Conserving Tropical Forests: Can Sustainable Livelihoods Outperform Artisanal or Informal Mining?

New strategies for conserving tropical forests.

In an interval of just 1-2 decades, the nature of tropical forest destruction has changed. Rather than being dominated by rural farmers, tropical deforestation now is substantially driven by major industries and economic globalization, with timber operations, oil and gas development, large-scale farming and exotic-tree plantations being the most frequent causes of forest loss. Although instigat...

Estimating Sustainable Timber Production from Tropical Forests

Natural forests in the humid tropics differ from temperate and plantation forests in several ways: there may be many tree species; many of these may occur infrequently; there may be a large range of tree sizes and shapes present; tree ages may be unknown and indeterminate; and despite the luxuriant appearance some rainforests, growth rates may be relatively low. This has many implications for t...

Governance and Sustainable Livelihoods

Sustainable Management of Tropical Forests Can Reduce Carbon Emissions and Stabilize Timber Production

1 School of Environment, Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Khlong Luang, Thailand, 2 Centre for Conservation Science and Technology, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia, 3 Graduate School of Applied Informatics, University of Hyogo, Kobe, Japan, 4 Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA, USA, 5 U.S. Department of Agricultu...

Sustainable Livelihoods Guidance Sheets

Effective policies, institutions and processes (PIP) are recognised as essential in sustaining livelihoods. Together, they shape poor people’s livelihood options. Although the importance of policy and institutional issues is widely recognised, approaches to reform are generally poorly understood. This section of the Guidance Sheets focuses on the concepts, methods and tools needed to help desig...