ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows how usual or familiar borders and traditional comfort zones are porous, shaky, and moving, obliging to review or update practices, skills, knowledge, and even principles and to open eyes and arms. It presents the hidden complexity of forests and the main successive milestones that forged forestry. The book deals with an original and innovative contribution expounding the different ethical models coexisting today on the forest scene. It focuses on the process of the urbanization of the society as understood not only literally but also figuratively. The book offers an immersion in the shared, while paradoxical, vision of forest mainly owned by today’s urban society. It discusses the issue of the tertiarization of the economy and also deals with a useful analysis of and debate on the increasing role of services in forestry, both upstream and downstream of forest management.
