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capet's avatar

Relationship between deforestation and industrialization?

Asked by capet (988points) July 1st, 2021

(I have no background in any relevant field.) There’s definitely a ton of evidence that industrialization leads to deforestation, at least under common conditions. (And there are probably some ways that industrialization reduces deforestation.)

But I’m wondering whether there are any prominent scholarly arguments that deforestation contributed to industrialization, especially in Britain.

The reason that this occurred to me is the following:
1. I think I’ve read in various places that Britain was an outlier in terms of deforestation in the early modern period. I remember not being sure about the evidence I was looking at, since different bits of forest have different kinds of possible human uses.
2. I’ve definitely read in various places that Britain’s early start on its modern phase of industrialization could be partially explained by “relative factor prices,” in particular
a. Availability of cheap coal
b. Availability of cheap labor of certain types (children, women, dispossessed farmers to work in early factories and other “intensely managed” production situations)
c. Scarcity of cheap labor of certain types (thinking of Robert Allen’s arguments based on reconstructed wage data).

If #1 is accurate, then I was wondering whether anyone has added a part d (“scarcity of cheap wood”) to #2.

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7 Answers

capet's avatar

It seems like Kenneth Pomeranz’s “The Great Divergence” might point to some good sources. Deforestation and coal seem to be recurring characters, but he doesn’t seem to think that deforestation was a major driver of British industrialization based on my ctrl+f-based skim through the book. http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Pomeranz2000.pdf

elbanditoroso's avatar

It’s not an absolute 1:1 type of thing, especially in the 2000s. You could make the argument that it was more true in the US and GB in the 1800s, with the advent of mass iron smelthing and other manufacturing that need large amouts of wood.

In this century, with the exception of Brazil, it is no longer true. Brazil stands out for its mass forest harvesting.

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kritiper's avatar

If coal was available, it could be used in steam plants/engines. Otherwise, wood was used in great quantities by steam ships, industrial plants, lumber processors, mines, etc. for power. Mines used lumber to shore up the mines and stripped whole mountains, landscapes. So industrialization and deforestation went hand-in-hand in many instances.

capet's avatar

Thanks @elbanditoroso and @kritiper. It sounds like you both agree (under some common conditions) that we can have industrialization->deforestation.

Do you have an opinion on deforestation->industrialization (in Britain)?

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