Population, development and tropical deforestation: a cross-national study

The ecological perspective identifies growing populations of peasant or subsistence cultivators as the chief cause of tropical deforestation. The second perspective on the causes of tropical deforestation is the political-economic one. Cross-national data on tropical deforestation are found in two data sets, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) production data and data from an FAO-United Nations Environmental Program study. A cross-national study which includes African, Asian, and Latin American countries promises to add breadth to the depth of understanding available in the case studies. If the same study can provide partial tests of the adequacy of the population-growth and capital-availability…