path normally refers to wood and timber, it may also be applied to Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP). This effect of forest scarcity generating higher forest rent is found in the world’s most populous countries China and India, assisted by government policies and large-scale development aid programs in tree planting.

One of the most thorough studies of the rise of forest through the rise of forest rent is the study of India by Foster and Rosenzweig (2003). They argue strongly that the increase in forest cover observed in India over the past five decades are due to higher demand for forest products. The higher prices of forest products – fuelwood in particular – have provided a strong incentive for forest conservation and tree planting. Their analysis also rejects the Borlaug hypothesis – higher agricultural productivity has _not_ increased local forest cover. Neither did higher wages lead to reforestation (the economic development path discussed above).

The forest recovery is not only due to scarcity of forest products. Loss of forest ecological functions (real or perceived) may result in policy changes to promote forest conservation. Institutional and policy changes may be initiated at national levels based on national and international pressure from environmental groups, or initiated at local levels based on visible effects on the local environment or from significant local dependence on forests. High local forest dependence provides, however, a dual incentive for local forest conservation efforts, as demonstrated by the contrasting experience of two forest co-management areas in Malawi (Jumbe and Angelsen, 2006).

In other contexts institutional reforms can be effective, including community forest management as discussed in section 2.5. Bray et al. (2004) argue that institutional reforms – both from above and below – in the Mayan zone in Mexico were sufficiently strong to avoid the phase of deforestation (stage 2) altogether.

The general pace of (economic) development may also create a number of changes which all contribute to forest conservation: (i) increased capacity for forest management and better enforcement of ‘the rule of law’, (ii) higher demand for environmental services, including raising public awareness of forest cover loss (emerging ‘civil society’), (iii) more transparency and focus on, for example, illegal logging and ‘forest mining’; (iv) firewood and charcoal are gradually being replaced by kerosene, gas and electricity as fuel sources. Mather (2001) argues that the latter played a significant role in the forest transition in Europe.

Policy changes can play an important role in stabilizing the forest cover. For example, geopolitics drove the creation of frontier colonization programs where distance made political controls problematic. With additional settlement and better infrastructure (and much of the forest gone), these places become closer to the center and less politically problematic, making the geopolitical rationales for expansion disappear.<sup>37</sup> Finally, one should note that the type of forest recovery observed during stage 4 will be different depending on whether the economic development or the forest scarcity path is followed. In the former case relatively more land will revert to unmanaged forests through natural regrowth. Under the forest scarcity path a relatively large share is likely to be in the form of managed forests and plantations.

# **3.3 Stages in FT across the tropical world**

Figure 7 distinguishes between four distinct phases in the forest transition. This section provides a further discussion of each of them, and relates them to regional patterns of forest cover change. It draws heavily on Rudel (2005), who gives a comprehensive overview of – as the subtitle of the books suggests – “regional paths of destruction and regeneration in the late twentieth century”.

> 37 I am grateful to Tom Rudel for suggesting this link between the two approaches.

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