Under intense grassroots pressure, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela have all recognized land rights of tribes that have inhabited and conserved forests since time immemorial. Goods and services from the woods provide more money and jobs than chopping down trees, Durning finds. The scenic and recreational benefits of forests earn billions of dollars, for both the world's growing nature tourism industry and for local residents. In Belize, expert gatherers of forest products can earn two to ten times as much per hectare as farmers who clear the forest for crops. Without secure control of these resources, however, their potential for sustainable employment will be lost.
Ecological pricing is the second priority for creating a sustainable forest economy.
Virgin timber is priced far below full cost. Few attempts have been made to calculate the full, ecological prices of forest products, but they would undoubtedly be astronomical. Forests' greatest value is probably the diversity of life they contain. Unfortunately, current government policies in both North and South accelerate forest loss by subsidizing sales of timber at fire-sale prices. In the U.S., for example, the Forest Service, which long denied subsidizing logging, proposed in April 1993 that it would stop selling timber from 62 of the 156 national forests it administers because those forests had consistently lost money on timber sales.