Tropical forests: Present status and future outlook

Tropical forests still cover almost 8 million km² of the humid tropics. But they are being destroyed at ever-more rapid rates. In 1989 the area deforested amounted to 142 200 km², or nearly 90% more than in 1979. So whereas the 1989 total amounted to 1.8% of the remaining biome, the proportion could well continue to rise for the foreseeable future, until there is little forest left in just another few decades.Deforestation patterns are far from even throughout the biome. In much if not most of Southeast and Southern Asia, East and West Africa, and Central America, there is likely to be little forest left by the year 2000 or shortly thereafter. But in the Zaire basin, western Brazilian Amazonia and the Guyana highlands, sizeable expanses of forest could persist a good while longer.The main agent of deforestation is the shifted cultivator or displaced peasant, who, responding to land hunger and general lack of rural development in traditional farming areas of countries concerned, feels there is no alternative but to adopt a slash-and-burn lifestyle in forestlands. This person is now accounting for at least 60% of deforestation, a proportion that is expanding rapidly. Yet he receives far less policy attention than the commercial logger, the cattle rancher and other agents of deforestation.This is a summary review of a report Deforestation Rates in Tropical Forests and Their Climatic Implications, prepared by the author and Richard A. Houghton for Friends of the Earth U.K. (available from 26–28 Underwood St., London N1 7JQ). A similar review, albeit with less updating than is included here, has been published by Myers, 1990a. The original report, being five times longer than the present paper, contains much detail of deforestation assessments on a country-by-country basis, backed by 400 references. It also presents information on research methodologies and reliability of data among other background materials, plus an analysis of carbon emissions from deforestation, as well as some policy appraisal and conservation recommendations.