Ecologists and Forest Conservation 481(Chapter 26, this volume), the drivers of forest
conversion vary from region to region, with poor
people trying to survive and rich people trying
to get richer being equally to blame. Unfortu-
nately for forests and despite hopes to the contrary,
logging is lucrative, especially when followed by
forest conversion to cattle ranches or commodity
crops such as soybeans and oil palm (e.g., Rice
et al. 1997, Pearceet al. 2002, Niestenet al.
2004, Chomitz 2007). Although the profits from
tropical forest-destroying activities are not shared
equitably, entire nations can benefit from forest
exploitation if natural capital is converted into
social capital (Luckert and Williamson 2005).
Malaysia, for example, is well known for having
“cashed in” its forests. Although the government
failed to capture much of the revenue it was
due from timber companies (Repetto and Gillis
1988), logging profits fueled economic develop-
ment but at the expense of the forest. In other
words, the biological costs of this macroeco-
nomic success were substantial. The rich forests
that blanketed the country have mostly been
replaced by oil palm plantations, some of which
are now being cleared for sprawling suburbs and
traffic-choked highways (F.E. Putz personal obser-
vation). At the other end of the development
gradient, the mostly poor people in rural com-
munities across the tropics now control at least
21% of the world’s remaining tropical forests
(White and Martin 2002). The combined effects
of millions of small-scale farmers on tropical
forests are substantial, but rural communities
have also instituted forest protection programs
that now cover an area equivalent to that which
is included in nature preserves demarcated by
central governments (Molnaret al. 2004). In
Brazil alone, indigenous groups now have title to
about 1× 106 km^2 (Schwartzman and Zimmer-
man 2005). Whether these lands are protected
and well managed depends in part on interac-
tions between visiting conservation biologists and
the property owners, which are sometimes good
(e.g., Zimmermanet al. 2001) and sometimes not
so good (e.g., Colchester 1996).
Many of the tropical forests where conservation
needs to happen are in frontier areas characterized
by poverty, insecure land tenure, and lawless-
ness (Rudel 2005). It is critical to kee pin mind
that armed insurrections and full-scale wars are
currently underway in about two dozen places in
the tropics (Álvarez 2003, McNeely 2003, Price
2003) and approximately 50% of tropical for-
est logging is illegal (e.g., Ravenelet al. 2004).
Even where local people recognize the value of
their forests as reliable long-term sources of food,
medicines, and building materials, they are forced
to address the challenge of short-term survival
in what are sometimes destructive ways. In most
places,localempowerment,improvedgovernance,
and poverty alleviation are prerequisites for con-
servation (Sanderson 2004) – necessary but not
always sufficient. The message is that forests will
be protected out of enlightened self-interest only
where social, economic, and political conditions
allow (Figure 28.1). Fortunately, while the beliefs
upon which Western neoliberal economics are
based are not universally held (e.g., the benefits
of privatization and globalization; Wade 2004),
there is some evidence that respect for nature is
a characteristic shared by many cultures around
the world (Selin 2003).CONSERVATION OPPORTUNITIES
Before considering further how ecologists could
contribute more substantially to the conserva-
tion of tropical forests, it might help to describe
some of the approaches that are having real con-
servation impacts. The examples we discuss are
mostly market-based and motivated by recogni-
tion that the costs of tropical forest conservation
are often borne by local people whereas the ben-
efits (e.g., protected biodiversity and sequestered
carbon) are enjoyed globally or at least beyond
the forest boundaries (e.g., maintained hydrolog-
ical functions). Various ways of capturing these
“externalities” (i.e., values that are not included
in standard financial cost–benefit analyses) are
being employed to make conservation a more
economically attractive option to the people who
determine forest fates (Wunder 2007 ).
Where forest protection entails relocation of
forest-dwelling people or substantial restrictions
on their forest-based activities, financial com-
pensation for their lost livelihoods is ethically
warranted and might promote conservation