Forest Cover Change in Space and Time : Combining the von Thünen and Forest Transition Theories

Angelsen, Arild

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGGREGATE DEMAND;    AGRICULTURAL LAND;    AGRICULTURAL LAND USE;    AGRICULTURAL OUTPUT;    AGRICULTURAL PRICE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4117
RP-ID  :  WPS4117

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper presents a framework foranalyzing tropical deforestation and reforestation using thevon Thunen model as its starting point: land is allocated tothe use which yields the highest rent, and the rents ofvarious land uses are determined by location. Forest coverchange therefore becomes a question of changes in rent offorest versus non-forest use. While this is a simple andpowerful starting point, more intriguing issues arise whenthis is applied to analyze real cases. An initial shift inthe rent of one particular land use generates feedbackswhich affect the rent of all land uses. For example, a newtechnology in extensive agriculture should make this landuse more profitable and lead to more forest clearing, butgeneral equilibrium effects (changes in prices and localwages) can modify or even reverse this conclusion. Anotherissue is how a policy change or a shift in broader market,technological, and institutional forces will affect variousland use rents. The paper deals with three such areas:technological progress in agriculture, land tenure regimes,and community forest management. The second part of thepaper links the von Thunen framework to the foresttransition theory. The forest transition theory describes asequence over time where a forested region goes through aperiod of deforestation before the forest cover eventuallystabilizes and starts to increase. This sequence can be seenas a systematic pattern of change in the agricultural andforest land rents over time. Increasing agricultural rentleads to high rates of deforestation. The slow-down ofdeforestation and eventual reforestation is due to loweragricultural rents (the economic development path) andhigher forest rent (the forest scarcity path). Variousforces leading to these changes are discussed and supportedby empirical evidence from different tropical regions.