The modern concept of public forest functions

Abstract

Forest, as one of the most complex and most important natural ecosystems, is characterized by numerous and very important characteristics that have permanently or current significance for human society, for life on earth and therefore we consider forest complexes as spatial functional components. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have jointly published a report entitled The State of the World’s Forests (SOFO 2020). From the functional aspect, forests have been defined as: areas of certain way and type of use, as well as roles in providing appropriate ecological conditions, primarly that forests supply the planet with water, that they are the key to combating climate change and biodiversity conservation, to provide more than 86 million jobs and support the existence of 880 million people worldwide. The Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE), a top-level policy initiative for the development of processes for the protection and sustainable management of forests since 1993, places urgent demands on forestry theory and practice and sector related to forestry planning. The explicit view (MCPFE) was that when planning and setting priorities, imponderable values of forests are given equal importance as values that produce financial effects. Therefore, when adopting planning settings related to forest valuation, cost-benefit analysis is necessary, where the benefits of forest complexes are an important input, especially in the closer zones of urban areas when it comes to social functions. Then in the process of planning forest management as an urban resource, the participation and influence of the local population is very important, because the goal is to recognize their participation and needs as primary, to harmonize with other plans, policies and finally with specific activities in the forest management process. The forest rarely has a single function. There are several, the same or different functional values. In that case, they can be either parallel functions, when the needs are stimulated by the same forest management measures, or opposite fonctions, when different procedures of harmonization with the goals and methods of forest management are required for their performance.