Epsilon Open Archive

Abstract

Maintenance of socio-cultural values and biodiversity at local and regional levels are new impor-tant additional criteria for the implementation of sustainable forest management. Ukraine’s forest sector is in transition from planned socialist to market economy. We evaluated the role of the tradi-tional village system, which was successful for centuries for achieving both common economic as well as these new dimensions of sustainable forest management in Ukraine’s Carpathian Moun-tains.We used the Skole district as a case study that represents one of the most forested areas in Ukraine, and an integral part of Boiko people’s ethnographic area. The village is a traditional so-cial–ecological system defined by the traditional land use of pre-industrial cultural landscapes, and a spatial structure with land use zones satisfying different needs. Using documents on regional en-vironmental history, analysis of socio-economic statistics, and interviews with local land users, we evaluated the extent to which the traditional village system supports socio-cultural dimensions of sustainable forest management. Our review of environmental history indicates that after different phases of cultural landscape development during several 100 years, the traditional village system is still a basic unit of the Skole district’s forest landscapes. However, data and interviews show that the traditional village system is endangered. Making use of the total economic value of forest land-scape resources, including wood and non-wood products and services based on cultural values and biodiversity, is an urgent task. Support of traditional village socio-cultural functions and land use systems including fields, wooded grasslands and forests should be milestones in a regional program of sustainable forest management. Traditional village system zoning and land use systems would be good indicators of sustainable forest landscapes.