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

A cross-sectional analysis using data from 36 countries with tropical forests found in the 1982 Food and Agriculture Organization and United Nations Environment Programme deforestation study was conducted to examined the role population growth and capital availability play in deforestation. The unweighted analysis using data from all 36 countries found population growth to significantly account for the variations in tropical deforestation (p<.05); its significance was even greater when data from Guinea-Bissau was removed from the analysis (p<.01). Rural population growth contributed directly to deforestation by increasing the population which clears the land and indirectly by increasing the demand for wood products (p<.001). Gross national product (GNP) did not play a substantial role in deforestation in the unweighted analyses but it did in the weighted analyses (p<.01). Since the weighted analyses exaggerated the significance of countries with large rain forests this result suggested an interaction between forest size and the effects of capital availability on deforestation. Moreover the correlation between GNP per capita and the area deforested for the 8 countries with the largest tropical forests stood at .575 compared with .011 for the 28 countries with small forests. Wood and agricultural exports did not account much for the variation in the extent of deforestation. the demand for tropical hardwoods did not contribute much to the rapid deforestation in African and Latin American countries buy did in the Southeast Asian countries. Export agriculture did not account for deforestation in African and Amazon basin countries but did play a role in deforestation in Central America. It is concluded that the efficacy of policies to preserve rain forests will depend on the size of the forest.