Changes in national forest areas during 1990–2000 are contrasted with other variables to illustrate correlations and provoke discussion about possible causes. Twenty-five statistically-significant correlations (including rural population, life expectancy, GDP, literacy, commerce, agriculture, poverty and inflation) are illustrated and a statistical model suggests that good governance, alternative employment opportunities, and payments for environmental services may be effective in combating deforestation. The data suggest that a global forest convention may need to be supported by substantial and carefully-targeted development assistance to foster good governance.

Weighted goal programming (WGP) is employed to reconcile the goals of food security, improved incomes and woodland conservation in households from selected sites in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The three goals are attainable simultaneously, albeit with trade-offs useful in guiding development of rural development policies. The WGP model provides a framework for evaluating impact, on the household goals and woodland condition, of some macroeconomic and sectoral policies and demographic changes.

This short paper continues the regular reporting of performance of successive rotations of pine grown on a 15–17 year rotation in the Usutu Forest, Swaziland. Evidence suggests that the mean height of 5–6 year old fourth rotation P. patula is significantly greater than in all preceding rotations. The increase in mean height of 6–10% probably arises from genetic improvement. Factors of hail damage and variable stocking affect the comparison but do not invalidate the significant overall conclusion.

In view of the intensive management of the highly productive plantations on the relatively poor soils at Usutu, namely short rotations, no thinning, and a clearfelling silvicultural system, the data reported here augur well for the sustainability (narrowsense) of plantations more generally.

Small Island Developing States like the Caribbean islands face a challenge in securing watersheds and freshwater to service competing water demands from various economic sectors. Processes of prioritisation for access to water often lack equity, represent the interests of industrial demands, and marginalize interests and water needs of the poor. Regional Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers are based on traditional economic indicators and give scant attention to the poverty and forest resource nexus and therefore inadequately reflect the actual and potential role of forest resources in alleviating rural poverty. Poverty related issues were once perceived as solely the domain of government ministries responsible for social affairs. However, there has been a shift and many sectors, including the forests and watershed management sector, now strive to incorporate poverty reduction elements in policy formulation. The challenge remains one of coordinating strategies under various portfolios for poverty reduction while ensuring access to water and forest resources by the poor.

Devolution poses serious challenges to forest departments as it radically transforms their dealings with local people. Forest departments need to develop mechanisms for monitoring, analyzing, and adapting devolution policies in a timely and efficient manner. This paper discusses a tool developed in Vietnam for assessing local outcomes of devolution. The paper describes the social and analytical processes underlying the collaborative development of the assessment tool. Results from its application in ten villages in Dak Lak province suggest that the tool provides an effective and feasible way for forest departments to generate relevant information about local outcomes of forest devolution. Assessments such as the one in Dak Lak can make important contributions to learning-oriented approaches to forest devolution.

Timber is an important commodity in African towns. This paper reports the findings from research into the supply of timber to Dar es Salaam and Mwanza (Tanzania). Tanzania has reserves of hardwood timber in the natural forest and softwood timber in plantations. Information gathered from consumers, producers and traders was used to estimate consumption, analyse changing patterns of supply and assess sustainability. Analysis of the hardwood supply system (presented as a sub-sector diagram) found it to be ‘slippery’, evolving in response to diminishing resources and a cumbersome and ineffective regulatory regime. With the advent of pit-sawing and other changes, control over the cutting of timber in the natural forest has been lost. Regaining control is unlikely unless effective local community participation can be established. Sustainable management in the plantations is achievable and offers the best chance of ensuring a supply of timber to meet future demands.

A chain of custody (CoC) certification system tracks material arising in certified forests to the market place. It often covers the entire value chain from the forest, through manufacturing to the consumer, and it ensures that only certified products are able to be identified with an eco-label in the market place. CoC also ensures that material from controversial sources is not used in eco-labelled products. Conceptually, there are three principal CoC accounting options:

Forest-related issues are addressed in several international agreements but the negotiation process that currently focuses solely on forests is the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF). Over the past 10–15 years, political opinions have diverged on whether there should be a binding convention on forests. This matter should inter alia have been decided at UNFF-5 in May 2005. No agreement was, however, reached and decisions about the future were postponed until UNFF-6 in 2006. This paper explores firstly the fact that there appears to be little consensus about why the international forest process is needed, and secondly, what is needed at the global political level and how these needs can be met. Seven options are discussed and the best possibility appears to be a combination of the already existing agreements and organizations. The paper also discusses what can be expected of UNFF-6.

The campaign for community forestry in upland areas of northern Thailand reflects an ‘arborealised’ perspective on upland agriculture. ‘Arborealisation’ is defined as the process whereby upland livelihoods are recast as forest livelihoods. As a result of an ‘arborealised’ perspective, securing rights to forest resources has come to be seen as the key to enhancing the livelihoods and tenure security of upland farmers. However, the emphasis of proposed community forest legislation on communally managed forest resources means that it will do little to enhance the tenure security of farmers in relation to agricultural land. An alternative, and more realistic, approach may require rethinking of attitudes towards the environment, agricultural commercialisation and the state.

Like most other species, sustainable management of mahogany in natural forests ultimately relies on continued seed production by the population. Because larger trees produce more fruit, previous authors have emphasised the importance of retaining large trees. In this paper, we investigate levels of fruit production of mahogany in two ecologically distinct forests. Fecundity was related to tree size in some years, but this relationship was neither consistent nor strong. The contribution of any given size class to population-level fruit production depended on both its fecundity and its relative abundance and this differed between forests. The fecundity of small and medium-sized trees was also significantly different between forests and this was consistent with patterns of increased crown exposure caused by differences in forest structure. From a forest management perspective, these results suggest that size-fecundity relationships are insufficient to guide forest management prescriptions without also quantifying the size structure of the population.