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In-Depth Information
Scandinavia). As it is doubtful that many areas of Europe were this well wooded at any
point in the period, the case for a general wood shortage by 1820 appears quite
plausible, but is hardly plausible for any period before 1750
.
114
At the same time, however, this plausible wood shortage at the end of the 18th or
the beginning of the 19th century brought about a wide development of
”
'
scienti
c
forestry
, aimed at increasing wood yields and its predictability across time. This
shift in woodland management entailed many con
'
icts between forest engineers,
state-rules and peasant communities, and the apparent landscape changes it brought
about raised deep social unrest all over Europe as well as in colonial regions such as
India under British rule.
115
Yet, as Paul Warde concludes,
fl
“
in dealing with general
scarcity, forestry was fairly successful. [
] The nineteenth century augmentation of
wood yields demonstrated that there was plenty of scope for productivity increase
within the economy after the Napoleonic age, but equally, that the ability to raise
consumption per head and indeed income levels was limited. [
…
…
] When Jevons in
1865 turned to the question of the exhaustion of coal reserves [
], most of Europe
still looked to wood as its primary source of thermal energy. That this could still be
the case after a period of enormous population growth is a tribute to the capacities
of the preindustrial ancient regime, and an indicator that Europe, for all its late
eighteenth-century problems, remained distant from any ecological frontier
…
.
116
It
must be added immediately, though, that it was precisely during the late 19th
century when written sources and the rst landscape photographs provided direct
and indirect evidence of a peak in deforestation all over Europe, just before the start
of a fast reforestation wave fostered by rural abandonment.
Was there or was there not a general biomass energy crisis at the beginning of
the fossil fuel era? This remains a signi
”
cant, open historical question that deserves
to be extensively looked into in the future by reconstructing land-use statistics or
surveys, and making GIS analysis of land-cover changes from aerial photographs
and cadastral maps. The aim should be to extend the land accounts that the EEA
have started to assemble for the last decade of the 20th century as far back in time as
possible,
117
similar to the historical series of main land uses in the United Kingdom
and Austria reconstructed from 1830 onwards by Fridolin Krausmann, Heinz
Schandl and Rolf Peter Sieferle (Fig.
2.11
):
In the meantime, the available evidence suggests that timber,
rewood or char-
coal scarcity might have been more of a regional situation than a general continental
phenomenon. As Paul Warde has suggested for the English case, it is likely that
scarcities became a true economic problem when, together with fuel, they increased
food or feed prices and land rents as well.
118
It would have been enough, however,
that these regional scarcities affected general trends of energy prices to become a
114
Warde (
2006b
), pp. 38
-
39.
115
Guha (
1991
).
116
Warde (
2006b
), p. 52.
117
European Environment Agency (
2006
).
118
Warde (
2007
).
