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Showing items 1 through 9 of 9.
  1. Library Resource
    January, 2002

    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. The report finds that the causes of deforestation are many and varied, and that governments and international investors are also responsible.

  2. Library Resource
    January, 2002
    Philippines, Eastern Asia, Oceania

    How can the process of tropical deforestation be controlled? We now know a good deal about the causes of deforestation but not its control. Research from the University of Leeds in Thailand and the Philippines fills this gap, showing that changes in the domestic political scene explain how deforestation processes have been controlled in the two countries. Environmental constraints and increases in agricultural productivity can curb the demand for farmland to some extent.

  3. Library Resource
    January, 2002

    The 21st Century opened with a commitment to involving forest-local communities in the processes of securing and sustaining forests. But what is the relationship between people’s right to land and the manner in which they may be involved in the management of forests?

  4. Library Resource
    January, 2002
    Mozambique, Ethiopia, Namibia, Sub-Saharan Africa

    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. Land hunger and environmental depletion in the aftermath of war are often cited as causes of famine that in turn will lead to further conflict. Is such a chain reaction really at work? Is there an inevitable causal link between environmental degradation and violent conflict?

  5. Library Resource
    January, 2002

    In 1995, corrupt officials secretly awarded all of Cambodia’s unallocated forest, 35 per cent of the country’s total land area, as concessions to logging companies. How have these rogue loggers exploited political instability and weak government institutions to plunder Cambodia’s timber? Can anything be done to check the depredations of the ‘untouchables’ before Cambodia is logged out?

  6. Library Resource
    January, 2002

    As the pace of decentralisation in Africa quickens, how can external agencies help communities fulfill new management responsibilities? A study from Niger has implications for other parts of Africa where commitment to decentralised natural resource management is offering scope for radical new approaches to transferring power to local people.

  7. Library Resource
    January, 2002
    Ethiopia, Sub-Saharan Africa

    Is the formal education system the best avenue for delivery of effective environmental education? Can Ethiopia’s newly decentralised educational administrations work with other arms of government and farmers to tackle the short-term and unsustainable resource exploitation patterns which imperil prospects of ever achieving food self-sufficiency?

  8. Library Resource
    January, 2002
    Liberia, Benin, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Sub-Saharan Africa

    Kissidougou in Guinea, West Africa, is characterised by so-called 'forest islands', relics - it was assumed -of original dense forest cover. It was also assumed that local cultivation practice was to blame for the destruction of the trees. However, as collaborative research led by the School of Oriental and African Studies, the Institute of Development Studies and Guinean researchers discovered, villagers had a different story to tell: that the forest islands had in fact been established over several generations as part of a process of deliberate forest management.

  9. Library Resource
    January, 2002
    Latin America and the Caribbean

    The incidence of skin diseases, including leishmaniasis, spread by different varieties of sandflies in tropical areas has increased dramatically in humans. Because of deforestation, sandflies have encroached further into human settlements. Here they have begun to infect domestic animals and humans. What can be done to control this trend? Researchers studied the impact that insecticide impregnated curtains have had on skin leishmaniasis.

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