Files
Abstract
Forests continue to fall for agricultural purposes throughout the humid tropics, with immediate and potentially large
consequences for climate change and biodiversity loss-issues of key interest to the international community. Some of the
actors directly responsible for forest conversion fell trees to meet food security needs and alleviate poverty-issues of urgent
inte~est to them and also to national policymakers. This multiplicity of groups with differing (often conflicting) interests in the
multifarious goods and services produced by tropical forests complicates the search for alternative agricultural activities for
forest margins since these alternatives must satisfy such divergent objectives. This paper sets out a conceptual framework for
comparing the impacts of different land use systems and agricultural practices at the margins of tropical rainforests in terms of
the concerns and objectives of two key interest groups: small-scale farmers seeking livelihoods at the forest margins and the
'international' interests in the global public goods and services supplied by tropical rainforests. This framework should be
useful to a third key group, the national and regional policymakers who must consider these and other policy objectives and
then decide on courses of action. The paper identifies data needs and analytical methods capable of supplying an empirical
base for this conceptual framework, based on quantifiable indicators. It then presents preliminary results of the application of
this conceptual framework in Indonesia and Brazil in association with a global, collaborative, multidisciplinary research
program. Even using preliminary order-of-magnitude estimates (to be replaced by more precise measurements as they become
available), this conceptual framework presents results in ways that allow researchers and policymakers to select clear 'best
bets' for development, when they exist, and to assess tradeoffs and options for complementary policy action and research
efforts, when they do not. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.