The advance of the agricultural frontier constitutes the biggest source of deforestation in Central America today. This conversion of tropical forests into agricultural land and pasture is the direct result of individual land use decisions. This paper presents a simple analytical model of household land use, followed by an econometric analysis of household survey data from the Río San Juan region of Nicaragua in order to test for consistency with the model.

Using the framework of the Land Use and Cover Change (LUCC) Science/Research Plan this study takes 152 studies of deforestation in different regions of varying size from around the tropics and analyses them to assess how important different causes of deforestation really are.

Focusing on smallholders’ decision making, this report presents trade-offs among the key development objectives - environmental sustainability, economic growth, and poverty alleviation - affecting forest use in two settlements in the western Brazilian Amazon.

The aim of the research is to analyse the landscape structure changes from the end of the Soviet times in 1974–1986 until 2005 when market economy existed in Lithuania. The changes of landscape structure were observed in 100 sample areas (squares) each of them having 2.5 km2 area and distributed in different landscape types. The changes in sample areas (squares) with determination of land cover structure transformations were observed using topographic photos and ortophoto images at a scale 1:10 000.

Recent debate about how timber prices affect deforestation has focused mainly on how log export bans (imposed in many developing countries to protect domestic timber processing) affect deforestation. One side argues that the lower domestic timber prices that result from banning log exports increase deforestation by making forestry less profitable than competing land uses, such as agriculture. The other argues that lower timber prices reduce profits from logging, so they slow down deforestation caused by logging.

The rapid expansion of commodity agriculture in tropical forest landscapes is a key driver of deforestation. To meet the growing demand from a more prosperous and expanding global population, it is imperative to develop sustainable commodity supply chains that support higher agricultural productivity, and that enable improved environmental, economic, and social outcomes. Interventions by community, market, and state actors can enhance the sustainability of supply chains by affecting where and how agricultural production occurs.

The purpose of the work presented in this report is to demonstrate that policymakers have tools at their disposal that provide significant help in the evaluation of trade-offs, opportunities, and repercussions of the policies under consideration. This report focuses on Colombia, however the analytical framework can be applied to any country interested in exploring country-wide effects and economic viability of policies that aim to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture. Results provided in this study should be seen as an example of the potential applications of the framework developed.

Rural roads promote economic development, but they also facilitate deforestation.

To explore this tradeoff, this article develops a spatially explicit model of land use

and estimates probabilities of alternative land uses as a function of land characteristics

and distance to market using a multinomial logit specification of this model.

Controls are incorporated for the endogeneity of road placement.

The model is applied to data for southern Belize, an area experiencing rapid

The Vision of the present cross-sectoral Forestry Strategy 2020 (FS2020) establishes that by 2020, the Government of the Lao PDR envisages a sizeable, vigorous and robust forestry sector continuing in its role as one of the leading sectors advancing national socio-economic development. A sector in which scientifically-managed natural production forests generate timber and non-timber products at sustainable levels with village participation, under supervision and technical support from well-staffed, well-trained local and national government units.

El Programa Estratégico Forestal para México 2025 es un documento multisectorial, de cobertura nacional, que establece las bases y estrategias para formular planes y programas operacionales de corto, mediano y largo plazos, orientados al uso sustentable de los recursos forestales.

The overall Goal of the present cross-sectoral Policy is sustainable development, management, utilization and conservation of forest resources and equitable sharing of accrued benefits for the present and future generations of the people of Kenya.

The overall aim of the present Forest and Wildlife Policy is the conservation and sustainable development of forest and wildlife resources for the maintenance of environmental stability and continuous flow of optimum benefits from the socio-cultural and economic goods and services that the forest environment provides to the present and future generations whilst fulfilling Ghana’s commitments under international agreements and conventions.