Tropical Forests: Regional Paths of Destruction and Regeneration in the Late Twentieth Century

The destruction of tropical forests has figured prominently on the global environmental agenda since the 1970s. Yet clearing rates in many tropical regions show no sign of slowing. The consequences of this ongoing environmental disaster are both local and global: loss of water regulation, soils, and biodiversity and emissions of large quantities of carbon dioxide, which are threatening to disrupt the global climate. Understanding the drivers behind tropical deforestation, as a basis for forging effective conservation polices, is therefore an imperative scientific endeavor. The scientific literature is ripe with case studies on the causes of deforestation in different regions and locales. Drawing upon more than a hundred of these, Thomas K. Rudel in Tropical Forests: Regional Paths of Destruction and Regeneration in the Late Twentieth Century tries to synthesize the knowledge amassed. The result is a broad, yet detailed, depiction of the ever-changing landscape of tropical deforestation. Although Tropical Forests is not the first meta-analysis on the causes of tropical deforestation, it differs from, and outshines, its predecessors in several ways. First, whereas many meta-analyses tend to put the quantitative results of the methodology at center stage, the focus here is on building an articulate and coherent narrative from the underlying material. This makes Tropical Forests a highly enjoyable read. In a subject in which it sometimes is hard to see the forest for all the trees, the book succeeds in striking a balance between the details: the complex socioeconomic processes driving deforestation at a local level and the bigger picture: regional patterns and causations behind forest clearing. Second, Tropical Forests attempts to map the temporal shift in the drivers of deforestation, which in some regions have been significant. The focus is on differences between the 1980s and 1990s, but in brief recapitulations Rudel tracks land-use change patterns and destructive practices further back in history, for some regions back to the 16th century. These historical résumés clearly illustrate how land-use decisions at all times have been shaped by a multitude of factors, influenced by both local and global market forces and policy. However, an important lesson from the temporal analysis is that the role of the state in propelling forest clearing has dwindled over time, while the importance of corporations, mainly large soybean producers and logging firms, has increased. Third, Tropical Forests’ most novel contribution to the already large body of literature on tropical deforestation is the focus on forest size and how this factor affects the casual chains leading to forest loss in different regions, as well as the prospects for forest conservation. A case in point is the theory of forest transitions—when and where net deforestation turns from positive to negative—which is analyzed from the angle of small and large forests. In the tropics, forest transitions have occurred in forest-scarce regions, notably South Asia, where local communities have reacted to a rapidly diminishing resource. However, the likelihood of such a transition occurring in the forest-rich regions experiencing the highest levels of deforestation today, i.e., Latin America and Southeast Asia, is negligible. Neither is the kind of forest transition that has occurred in some forest-rich, developed countries (induced by labor scarcity and agricultural intensification [1]) likely to be replicated in Latin America and Southeast Asia, where deforestation chiefly is driven by highly profitable and less labor-intensive industries, cattle ranching, and logging. Consequently, the book mainly sees opportunities for policydriven forest conservation in forest-scarce regions. Somewhat disappointing, it offers little policy advice, or hope, for how to save the large tracts of tropical forests remaining in forest-rich regions. A deliberation on the prospects of climate policy as a tool for reducing deforestation would have been welcome. Discussions on the possibility of including tropical deforestation in a future international climate regime are currently under way in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and, given the apparent failure in reducing deforestation rates to date, many people see this as a golden opportunity. Still, doubts can be cast on the possible effect a climate regime alone will have on deforestation rates (2). For a climate regime to be effective, the incentive for reduced deforestation at the international level must translate to an incentive at the local level. How to make this link is an issue that until now has received little attention, and Tropical Forests, unfortunately, does not fill this knowledge gap. However, this shortfall, together with some other minor blemishes (the regional forest maps in the book are close to illegible and the presentation of the quantitative analytical results confounding), weighs light compared to the overall qualities of the book. In all, Tropical Forests is an excellent and well-written piece of work on an urgent topic. It is highly recommended reading both for scientists and for policy makers interested in arresting the ecological crisis tropical deforestation constitutes.