In the literature about macroeconomics and deforestation, it is often supposed that strong foreign exchange outflows (e.g. debt service) increase deforestation, as higher poverty augments frontier migration and natural resources are squeezed to generate export revenues. This paper analyses the opposite phenomenon, i.e.

Population pressures play less of a role in deforestation than earlier studies of Thailand found. Between 1976 and 1989, Thailand lost 28 percent ofits forest cover.

A recent eighteen-month economic study of the benefits of alternative uses of forest and in Ratanakiri province recommends the exclusion of customary forest land from current and future commercial concessions.

This study analyses seven factors used to explain the conversion of forest to pasture in Central America between 1979 and 1994: 1) favourable markets for livestock products; 2) subsidised credit and road construction; 3) land-tenure policies; 4) limited technological change in livestock production; 5) policies which reduce timber values; 6) reduced levels of political violence; and 7) character

There have been several major research efforts on the rate and causes of Indonesia's deforestation in recent years and much associated literature, but there is still no consensus in the research community on these issues. This paper reviews the areas of uncertainty and confusion, and proposes questions that must be answered to get a better grasp of the subject.

The area northwest of Mt Kenya is undergoing rapid land use changes caused by a population influx. Rapid population growth and subsequent pressure on land raise the problem of how to increase and sustain agricultural production while at the same time conserving the natural resources (montane forest with Olea africana and Juniperus procera as main species at 2900 m asl.).

This paper outlines FAO's past and present activities on combating desertification, with particular emphasis on the Near East Region, in an attempt to mobilise all the potential efforts towards the establishment of an adequate strategy to enable this particular part of the world to build efficient regional and national programmes to combat resource degradation, restore land productivity and ach

The survey of tropical forests reported here was developed and implemented with the aim of providing detailed and reliable information on the process of on-going chenges in the tropical forest cover, in order to meet the needs of researchers, policy makers and the public at large.

The Fourth International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources, organized in Leipzig, Germany 17-23 June 1996 (see this number of the Forest Genetic Resources bulletin [FGR]), adopted a Global Plan of Action for the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.This plan excluded consideration of forest genetic resources, "..