Although there is a rationale for a more conservative management of the remaining tropical forests, policy-makers in the tropical countries tend to be reluctant to implement appropriate policy measures, because they fear the short-run economic costs of environmental protection. Taking Indonesia...

The long-forgotten subject of the ecological disadvantages of the tropics has been brought to the fore once again by the catastrophic droughts in the Sahel and in southern Africa. The naive belief that economic development is simply a matter of finding the right technology and of spreading...