Much of the native forest in the highlands of western Kenya has been converted to agricultural land in order to feed the growing population, and more land is being cleared. In tropical Africa, this land use change results in progressive soil degradation, as the period of cultivation increases. Both rates and variation in infiltration, soil carbon concentration and other soil parameters are influenced by management within agricultural systems, but they have rarely been well documented in East Africa.

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. The paper looks at how technological change interacted with other government policies and examines general equilibrium effects on product and labor markets as well as the direct on-farm effects. In southern Brazil new technologies made large-scale mechanized soybean production more profitable.

Case study for the report "Institutional innovations in African smallholder carbon projects" available at http://hdl.handle.net/10568/21222

This chapter spells out the theoretical framework for the discussion and case studies of the book. First, it provides precise definitions of technological change and classify technological change into different types based on their factor intensities. The discussion starts off with a single farm household. Two key concepts for understanding how that household will respond to technological changes are economic incentives and constraints. The former relates to how new technologies influence the economic return of different activities.

The purpose of this lecture note is to summarise different research results about the impact of macro-level factors and “extra-sectoral” policies on tropical forest cover. Specifically, we are interested in the forest margins - i.e. the spatial transition zone between tropical forests and converted land uses. What are the policy factors that accelerate frontier expansion, and which ones tend to slow it down? The main objectives are: a. To learn how different changes related to trade and macroeconomic policies affect the loss of frontier forests, i.e.

The ongoing expansion of oil palm plantations in the humid tropics, especially in Southeast Asia, is generating considerable concern and debate. Amid industry and environmental campaigners’ claims, it can be hard to perceive reality. Is oil palm a valuable route to sustainable development or a costly road to environmental ruin? Inevitably, any answer depends on many choices. But do decision makers have the information they require to avoid pitfalls and make the best decisions? This review examines what we know and what we don’t know about oil palm developments.

The dynamics of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon are complex. A growing debate considers the extent to which deforestation is a result of the expansion of the Brazilian soy industry. Most recent analyses suggest that deforestation is driven by the expansion of cattle ranching, rather than soy. Soy seems to be replacing previously deforested land and/or land previously under pasture.

The United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD) commissioned this report from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) to summarize the current state of negotiations towards a decision in Copenhagen, specifically outlining areas of consensus, options for resolving areas where consensus has not yet been reached, and priorities for research to support successful implementation of an international REDD Programme following a decision at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Copenhage