Deforestation

This book provides an up-to-date picture of the health of the world’s tropical forests. Claude Martin, an eminent scientist and conservationist, integrates information from remote imaging, ecology, and economics to explain deforestation and forest health throughout the world. He explains how urbanization, an increasingly global economy, and a worldwide demand for biofuels put new pressure on rainforest land. He examines the policies and market forces that have successfully preserved forests in some areas and discusses the economic benefits of protected areas.

This book conveys how sustainable land management practices are helping shape a sustainable future for people and the planet. It demonstrates how human ingenuity is largely driving innovations in soil, land, water, and vegetation management around the world. And it describes how harnessing natural, social, and cultural capital is addressing fundamental needs for livelihood and well-being—food, water, energy, and wealth—while delivering global environmental benefits.

This book is the first comprehensive introduction to the issues surrounding the health of people living in and around forests, particularly in Asia, South America and Africa.

The Amazon region is the focus of intense conflict between conservationists concerned with deforestation and advocates of agro-industrial development. This book focuses on the contributions of environmental organizations to the preservation of Brazilian Amazonia. It reveals how environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and others have fought fiercely to stop deforestation in the region.

This document discusses the potential for designing pro-poor systems for the distribution of benefits derived from the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) in the Yucatan Peninsula (comprised by the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatan), Mexico.

The Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) consortium was formed in 1992 by a group of concerned national and international research institutions to address the global and local issues associated with this form of agriculture. With contributions from agronomists, foresters, economists, ecologists, and anthropologists, this book synthesizes the first decade of ASB's work. It assesses the environmental, economic, and social impact of deforestation and identifies the costs and benefits of alternative uses of forests and cleared land.

The Responsive Forest Governance Initiative (RFGI) is an Africa-wide environmental-governance research and training program focusing on enabling responsive and accountable decentralization to strengthen the representation of forest-based rural people in local-government decision making. This Working Paper series will publish the RFGI case studies as well as other comparative studies of decentralized natural resources governance in Africa and elsewhere that focus on the intersection between local democracy and natural resource management schemes.

The impacts of oil palm plantations have been widely ignored, and given widespread promotion of these plantations throughout the tropics, the World Rainforest Movement decided to bring together research and local struggles in this book, aimed as a tool for action. Presented are three representative cases for each continent -- Cameroon, Ecuador and Indonesia -- as well as a general overview and examples from other countries.