Sustainability in forest and society despite “overmaturity” and “lack of regeneration” (essay)
This essay compares efforts to move towards sustainability in the forests with those in the care for the elderly in Switzerland, and tries to draw conclusions which may promote sustainability. It is wrong, for forests and human populations, to talk of “overmaturity”, as this assumes the primacy of economic reasoning. To guarantee sustainability, the balance between all aspects is crucial. To attain true sustainability, we need binding guidelines and the “right” scale of implementation programme. Civil society organisations have been working for decades – often longer than the state itself – to improve sustainability. In many different areas, good cooperation and effective distribution of tasks between these institutions can be observed. This is important, among other things, because the ever greater speed of technical progress may overwhelm the adaptive capacity of both forests and people, which would influence sustainability in a negative way.