Deforestación

A University of Leeds collaborative study has probed links between environmental change and famine – two problems perceived to lie at the heart of Africa’s current crisis – in the context of another all too often linked to the continent - warfare and civil unrest.

Everyone agrees that logging and agriculture can cause deforestation. But does shifting cultivation, or ‘slash and burn’ farming destroy forests particularly? Are local farmers solely to blame? Recent research by Overseas Development Institute (ODI) suggests the role of shifting farming in starting forest fires has been exaggerated. It is not, in fact, a major cause of biodiversity loss.

Using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model this report identifies the links among economic growth, poverty alleviation, and natural resource degradation in Brazil.

In this paper, we present an intensification model based on the intensity of exploitation and use of forests and forest lands as a relevant framework for analysing the appearance, dynamics, and evolution of different types of secondary forests.

Do improvements in agricultural technology protect or endanger tropical forests? This book examines this controversial issue. It includes both theoretical frameworks for analysing the issue as well as case studies covering a wide range of geographical regions, technologies, market conditions and types of agricultural procedures.

This chapter summarises the key insights from the case studies included in the book. First, it discusses the technology-deforestation link in six different types of cases: developed countries, commodity booms, shifting cultivation, permanent upland (rainfed) agriculture, irrigated (lowland) agriculture, and cattle production.

What policy lessons derive from the half-century of banana expansion in the coastal region? For that whole period bananas had a catalytic role in promoting coastal deforestation. At first, this was mostly through direct banana frontier expansion. Later the gradual settlement effects proved key.

This introductory chapter sets the scene for the discussion in the edited volume on how new agricultural affects tropical forests. It critically reviews four hypotheses that have been central in the claim that better technologies help protect forests: the Borlaug, the subsistence, the economic development and the land degradation-deforestation hypotheses.

Land degradation is a great threat for the future and it requires great effort and resources to ameliorate. The major causes of land degradation in Ethiopia are the rapid population increase, severe soil loss, deforestation, low vegetative cover and unbalanced crop and livestock production.

This final chapter of the book offers a set of policy recommendations. It presents some typical win-win outcomes, including technologies suited for forest poor areas, labour intensive technologies promoting intensification to replace land extensive farming practices, and promoting agricultural systems that provide environmental services similar to those of natural forests.

This conference proceedings contains 26 papers based on the activities of partner institutions that the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has facilitated.

This paper looks at the impact of the introduction of new soybean technologies on the clearing of natural vegetation (forest and savanna) in southern Brazil, the Brazilian Cerrado, and Santa Cruz, Bolivia.