Deforestation

Researchers have questioned 2009 findings by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) that found that India's forests were, unlike many tropical Asian nations', on the rebound. According to the FSI, Indian forests had grown by almost five percent from the 1990s. Yet, were these finding too good to be true?

According to Jean-Philippe Puyravaud and Priya Davidar of Pondicherry University, and William Laurance from James Cook University, the findings were very likely too optimistic.

It must be realised that while population growth and poverty do threaten forests, their destruction is more seriously determined by institutional and economic policies. Institutional failure can occur due to pro-degradation land use development policies or if there is a lack of regulation of resource use or corruption

The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) has condemned Malaysia's booming practice of converting tropical forests into rubberwood plantations, arguing that the conversion threatens Malaysia's biodiversity, endangered species, and releases significant greenhouse gas emissions.

Discouraged by the outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit last December as well as how negotiations at the just concluded talks in Bonn in Germany seem to have turned out, developing nations made up of mainly those from Africa are now looking inwards as a way out of the dilemma.