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Drivers of deforestation - are we in the right track. RFUK Tropenbos WRI CIRAD.pdf

CBFP Meeting of the Parties

Efforts to conserve forests, such as through REDD in DRC and the wider Congo Basin, are largely premised  on increasingly contested deforestation analyses that point to subsistence ‘slash and burn‘ agriculture and charcoal production as the main underlying drivers of deforestation. Meanwhile, community forestry  and similar  approaches to forest protection that have proven effective elsewhere in the tropics have been largely peripheral.

A growing number  of studies are starting  to challenge the received wisdom around deforestation in the Central Africa region and more particularly DRC. Drawing  on improved data and analysis, a much more nuanced picture is emerging concerning the underlying drivers of deforestation, regrowth linked to rotational farming, the forest-farming dynamics  of the ‘rural complex’, the downstream impacts of industrial logging as well as huge local, regional  and temporal variations in  forest loss. These suggest that the current policy approaches and some large programmes may need to be reconsidered, and new approaches developed  instead.

Please download the Document here below: