Econometric Analysis on the socio-economic mechanism of tropical deforestation

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Tropical deforestation is considered to be the most important among the global environment problems. It is caused by many layered human activities, such as shifting cultivation, wood trade and other commercial logging, fire wood consumption and other local harvesting, conversion to arable and pasture lands, and fire. In this year's research, we have studied the mechanism of tropical deforestation through collected literature so that we have better understanding and we tried to build a econometric model.Currently Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO) is undertaking estimation of tropical forest resources, taking 1990 as study year. Although it was planned to publish the estimate in 1992, it has not been published yet. FAO itself recognized that the old data taking 1980 as study year and published in 1982 need revision, and the study using the old data would have limited meanings. As to the new data, FAO has reported a couple of interim reports. Regional figures, as sums of country data, were given there but country data themselves were not. Because of these data limitations, we cannot carry out full-scale econometric analysis. Instead we investigated the given data region wise.We have found that tropical deforestation is more apparent in South- Eastern Asia where economic growth is rapid than in Africa and Southern Asia where population growth is rapid. For fuelwood consumption population is a key factor and for industrial wood consumption a key factor is national income. Our finding that population increases have limited influence on tropical deforestation contradicts the ordinary belief that population pressure is the main cause of tropical deforestation.We would like to investigate more using inter-national data, as well as intra-national data to evaluate social movement of population.