Conflicts among ecosystem services may depend on environmental awareness: a multi-municipality analysis

Abstract Timber and non-timber ecosystem services (ESs) of forests can have trade-offs. These trade-offs are often influenced by local characteristics, and a higher awareness of local ESs among the location population could support forest management to supply ESs sustainably. This study examines trade-offs among timber and non-timber ESs in three adjacent municipalities in Japan where social contexts differ and discusses them in relation to the environmental awareness of each community. First, we explored the local awareness of the population of ESs in interviews. Then we produced maps of landslide prevention, sediment retention, and forest recreation ESs in plantations at 30-m resolution and classified forests according to evaluations of each ES. We overlaid the ES maps with a map of logging locations from the previous 5 years to calculate the logged ratio for each ES class. In a region with a long history of forestry, where awareness of ESs seems to be high, forests providing a wider range of ESs had a lower logged ratio than forests with lower ESs. In contrast, in a region in which contracted foresters from outside of that region were coordinating logging activities, even forests providing numerous ES had a high logged ratio. Thus, increasing awareness of ESs amongst the local population may lead to a more balanced use of ESs. Our results indicate that local governments would be best placed to raise awareness by educating forest enterprises or providing science-based information on ESs to foresters. We conclude that analyses of local ES trade-offs under consideration of the social context as presented here, is the first step towards developing and maintaining sustainable forest management principles.