Private gains from deforestation can be sometimes miniscule and sometimes huge

Private gains from deforestation vary tremendously between places, technologies and land use systems. Profits from deforestation range from near zero to thousand of dollars a hectare.

In some places, there are huge incentives to convert or degrade forest.

• In Cameroon, oil palm and intensive cocoa cultivation has a net present value of more than $1,400 a hectare.
• In Brazil's cerrado, some conversions result in land values over $3,000 a hectare.
• And India offers very high values for land devoted to coffee cultivation in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot.

In other places, conversion results in low-value land

• Mean land values are just $400 a hectare in the Atlantic forest of Bahia, Brazil.
• Low-value land uses are also reported in Indonesia, Uganda and the Cameroonian forest frontier.

Where conditions are amenable to crops such as soybeans, oil palm, or cocoa, and where old growth timber is still standing, deforesters are rewarded with thousands of dollars per hectare.

On marginal lands, lands far from markets, or where agricultural technologies are unavailable, there may be little incentive beyond the ability to eke out a living at the going wage.

The losses from deforestation can be local and/or global