Poverty reduction by tropical forests: rhetoric or a viable option?

摘要

This paper is aimed to respond to the most essential issue raised in its title. Both income (GDP/capita) and Human Development Index as national poverty measures are regressed with relative forest area as a dependant variable, and with population density, Corruption Perception Index and some other independent variables in 35-83 tropical countries covering 70—95 percent of the total tropical forest area. It was found that the two poverty variables were strongly correlated with the relative forest area. It was deduced that high population density at low income levels advances forest degradation, deforestation and desertification. The deteriorated forest environment increases poverty, which in turn increases population pressure on the remaining forest, and so on in a vicious cycle. The prevailing practice of administrative pricing of the standing timber undervalues the tropical forest. Therefore, the opportunity cost of sustainable forestry remains artificially too high and is expanding deforestation with corruption and some other causes underlying the local visible agents of deforestation. The widely prevailing corruption in the tropics is blocking the effectiveness of both the government policies and the market means, which are the only ways to control the allocation, production and distribution of forest products and services. Finland never had any wide scale corruption and it has therefore had less government and market failures than the tropical countries. In Finland increasing exports of forest products have made forestry more profitable and agricultural fields more productive and they have in this way reduced poverty on a national scale. In the tropics increasing exports have advanced deforestation with minimal impacts in poverty reduction. Finland, Costa Rica, Republic of Korea, Sweden and Japan all have transited into sustainable forestry practices. They all share prevailing private forest ownership and advanced political, social, human, financial, natural and physical capitals, while most of the tropical countries are lacking such endowments as a balanced mix. Therefore, poverty reduction on a national scale by the tropical forests will remain as rhetoric for the time being. It may become a viable option only in a couple of decades with reducing corruption and a major devolution of the prevailing socialistic forestry.