About 800 million people--many of whom are extremely poor--live in or around tropical forests and woodlands, depending on them heavily for much of their food, fuel, and income.
Tropical forests are shrivelling before our eyes Satellites allow us to watch forests burn in real time. Tropical forests are shrinking at about 5 percent a decade. This may not sound like very much, but it implies annual forest loss of an area the size of Portugal. Pressures on forests will not disappear soon. Croplands, pastures and plantations are expanding into natural forests and will likely do so for the next 30 to 50 years. A huge rural population relies on low-productivity agriculture for subsistence. A growing, increasingly wealthy urban population demands commodities produced at the forest's edge: beef, palm oil, coffee, soybeans, and chocolate. Generalizations about poverty and deforestation make a poor foundation for policy The relationship between poverty and deforestation eludes simple generalizations. Assumptions such as 'poverty causes deforestation' and 'deforestation causes poverty' are a poor foundation for policy. Poor subsistence farmers do cut down trees, but so do rich ranchers and plantation owners. Deforestation is in fact undertaken by both rich and poor people, for high and low gains. In Madagascar, poor people clear forests for tiny, unsustainable, short-term gains--as little as $39 a hectare a year, for only a few years. In Indonesia or Cameroon, households can create cocoa farms worth $1500 or more. In the Brazilian Amazon, about 80 percent of deforestation occurs in clear-cuts of 20 hectares or larger, reflecting commercial-scale activities rather than that of households. Forests can be both a geographic poverty trap as well as a route out of poverty. While deforestation often creates assets for poor people, it an also deprive them of assets. Indonesia, for instance, experiences disputes between plantation interests and local people over control of forest land. Causes of forest poverty Poverty in forests stems from remoteness and a lack of rights. The best, most accessible farming lands have long been cleared and tilled in many parts of the world. Forests and their inhabitants tend to be relegated to remote or unfavorable areas. As a result, places with high forest cover often have low poulation densities but high poverty rates. Forest dwellers are often unable to tap forest resources. Sometimes this happens when governments or wealthy interests claim forests and restrict access. In other cases, forests effectively belong to no one--with the result that their resources are degraded through overuse. In Asia, tens of millions of people live in ‘forests without trees’—state forest lands where trees have been removed but where zoning regulations make land tenure problematic. Drivers of deforestation Local conditions, incentives and constraints determine where and why deforestation occurs, and with what impacts. Low wages, good soils, favorable climate, and higher prices for agricultural goods all motivate deforestation. This suggests that road improvements or agricultural polciies that boost farm profitability will tend to accelerate deforestation. Often, people find agriculture a more profitable and attractive land use than sustainable management of forests for timber and other products.
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