Technology will help to address the challenges for sustainable forestry in the 21st century. Some of the challenges will include the shift of production from native forest to plantations in areas of comparative advantage, more efficient processing delinking end-use products from raw wood characteristics, increased demand, better information technologies to support decision makers, and more options for conserving biodiversity.

Swidden agriculture in tropical Asia is a diverse practice, making it difficult to draw general conclusions on trends of the development of swidden fallow secondary forests (SFSF). There is, however, sufficient evidence to recognise trends of a gradual intensification often through the incorporation of extensive tree crop production in SFSF, or a direct conversion to intensive tree cash cropping. Factors contributing to the changes include emerging markets for cash crops or timber and pulp wood production, government policies and development projects, fire, and population pressures.

In 1994 Cameroon adopted a new forest law that focussed on the large-scale, export-oriented industrial forest sector while timber produced through small-scale logging for the domestic market was ignored, even in official statistics, and is generally produced without a valid permit. As Cameroon prepares to implement the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) it recently signed with the European Union, promising a legal framework for all national timber production, this occasional paper presents a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the country’s domestic timber market.

Agricultural soils in the tropics have undergone significant declines in their native carbon stock through the long-term use of extractive farming practices. However, these soils have significant capacity to sequester CO2 through the implementation of improved land management practices. This paper reviews the published and grey literature related to the influence of improved land management practices on soil carbon stock in the tropics.

Most forests in Sri Lanka are secondary, are mostly confined to the dry and intermediate zones of the country, and arise out of swidden agriculture. The majority of secondary forests which regenerate after swidden farming in the dry parts of Sri Lanka are grown from vegetative parts, that are from remaining roots and stumps. Secondary forests provide numerous products of importance to local people. They also help to bridge seasonal gaps in livelihoods.

Secondary forests comprise a large and growing proportion of the forest cover in the tropics and are very important at the local, national and regional levels for a wide range of products and environmental services. However, knowledge and expertise regarding secondary forests is still limited, and they are inadequately addressed in forest policy, planning and research.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol raised the hopes of many, that payment for carbon sequestration services would provide a significant incentive for sustainable management practices in industrial forestry in tropical countries. Data to assess how realistic these hopes are, remain scant and high degree of uncertainty about CDM rules make assessment hazardous. The analysis in this paper focuses on the potential for using carbon trading to stimulate adoption of reduced impact logging (RIL)-based sustainable forest management.

The methods used to value tropical forests have the potential to influence how policy makers and others perceive forest landsforestlands. A small number of valuation studies achieve real impact. These are generally succinct accounts supporting a specific perception. However, such reports risk being used to justify inappropriate actions. The end users of such results are rarely those who produced them and misunderstanding of key details is a concern. One defence is to ensure that the ultimate users appreciate shortcomings and common pitfalls.