Satisfaction of communities living close to forests with forest management authorities is essential for ensuring continued support for conservation efforts. However, more often than not, community satisfaction is not systematically elicited, analyzed, and incorporated in conservation decisions.

Forest data from the recent period of rapid growth in China show interesting macroeconomic and population impacts on the forest.

Current conservation debates place high emphasis on the need to integrate the views and needs of local communities in conservation processes. Understanding local community perceptions of forest management and the factors that influence these perceptions is important for designing management policies that are sensitive to their needs. However, more often than not local communities’ perceptions do not receive as much attention as they deserve.

This paper reviews the state of economic understanding about fuelwood in developing countries. It synthesizes the main results from numerous empirical studies with the intent of identifying implications for policy and pointing out where important questions remain unanswered.

This brief is a summary of the main outcomes of a forest policy workshop on “Policies to increase forest cover in Ethiopia” held on 18-19 September 2007 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Proceedings of a policy workshop on Policies to increase forest cover in Ethiopia held on 18-19 September 2007 at Global Hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Managed forest ecosystems like shade coffee supply valuable ecological services. Yet little is known about the drivers and characteristics of clearing in such systems.

As with other components of its receding planned economy, China’s state forestry sector faces growing pressure to reform, restructure and liberalize, with policymakers considering the tradeoffs between the shorter-term social welfare impacts versus the longer-term goals of economic and environmental sustainability.

This is a book chapter in Plantations, Privatization, Poverty and Power: Changing Ownership and Management of State Forests, edited by M. Garforth and J. Mayers. Earthscan: London.

This is a guest speech when Prof Xu was attending the OECD Roundtable for Sustainable Development, January 8-9, 2007, Paris.