survey (n = 999) on public attitudes toward greater conservation of forests in Slovenia. The results comply with the ECKC theory; the higher the naturalness of forests in the surroundings of a respondent's home, the lower the support for greater conservation. However, the study suggests that human values play a prominent role. Support for conservation largely depended on the respondents' general attitude toward forest cover and growing stock, harvesting intensities, satisfaction with the level of control in forests and concern for the population of protected brown bears. The general belief that ecosystems are fragile and there are limits to growth increased support for conservation by 33%. We conclude that the environment in the most developed countries is likely to experience increasing pressure due to decreasing environmental concern and its decoupling from objective problems.

A conceptual framework for characterizing forest areas with high societal values: experiences from the Pacific Northwest of USA and Central Europe.

In recent decades, much work has been invested to describe forest allocations with high societal values. Yet, few comparative analyses have been conducted on their importance and differences across the regions of the globe. This paper introduces a conceptual framework to characterize forest priority areas defined as areas with identified higher importance of societal values in the context of multi-objective forest management. The six dimensions of the framework (designation objective, prioritization of objectives, governance, permanency, spatial scale, and management regime) characterize the general approach (integrative vs. segregative) to multi-objective forest management and explain the form and role of priority areas for providing forest services. The framework was applied in two case study regions--Pacific Northwest of USA (PNW) and Central Europe (CE). Differences between the regions exist in all dimensions. Late-successional and riparian reserves are specific to the PNW, while protection against natural hazards is specific to CE. In PNW, priority areas are mainly focused on public lands whereas in CE they include public and private lands. Priority areas in PNW are designated in a much larger spatial context and have longer time commitments. In CE, integration of management objectives on priority areas prevails, whereas in PNW priority areas tend to be designated for single objectives. In CE, greater tolerance of timber management within priority areas compared to PNW is allowed. Convergent trends in application of priority areas between the regions indicate mixing of segregation and integration approaches to forest management.