This article, which synthesizes the results of more than 140 economic models analyzing the causes of tropical deforestation, raises significant doubts about many conventional hypotheses in the debate about deforestation. More roads, higher agricultural prices, lower wages, and a shortage of off-farm employment generally lead to more deforestation. How technical change, agricultural input prices, household income levels, and tenure security affect deforestation-if at all-is unknown. The role of macroeconomic factors such as population growth, poverty reduction, national income, economic growth, and foreign debt is also ambiguous. This review, however, finds that policy reforms included in current economic liberalization and adjustment efforts may increase the pressure on forests. Although the boom in deforestation modeling has yielded new insights, weak methodology and poor-quality data make the results of many models questionable. Concern is rising about the adverse consequences of tropical deforestation. The loss of forest cover influences the climate and contributes to a loss of biodiversity. Reduced timber supplies, siltation, flooding, and soil degradation affect economic activity and threaten the livelihoods and cultural integrity of forest-dependent people. Tropical rain forests, which constitute about 41 percent of the total tropical forest cover, are considered the richest and most valuable ecosystem on the earth's land surface. During the 1980s about 15.4 million hectares of tropical forests were lost each year, according to estimates by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO 1992). From 1990 to 1995 the annual loss was estimated at 12.7 million hectares (FAO 1997), but it is unclear whether this reduction represents a slowdown in actual forest clearance or new definitions and better data. This concern has led economists to expand their efforts to model why, where, and to what extent forests are being converted to other land uses. Kaimowitz and Angelsen
The introductory chapter discusses the assumptions behind policies which have led to deforestation of tropical forests, and outlines the aims and scope, and key conclusions of the book. A summary of each chapter in the rest of the book is also included.
For hundreds of millions of people, biodiversity is about eating, staying healthy, and finding shelter. Meeting these people's basic needs should receive greater priority in the conservation agenda. Wild and semi‐wild plants and animals contribute significantly to nutrition, health care, income, and culture in developing countries, and the poorest and most vulnerable people often rely on those resources most. Depleting those resources or making them inaccessible can impoverish these people even further. ‘Pro‐poor conservation’—that is, conservation that aims to support poor people—explicitly seeks to address basic human needs. Such an emphasis has many potential synergies with more conventional conservation goals. Nonetheless, pro‐poor conservation requires a distinct attitude to gauging conservation outcomes and a different approach to conservation science. Biologists can make a vital contribution.
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